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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10150 ***
+
+Dracula’s Guest
+
+by Bram Stoker
+
+
+First published 1914
+
+To MY SON
+
+Contents
+
+ PREFACE
+ Dracula’s Guest
+ The Judge’s House
+ The Squaw
+ The Secret of the Growing Gold
+ The Gipsy Prophecy
+ The Coming of Abel Behenna
+ The Burial of the Rats
+ A Dream of Red Hands
+ Crooken Sands
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+A few months before the lamented death of my husband—I might say even
+as the shadow of death was over him—he planned three series of short
+stories for publication, and the present volume is one of them. To his
+original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto
+unpublished episode from _Dracula_. It was originally excised owing to
+the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers
+of what is considered my husband’s most remarkable work. The other
+stories have already been published in English and American
+periodicals. Had my husband lived longer, he might have seen fit to
+revise this work, which is mainly from the earlier years of his
+strenuous life. But, as fate has entrusted to me the issuing of it, I
+consider it fitting and proper to let it go forth practically as it was
+left by him.
+
+FLORENCE BRAM STOKER
+
+
+
+
+Dracula’s Guest
+
+
+When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich,
+and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were
+about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the maître d’hôtel of the Quatre
+Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the carriage
+and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still
+holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door:
+
+“Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is
+a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I
+am sure you will not be late.” Here he smiled, and added, “for you know
+what night it is.”
+
+Johann answered with an emphatic, “Ja, mein Herr,” and, touching his
+hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after
+signalling to him to stop:
+
+“Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?”
+
+He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: “Walpurgis nacht.” Then
+he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as
+big as a turnip, and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together
+and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realised that this was
+his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay, and
+sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started
+off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the
+horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniffed the air suspiciously.
+On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty
+bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high, wind-swept plateau. As we
+drove, I saw a road that looked but little used, and which seemed to
+dip through a little, winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even
+at the risk of offending him, I called Johann to stop—and when he had
+pulled up, I told him I would like to drive down that road. He made all
+sorts of excuses, and frequently crossed himself as he spoke. This
+somewhat piqued my curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He
+answered fencingly, and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest.
+Finally I said:
+
+“Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come
+unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I
+ask.” For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did
+he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me,
+and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English mixed with
+the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always
+just about to tell me something—the very idea of which evidently
+frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he
+crossed himself: “Walpurgis-Nacht!”
+
+I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man
+when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with
+him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and
+broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue—and
+every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became
+restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking
+around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by
+the bridles and led them on some twenty feet. I followed, and asked why
+he had done this. For answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we
+had left and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road,
+indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English: “Buried
+him—him what killed themselves.”
+
+I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross-roads: “Ah! I
+see, a suicide. How interesting!” But for the life of me I could not
+make out why the horses were frightened.
+
+Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a
+bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took
+Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale, and said, “It sounds
+like a wolf—but yet there are no wolves here now.”
+
+“No?” I said, questioning him; “isn’t it long since the wolves were so
+near the city?”
+
+“Long, long,” he answered, “in the spring and summer; but with the snow
+the wolves have been here not so long.”
+
+Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds
+drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath
+of cold wind seemed to drift past us. It was only a breath, however,
+and more in the nature of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out
+brightly again. Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and
+said:
+
+“The storm of snow, he comes before long time.” Then he looked at his
+watch again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly—for the horses
+were still pawing the ground restlessly and shaking their heads—he
+climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our
+journey.
+
+I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.
+
+“Tell me,” I said, “about this place where the road leads,” and I
+pointed down.
+
+Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer, before he answered, “It
+is unholy.”
+
+“What is unholy?” I enquired.
+
+“The village.”
+
+“Then there is a village?”
+
+“No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years.” My curiosity was
+piqued, “But you said there was a village.”
+
+“There was.”
+
+“Where is it now?”
+
+Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so
+mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said, but
+roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there
+and been buried in their graves; and sounds were heard under the clay,
+and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy with
+life, and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their
+lives (aye, and their souls!—and here he crossed himself) those who
+were left fled away to other places, where the living lived, and the
+dead were dead and not—not something. He was evidently afraid to speak
+the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and
+more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and
+he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear—white-faced, perspiring,
+trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful
+presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open
+plain. Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried:
+
+“Walpurgis nacht!” and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All my
+English blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said:
+
+“You are afraid, Johann—you are afraid. Go home; I shall return alone;
+the walk will do me good.” The carriage door was open. I took from the
+seat my oak walking-stick—which I always carry on my holiday
+excursions—and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, “Go
+home, Johann—Walpurgis-nacht doesn’t concern Englishmen.”
+
+The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to
+hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so
+foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was deeply in earnest; but all
+the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In
+his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me
+understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native
+German. It began to be a little tedious. After giving the direction,
+“Home!” I turned to go down the cross-road into the valley.
+
+With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I
+leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road
+for a while: then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and
+thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the
+horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror.
+Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away
+madly. I watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger, but I
+found that he, too, was gone.
+
+With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening
+valley to which Johann had objected. There was not the slightest
+reason, that I could see, for his objection; and I daresay I tramped
+for a couple of hours without thinking of time or distance, and
+certainly without seeing a person or a house. So far as the place was
+concerned, it was desolation itself. But I did not notice this
+particularly till, on turning a bend in the road, I came upon a
+scattered fringe of wood; then I recognised that I had been impressed
+unconsciously by the desolation of the region through which I had
+passed.
+
+I sat down to rest myself, and began to look around. It struck me that
+it was considerably colder than it had been at the commencement of my
+walk—a sort of sighing sound seemed to be around me, with, now and
+then, high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. Looking upwards I noticed
+that great thick clouds were drifting rapidly across the sky from North
+to South at a great height. There were signs of coming storm in some
+lofty stratum of the air. I was a little chilly, and, thinking that it
+was the sitting still after the exercise of walking, I resumed my
+journey.
+
+The ground I passed over was now much more picturesque. There were no
+striking objects that the eye might single out; but in all there was a
+charm of beauty. I took little heed of time and it was only when the
+deepening twilight forced itself upon me that I began to think of how I
+should find my way home. The brightness of the day had gone. The air
+was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked.
+They were accompanied by a sort of far-away rushing sound, through
+which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious cry which the driver
+had said came from a wolf. For a while I hesitated. I had said I would
+see the deserted village, so on I went, and presently came on a wide
+stretch of open country, shut in by hills all around. Their sides were
+covered with trees which spread down to the plain, dotting, in clumps,
+the gentler slopes and hollows which showed here and there. I followed
+with my eye the winding of the road, and saw that it curved close to
+one of the densest of these clumps and was lost behind it.
+
+As I looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to
+fall. I thought of the miles and miles of bleak country I had passed,
+and then hurried on to seek the shelter of the wood in front. Darker
+and darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the snow, till the
+earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the further
+edge of which was lost in misty vagueness. The road was here but crude,
+and when on the level its boundaries were not so marked, as when it
+passed through the cuttings; and in a little while I found that I must
+have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard surface, and my
+feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind grew stronger and
+blew with ever increasing force, till I was fain to run before it. The
+air became icy-cold, and in spite of my exercise I began to suffer. The
+snow was now falling so thickly and whirling around me in such rapid
+eddies that I could hardly keep my eyes open. Every now and then the
+heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning, and in the flashes I
+could see ahead of me a great mass of trees, chiefly yew and cypress
+all heavily coated with snow.
+
+I was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there, in comparative
+silence, I could hear the rush of the wind high overhead. Presently the
+blackness of the storm had become merged in the darkness of the night.
+By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away: it now only came in
+fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf
+appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
+
+Now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud, came a
+straggling ray of moonlight, which lit up the expanse, and showed me
+that I was at the edge of a dense mass of cypress and yew trees. As the
+snow had ceased to fall, I walked out from the shelter and began to
+investigate more closely. It appeared to me that, amongst so many old
+foundations as I had passed, there might be still standing a house in
+which, though in ruins, I could find some sort of shelter for a while.
+As I skirted the edge of the copse, I found that a low wall encircled
+it, and following this I presently found an opening. Here the cypresses
+formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind of building.
+Just as I caught sight of this, however, the drifting clouds obscured
+the moon, and I passed up the path in darkness. The wind must have
+grown colder, for I felt myself shiver as I walked; but there was hope
+of shelter, and I groped my way blindly on.
+
+I stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. The storm had passed; and,
+perhaps in sympathy with nature’s silence, my heart seemed to cease to
+beat. But this was only momentarily; for suddenly the moonlight broke
+through the clouds, showing me that I was in a graveyard, and that the
+square object before me was a great massive tomb of marble, as white as
+the snow that lay on and all around it. With the moonlight there came a
+fierce sigh of the storm, which appeared to resume its course with a
+long, low howl, as of many dogs or wolves. I was awed and shocked, and
+felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the
+heart. Then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb,
+the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it was returning
+on its track. Impelled by some sort of fascination, I approached the
+sepulchre to see what it was, and why such a thing stood alone in such
+a place. I walked around it, and read, over the Doric door, in German:
+
+COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ
+IN STYRIA
+SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH
+1801
+
+On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble—for
+the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone—was a great
+iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great
+Russian letters:
+
+“The dead travel fast.”
+
+There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it
+gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the
+first time, that I had taken Johann’s advice. Here a thought struck me,
+which came under almost mysterious circumstances and with a terrible
+shock. This was Walpurgis Night!
+
+Walpurgis Night, when, according to the belief of millions of people,
+the devil was abroad—when the graves were opened and the dead came
+forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held
+revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was the
+depopulated village of centuries ago. This was where the suicide lay;
+and this was the place where I was alone—unmanned, shivering with cold
+in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again upon me! It took
+all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught, all my courage,
+not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.
+
+And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though
+thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore
+on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such
+violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic
+slingers—hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter
+of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were
+standing-corn. At the first I had rushed to the nearest tree; but I was
+soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford
+refuge, the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching
+against the massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of
+protection from the beating of the hailstones, for now they only drove
+against me as they ricocheted from the ground and the side of the
+marble.
+
+As I leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. The
+shelter of even a tomb was welcome in that pitiless tempest, and I was
+about to enter it when there came a flash of forked-lightning that lit
+up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as I am a living
+man, I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the tomb, a
+beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping
+on a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand
+of a giant and hurled out into the storm. The whole thing was so sudden
+that, before I could realise the shock, moral as well as physical, I
+found the hailstones beating me down. At the same time I had a strange,
+dominating feeling that I was not alone. I looked towards the tomb.
+Just then there came another blinding flash, which seemed to strike the
+iron stake that surmounted the tomb and to pour through to the earth,
+blasting and crumbling the marble, as in a burst of flame. The dead
+woman rose for a moment of agony, while she was lapped in the flame,
+and her bitter scream of pain was drowned in the thundercrash. The last
+thing I heard was this mingling of dreadful sound, as again I was
+seized in the giant-grasp and dragged away, while the hailstones beat
+on me, and the air around seemed reverberant with the howling of
+wolves. The last sight that I remembered was a vague, white, moving
+mass, as if all the graves around me had sent out the phantoms of their
+sheeted-dead, and that they were closing in on me through the white
+cloudiness of the driving hail.
+
+Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of consciousness; then a
+sense of weariness that was dreadful. For a time I remembered nothing;
+but slowly my senses returned. My feet seemed positively racked with
+pain, yet I could not move them. They seemed to be numbed. There was an
+icy feeling at the back of my neck and all down my spine, and my ears,
+like my feet, were dead, yet in torment; but there was in my breast a
+sense of warmth which was, by comparison, delicious. It was as a
+nightmare—a physical nightmare, if one may use such an expression; for
+some heavy weight on my chest made it difficult for me to breathe.
+
+This period of semi-lethargy seemed to remain a long time, and as it
+faded away I must have slept or swooned. Then came a sort of loathing,
+like the first stage of sea-sickness, and a wild desire to be free from
+something—I knew not what. A vast stillness enveloped me, as though all
+the world were asleep or dead—only broken by the low panting as of some
+animal close to me. I felt a warm rasping at my throat, then came a
+consciousness of the awful truth, which chilled me to the heart and
+sent the blood surging up through my brain. Some great animal was lying
+on me and now licking my throat. I feared to stir, for some instinct of
+prudence bade me lie still; but the brute seemed to realise that there
+was now some change in me, for it raised its head. Through my eyelashes
+I saw above me the two great flaming eyes of a gigantic wolf. Its sharp
+white teeth gleamed in the gaping red mouth, and I could feel its hot
+breath fierce and acrid upon me.
+
+For another spell of time I remembered no more. Then I became conscious
+of a low growl, followed by a yelp, renewed again and again. Then,
+seemingly very far away, I heard a “Holloa! holloa!” as of many voices
+calling in unison. Cautiously I raised my head and looked in the
+direction whence the sound came; but the cemetery blocked my view. The
+wolf still continued to yelp in a strange way, and a red glare began to
+move round the grove of cypresses, as though following the sound. As
+the voices drew closer, the wolf yelped faster and louder. I feared to
+make either sound or motion. Nearer came the red glow, over the white
+pall which stretched into the darkness around me. Then all at once from
+beyond the trees there came at a trot a troop of horsemen bearing
+torches. The wolf rose from my breast and made for the cemetery. I saw
+one of the horsemen (soldiers by their caps and their long military
+cloaks) raise his carbine and take aim. A companion knocked up his arm,
+and I heard the ball whizz over my head. He had evidently taken my body
+for that of the wolf. Another sighted the animal as it slunk away, and
+a shot followed. Then, at a gallop, the troop rode forward—some towards
+me, others following the wolf as it disappeared amongst the snow-clad
+cypresses.
+
+As they drew nearer I tried to move, but was powerless, although I
+could see and hear all that went on around me. Two or three of the
+soldiers jumped from their horses and knelt beside me. One of them
+raised my head, and placed his hand over my heart.
+
+“Good news, comrades!” he cried. “His heart still beats!”
+
+Then some brandy was poured down my throat; it put vigour into me, and
+I was able to open my eyes fully and look around. Lights and shadows
+were moving among the trees, and I heard men call to one another. They
+drew together, uttering frightened exclamations; and the lights flashed
+as the others came pouring out of the cemetery pell-mell, like men
+possessed. When the further ones came close to us, those who were
+around me asked them eagerly:
+
+“Well, have you found him?”
+
+The reply rang out hurriedly:
+
+“No! no! Come away quick—quick! This is no place to stay, and on this
+of all nights!”
+
+“What was it?” was the question, asked in all manner of keys. The
+answer came variously and all indefinitely as though the men were moved
+by some common impulse to speak, yet were restrained by some common
+fear from giving their thoughts.
+
+“It—it—indeed!” gibbered one, whose wits had plainly given out for the
+moment.
+
+“A wolf—and yet not a wolf!” another put in shudderingly.
+
+“No use trying for him without the sacred bullet,” a third remarked in
+a more ordinary manner.
+
+“Serve us right for coming out on this night! Truly we have earned our
+thousand marks!” were the ejaculations of a fourth.
+
+“There was blood on the broken marble,” another said after a pause—“the
+lightning never brought that there. And for him—is he safe? Look at his
+throat! See, comrades, the wolf has been lying on him and keeping his
+blood warm.”
+
+The officer looked at my throat and replied:
+
+“He is all right; the skin is not pierced. What does it all mean? We
+should never have found him but for the yelping of the wolf.”
+
+“What became of it?” asked the man who was holding up my head, and who
+seemed the least panic-stricken of the party, for his hands were steady
+and without tremor. On his sleeve was the chevron of a petty officer.
+
+“It went to its home,” answered the man, whose long face was pallid,
+and who actually shook with terror as he glanced around him fearfully.
+“There are graves enough there in which it may lie. Come, comrades—come
+quickly! Let us leave this cursed spot.”
+
+The officer raised me to a sitting posture, as he uttered a word of
+command; then several men placed me upon a horse. He sprang to the
+saddle behind me, took me in his arms, gave the word to advance; and,
+turning our faces away from the cypresses, we rode away in swift,
+military order.
+
+As yet my tongue refused its office, and I was perforce silent. I must
+have fallen asleep; for the next thing I remembered was finding myself
+standing up, supported by a soldier on each side of me. It was almost
+broad daylight, and to the north a red streak of sunlight was
+reflected, like a path of blood, over the waste of snow. The officer
+was telling the men to say nothing of what they had seen, except that
+they found an English stranger, guarded by a large dog.
+
+“Dog! that was no dog,” cut in the man who had exhibited such fear. “I
+think I know a wolf when I see one.”
+
+The young officer answered calmly: “I said a dog.”
+
+“Dog!” reiterated the other ironically. It was evident that his courage
+was rising with the sun; and, pointing to me, he said, “Look at his
+throat. Is that the work of a dog, master?”
+
+Instinctively I raised my hand to my throat, and as I touched it I
+cried out in pain. The men crowded round to look, some stooping down
+from their saddles; and again there came the calm voice of the young
+officer:
+
+“A dog, as I said. If aught else were said we should only be laughed
+at.”
+
+I was then mounted behind a trooper, and we rode on into the suburbs of
+Munich. Here we came across a stray carriage, into which I was lifted,
+and it was driven off to the Quatre Saisons—the young officer
+accompanying me, whilst a trooper followed with his horse, and the
+others rode off to their barracks.
+
+When we arrived, Herr Delbrück rushed so quickly down the steps to meet
+me, that it was apparent he had been watching within. Taking me by both
+hands he solicitously led me in. The officer saluted me and was turning
+to withdraw, when I recognised his purpose, and insisted that he should
+come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked him and his
+brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he was more than
+glad, and that Herr Delbrück had at the first taken steps to make all
+the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous utterance the maître
+d’hôtel smiled, while the officer pleaded duty and withdrew.
+
+“But Herr Delbrück,” I enquired, “how and why was it that the soldiers
+searched for me?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, as if in depreciation of his own deed, as he
+replied:
+
+“I was so fortunate as to obtain leave from the commander of the
+regiment in which I served, to ask for volunteers.”
+
+“But how did you know I was lost?” I asked.
+
+“The driver came hither with the remains of his carriage, which had
+been upset when the horses ran away.”
+
+“But surely you would not send a search-party of soldiers merely on
+this account?”
+
+“Oh, no!” he answered; “but even before the coachman arrived, I had
+this telegram from the Boyar whose guest you are,” and he took from his
+pocket a telegram which he handed to me, and I read:
+
+_Bistritz_.
+Be careful of my guest—his safety is most precious to me. Should aught
+happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure
+his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often
+dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you
+suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.—_Dracula_.
+
+As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me;
+and, if the attentive maître d’hôtel had not caught me, I think I
+should have fallen. There was something so strange in all this,
+something so weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a
+sense of my being in some way the sport of opposite forces—the mere
+vague idea of which seemed in a way to paralyse me. I was certainly
+under some form of mysterious protection. From a distant country had
+come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the
+danger of the snow-sleep and the jaws of the wolf.
+
+
+
+
+The Judge’s House
+
+
+When the time for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcolmson made up
+his mind to go somewhere to read by himself. He feared the attractions
+of the seaside, and also he feared completely rural isolation, for of
+old he knew it charms, and so he determined to find some unpretentious
+little town where there would be nothing to distract him. He refrained
+from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that
+each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where he
+had already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished to avoid friends he had
+no wish to encumber himself with the attention of friends’ friends, and
+so he determined to look out for a place for himself. He packed a
+portmanteau with some clothes and all the books he required, and then
+took ticket for the first name on the local time-table which he did not
+know.
+
+When at the end of three hours’ journey he alighted at Benchurch, he
+felt satisfied that he had so far obliterated his tracks as to be sure
+of having a peaceful opportunity of pursuing his studies. He went
+straight to the one inn which the sleepy little place contained, and
+put up for the night. Benchurch was a market town, and once in three
+weeks was crowded to excess, but for the remainder of the twenty-one
+days it was as attractive as a desert. Malcolmson looked around the day
+after his arrival to try to find quarters more isolated than even so
+quiet an inn as “The Good Traveller” afforded. There was only one place
+which took his fancy, and it certainly satisfied his wildest ideas
+regarding quiet; in fact, quiet was not the proper word to apply to
+it—desolation was the only term conveying any suitable idea of its
+isolation. It was an old rambling, heavy-built house of the Jacobean
+style, with heavy gables and windows, unusually small, and set higher
+than was customary in such houses, and was surrounded with a high brick
+wall massively built. Indeed, on examination, it looked more like a
+fortified house than an ordinary dwelling. But all these things pleased
+Malcolmson. “Here,” he thought, “is the very spot I have been looking
+for, and if I can get opportunity of using it I shall be happy.” His
+joy was increased when he realised beyond doubt that it was not at
+present inhabited.
+
+From the post-office he got the name of the agent, who was rarely
+surprised at the application to rent a part of the old house. Mr.
+Carnford, the local lawyer and agent, was a genial old gentleman, and
+frankly confessed his delight at anyone being willing to live in the
+house.
+
+“To tell you the truth,” said he, “I should be only too happy, on
+behalf of the owners, to let anyone have the house rent free for a term
+of years if only to accustom the people here to see it inhabited. It
+has been so long empty that some kind of absurd prejudice has grown up
+about it, and this can be best put down by its occupation—if only,” he
+added with a sly glance at Malcolmson, “by a scholar like yourself, who
+wants its quiet for a time.”
+
+Malcolmson thought it needless to ask the agent about the “absurd
+prejudice”; he knew he would get more information, if he should require
+it, on that subject from other quarters. He paid his three months’
+rent, got a receipt, and the name of an old woman who would probably
+undertake to “do” for him, and came away with the keys in his pocket.
+He then went to the landlady of the inn, who was a cheerful and most
+kindly person, and asked her advice as to such stores and provisions as
+he would be likely to require. She threw up her hands in amazement when
+he told her where he was going to settle himself.
+
+“Not in the Judge’s House!” she said, and grew pale as she spoke. He
+explained the locality of the house, saying that he did not know its
+name. When he had finished she answered:
+
+“Aye, sure enough—sure enough the very place! It is the Judge’s House
+sure enough.” He asked her to tell him about the place, why so called,
+and what there was against it. She told him that it was so called
+locally because it had been many years before—how long she could not
+say, as she was herself from another part of the country, but she
+thought it must have been a hundred years or more—the abode of a judge
+who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences and his
+hostility to prisoners at Assizes. As to what there was against the
+house itself she could not tell. She had often asked, but no one could
+inform her; but there was a general feeling that there was _something_,
+and for her own part she would not take all the money in Drinkwater’s
+Bank and stay in the house an hour by herself. Then she apologised to
+Malcolmson for her disturbing talk.
+
+“It is too bad of me, sir, and you—and a young gentlemen, too—if you
+will pardon me saying it, going to live there all alone. If you were my
+boy—and you’ll excuse me for saying it—you wouldn’t sleep there a
+night, not if I had to go there myself and pull the big alarm bell
+that’s on the roof!” The good creature was so manifestly in earnest,
+and was so kindly in her intentions, that Malcolmson, although amused,
+was touched. He told her kindly how much he appreciated her interest in
+him, and added:
+
+“But, my dear Mrs. Witham, indeed you need not be concerned about me! A
+man who is reading for the Mathematical Tripos has too much to think of
+to be disturbed by any of these mysterious ‘somethings’, and his work
+is of too exact and prosaic a kind to allow of his having any corner in
+his mind for mysteries of any kind. Harmonical Progression,
+Permutations and Combinations, and Elliptic Functions have sufficient
+mysteries for me!” Mrs. Witham kindly undertook to see after his
+commissions, and he went himself to look for the old woman who had been
+recommended to him. When he returned to the Judge’s House with her,
+after an interval of a couple of hours, he found Mrs. Witham herself
+waiting with several men and boys carrying parcels, and an
+upholsterer’s man with a bed in a car, for she said, though tables and
+chairs might be all very well, a bed that hadn’t been aired for mayhap
+fifty years was not proper for young bones to lie on. She was evidently
+curious to see the inside of the house; and though manifestly so afraid
+of the “somethings” that at the slightest sound she clutched on to
+Malcolmson, whom she never left for a moment, went over the whole
+place.
+
+After his examination of the house, Malcolmson decided to take up his
+abode in the great dining-room, which was big enough to serve for all
+his requirements; and Mrs. Witham, with the aid of the charwoman, Mrs.
+Dempster, proceeded to arrange matters. When the hampers were brought
+in and unpacked, Malcolmson saw that with much kind forethought she had
+sent from her own kitchen sufficient provisions to last for a few days.
+Before going she expressed all sorts of kind wishes; and at the door
+turned and said:
+
+“And perhaps, sir, as the room is big and draughty it might be well to
+have one of those big screens put round your bed at night—though, truth
+to tell, I would die myself if I were to be so shut in with all kinds
+of—of ‘things’, that put their heads round the sides, or over the top,
+and look on me!” The image which she had called up was too much for her
+nerves, and she fled incontinently.
+
+Mrs. Dempster sniffed in a superior manner as the landlady disappeared,
+and remarked that for her own part she wasn’t afraid of all the bogies
+in the kingdom.
+
+“I’ll tell you what it is, sir,” she said; “bogies is all kinds and
+sorts of things—except bogies! Rats and mice, and beetles; and creaky
+doors, and loose slates, and broken panes, and stiff drawer handles,
+that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of
+the night. Look at the wainscot of the room! It is old—hundreds of
+years old! Do you think there’s no rats and beetles there! And do you
+imagine, sir, that you won’t see none of them? Rats is bogies, I tell
+you, and bogies is rats; and don’t you get to think anything else!”
+
+“Mrs. Dempster,” said Malcolmson gravely, making her a polite bow, “you
+know more than a Senior Wrangler! And let me say, that, as a mark of
+esteem for your indubitable soundness of head and heart, I shall, when
+I go, give you possession of this house, and let you stay here by
+yourself for the last two months of my tenancy, for four weeks will
+serve my purpose.”
+
+“Thank you kindly, sir!” she answered, “but I couldn’t sleep away from
+home a night. I am in Greenhow’s Charity, and if I slept a night away
+from my rooms I should lose all I have got to live on. The rules is
+very strict; and there’s too many watching for a vacancy for me to run
+any risks in the matter. Only for that, sir, I’d gladly come here and
+attend on you altogether during your stay.”
+
+“My good woman,” said Malcolmson hastily, “I have come here on purpose
+to obtain solitude; and believe me that I am grateful to the late
+Greenhow for having so organised his admirable charity—whatever it
+is—that I am perforce denied the opportunity of suffering from such a
+form of temptation! Saint Anthony himself could not be more rigid on
+the point!”
+
+The old woman laughed harshly. “Ah, you young gentlemen,” she said,
+“you don’t fear for naught; and belike you’ll get all the solitude you
+want here.” She set to work with her cleaning; and by nightfall, when
+Malcolmson returned from his walk—he always had one of his books to
+study as he walked—he found the room swept and tidied, a fire burning
+in the old hearth, the lamp lit, and the table spread for supper with
+Mrs. Witham’s excellent fare. “This is comfort, indeed,” he said, as he
+rubbed his hands.
+
+When he had finished his supper, and lifted the tray to the other end
+of the great oak dining-table, he got out his books again, put fresh
+wood on the fire, trimmed his lamp, and set himself down to a spell of
+real hard work. He went on without pause till about eleven o’clock,
+when he knocked off for a bit to fix his fire and lamp, and to make
+himself a cup of tea. He had always been a tea-drinker, and during his
+college life had sat late at work and had taken tea late. The rest was
+a great luxury to him, and he enjoyed it with a sense of delicious,
+voluptuous ease. The renewed fire leaped and sparkled, and threw quaint
+shadows through the great old room; and as he sipped his hot tea he
+revelled in the sense of isolation from his kind. Then it was that he
+began to notice for the first time what a noise the rats were making.
+
+“Surely,” he thought, “they cannot have been at it all the time I was
+reading. Had they been, I must have noticed it!” Presently, when the
+noise increased, he satisfied himself that it was really new. It was
+evident that at first the rats had been frightened at the presence of a
+stranger, and the light of fire and lamp; but that as the time went on
+they had grown bolder and were now disporting themselves as was their
+wont.
+
+How busy they were! and hark to the strange noises! Up and down behind
+the old wainscot, over the ceiling and under the floor they raced, and
+gnawed, and scratched! Malcolmson smiled to himself as he recalled to
+mind the saying of Mrs. Dempster, “Bogies is rats, and rats is bogies!”
+The tea began to have its effect of intellectual and nervous stimulus,
+he saw with joy another long spell of work to be done before the night
+was past, and in the sense of security which it gave him, he allowed
+himself the luxury of a good look round the room. He took his lamp in
+one hand, and went all around, wondering that so quaint and beautiful
+an old house had been so long neglected. The carving of the oak on the
+panels of the wainscot was fine, and on and round the doors and windows
+it was beautiful and of rare merit. There were some old pictures on the
+walls, but they were coated so thick with dust and dirt that he could
+not distinguish any detail of them, though he held his lamp as high as
+he could over his head. Here and there as he went round he saw some
+crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with its bright
+eyes glittering in the light, but in an instant it was gone, and a
+squeak and a scamper followed. The thing that most struck him, however,
+was the rope of the great alarm bell on the roof, which hung down in a
+corner of the room on the right-hand side of the fireplace. He pulled
+up close to the hearth a great high-backed carved oak chair, and sat
+down to his last cup of tea. When this was done he made up the fire,
+and went back to his work, sitting at the corner of the table, having
+the fire to his left. For a little while the rats disturbed him
+somewhat with their perpetual scampering, but he got accustomed to the
+noise as one does to the ticking of a clock or to the roar of moving
+water; and he became so immersed in his work that everything in the
+world, except the problem which he was trying to solve, passed away
+from him.
+
+He suddenly looked up, his problem was still unsolved, and there was in
+the air that sense of the hour before the dawn, which is so dread to
+doubtful life. The noise of the rats had ceased. Indeed it seemed to
+him that it must have ceased but lately and that it was the sudden
+cessation which had disturbed him. The fire had fallen low, but still
+it threw out a deep red glow. As he looked he started in spite of his
+_sang froid_.
+
+There on the great high-backed carved oak chair by the right side of
+the fireplace sat an enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with baleful
+eyes. He made a motion to it as though to hunt it away, but it did not
+stir. Then he made the motion of throwing something. Still it did not
+stir, but showed its great white teeth angrily, and its cruel eyes
+shone in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness.
+
+Malcolmson felt amazed, and seizing the poker from the hearth ran at it
+to kill it. Before, however, he could strike it, the rat, with a squeak
+that sounded like the concentration of hate, jumped upon the floor,
+and, running up the rope of the alarm bell, disappeared in the darkness
+beyond the range of the green-shaded lamp. Instantly, strange to say,
+the noisy scampering of the rats in the wainscot began again.
+
+By this time Malcolmson’s mind was quite off the problem; and as a
+shrill cock-crow outside told him of the approach of morning, he went
+to bed and to sleep.
+
+He slept so sound that he was not even waked by Mrs. Dempster coming in
+to make up his room. It was only when she had tidied up the place and
+got his breakfast ready and tapped on the screen which closed in his
+bed that he woke. He was a little tired still after his night’s hard
+work, but a strong cup of tea soon freshened him up and, taking his
+book, he went out for his morning walk, bringing with him a few
+sandwiches lest he should not care to return till dinner time. He found
+a quiet walk between high elms some way outside the town, and here he
+spent the greater part of the day studying his Laplace. On his return
+he looked in to see Mrs. Witham and to thank her for her kindness. When
+she saw him coming through the diamond-paned bay window of her sanctum
+she came out to meet him and asked him in. She looked at him
+searchingly and shook her head as she said:
+
+“You must not overdo it, sir. You are paler this morning than you
+should be. Too late hours and too hard work on the brain isn’t good for
+any man! But tell me, sir, how did you pass the night? Well, I hope?
+But my heart! sir, I was glad when Mrs. Dempster told me this morning
+that you were all right and sleeping sound when she went in.”
+
+“Oh, I was all right,” he answered smiling, “the ‘somethings’ didn’t
+worry me, as yet. Only the rats; and they had a circus, I tell you, all
+over the place. There was one wicked looking old devil that sat up on
+my own chair by the fire, and wouldn’t go till I took the poker to him,
+and then he ran up the rope of the alarm bell and got to somewhere up
+the wall or the ceiling—I couldn’t see where, it was so dark.”
+
+“Mercy on us,” said Mrs. Witham, “an old devil, and sitting on a chair
+by the fireside! Take care, sir! take care! There’s many a true word
+spoken in jest.”
+
+“How do you mean? Pon my word I don’t understand.”
+
+“An old devil! The old devil, perhaps. There! sir, you needn’t laugh,”
+for Malcolmson had broken into a hearty peal. “You young folks thinks
+it easy to laugh at things that makes older ones shudder. Never mind,
+sir! never mind! Please God, you’ll laugh all the time. It’s what I
+wish you myself!” and the good lady beamed all over in sympathy with
+his enjoyment, her fears gone for a moment.
+
+“Oh, forgive me!” said Malcolmson presently. “Don’t think me rude; but
+the idea was too much for me—that the old devil himself was on the
+chair last night!” And at the thought he laughed again. Then he went
+home to dinner.
+
+This evening the scampering of the rats began earlier; indeed it had
+been going on before his arrival, and only ceased whilst his presence
+by its freshness disturbed them. After dinner he sat by the fire for a
+while and had a smoke; and then, having cleared his table, began to
+work as before. Tonight the rats disturbed him more than they had done
+on the previous night. How they scampered up and down and under and
+over! How they squeaked, and scratched, and gnawed! How they, getting
+bolder by degrees, came to the mouths of their holes and to the chinks
+and cracks and crannies in the wainscoting till their eyes shone like
+tiny lamps as the firelight rose and fell. But to him, now doubtless
+accustomed to them, their eyes were not wicked; only their playfulness
+touched him. Sometimes the boldest of them made sallies out on the
+floor or along the mouldings of the wainscot. Now and again as they
+disturbed him Malcolmson made a sound to frighten them, smiting the
+table with his hand or giving a fierce “Hsh, hsh,” so that they fled
+straightway to their holes.
+
+And so the early part of the night wore on; and despite the noise
+Malcolmson got more and more immersed in his work.
+
+All at once he stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a
+sudden sense of silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or
+scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave. He remembered the
+odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at
+the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very odd sensation
+thrilled through him.
+
+There, on the great old high-backed carved oak chair beside the
+fireplace sat the same enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with
+baleful eyes.
+
+Instinctively he took the nearest thing to his hand, a book of
+logarithms, and flung it at it. The book was badly aimed and the rat
+did not stir, so again the poker performance of the previous night was
+repeated; and again the rat, being closely pursued, fled up the rope of
+the alarm bell. Strangely too, the departure of this rat was instantly
+followed by the renewal of the noise made by the general rat community.
+On this occasion, as on the previous one, Malcolmson could not see at
+what part of the room the rat disappeared, for the green shade of his
+lamp left the upper part of the room in darkness, and the fire had
+burned low.
+
+On looking at his watch he found it was close on midnight; and, not
+sorry for the _divertissement_, he made up his fire and made himself
+his nightly pot of tea. He had got through a good spell of work, and
+thought himself entitled to a cigarette; and so he sat on the great oak
+chair before the fire and enjoyed it. Whilst smoking he began to think
+that he would like to know where the rat disappeared to, for he had
+certain ideas for the morrow not entirely disconnected with a rat-trap.
+Accordingly he lit another lamp and placed it so that it would shine
+well into the right-hand corner of the wall by the fireplace. Then he
+got all the books he had with him, and placed them handy to throw at
+the vermin. Finally he lifted the rope of the alarm bell and placed the
+end of it on the table, fixing the extreme end under the lamp. As he
+handled it he could not help noticing how pliable it was, especially
+for so strong a rope, and one not in use. “You could hang a man with
+it,” he thought to himself. When his preparations were made he looked
+around, and said complacently:
+
+“There now, my friend, I think we shall learn something of you this
+time!” He began his work again, and though as before somewhat disturbed
+at first by the noise of the rats, soon lost himself in his
+propositions and problems.
+
+Again he was called to his immediate surroundings suddenly. This time
+it might not have been the sudden silence only which took his
+attention; there was a slight movement of the rope, and the lamp moved.
+Without stirring, he looked to see if his pile of books was within
+range, and then cast his eye along the rope. As he looked he saw the
+great rat drop from the rope on the oak arm-chair and sit there glaring
+at him. He raised a book in his right hand, and taking careful aim,
+flung it at the rat. The latter, with a quick movement, sprang aside
+and dodged the missile. He then took another book, and a third, and
+flung them one after another at the rat, but each time unsuccessfully.
+At last, as he stood with a book poised in his hand to throw, the rat
+squeaked and seemed afraid. This made Malcolmson more than ever eager
+to strike, and the book flew and struck the rat a resounding blow. It
+gave a terrified squeak, and turning on his pursuer a look of terrible
+malevolence, ran up the chair-back and made a great jump to the rope of
+the alarm bell and ran up it like lightning. The lamp rocked under the
+sudden strain, but it was a heavy one and did not topple over.
+Malcolmson kept his eyes on the rat, and saw it by the light of the
+second lamp leap to a moulding of the wainscot and disappear through a
+hole in one of the great pictures which hung on the wall, obscured and
+invisible through its coating of dirt and dust.
+
+“I shall look up my friend’s habitation in the morning,” said the
+student, as he went over to collect his books. “The third picture from
+the fireplace; I shall not forget.” He picked up the books one by one,
+commenting on them as he lifted them. “_Conic Sections_ he does not
+mind, nor _Cycloidal Oscillations_, nor the _Principia_, nor
+_Quaternions_, nor _Thermodynamics_. Now for the book that fetched
+him!” Malcolmson took it up and looked at it. As he did so he started,
+and a sudden pallor overspread his face. He looked round uneasily and
+shivered slightly, as he murmured to himself:
+
+“The Bible my mother gave me! What an odd coincidence.” He sat down to
+work again, and the rats in the wainscot renewed their gambols. They
+did not disturb him, however; somehow their presence gave him a sense
+of companionship. But he could not attend to his work, and after
+striving to master the subject on which he was engaged gave it up in
+despair, and went to bed as the first streak of dawn stole in through
+the eastern window.
+
+He slept heavily but uneasily, and dreamed much; and when Mrs. Dempster
+woke him late in the morning he seemed ill at ease, and for a few
+minutes did not seem to realise exactly where he was. His first request
+rather surprised the servant.
+
+“Mrs. Dempster, when I am out to-day I wish you would get the steps and
+dust or wash those pictures—specially that one the third from the
+fireplace—I want to see what they are.”
+
+Late in the afternoon Malcolmson worked at his books in the shaded
+walk, and the cheerfulness of the previous day came back to him as the
+day wore on, and he found that his reading was progressing well. He had
+worked out to a satisfactory conclusion all the problems which had as
+yet baffled him, and it was in a state of jubilation that he paid a
+visit to Mrs. Witham at “The Good Traveller”. He found a stranger in
+the cosy sitting-room with the landlady, who was introduced to him as
+Dr. Thornhill. She was not quite at ease, and this, combined with the
+doctor’s plunging at once into a series of questions, made Malcolmson
+come to the conclusion that his presence was not an accident, so
+without preliminary he said:
+
+“Dr. Thornhill, I shall with pleasure answer you any question you may
+choose to ask me if you will answer me one question first.”
+
+The doctor seemed surprised, but he smiled and answered at once, “Done!
+What is it?”
+
+“Did Mrs. Witham ask you to come here and see me and advise me?”
+
+Dr. Thornhill for a moment was taken aback, and Mrs. Witham got fiery
+red and turned away; but the doctor was a frank and ready man, and he
+answered at once and openly.
+
+“She did: but she didn’t intend you to know it. I suppose it was my
+clumsy haste that made you suspect. She told me that she did not like
+the idea of your being in that house all by yourself, and that she
+thought you took too much strong tea. In fact, she wants me to advise
+you if possible to give up the tea and the very late hours. I was a
+keen student in my time, so I suppose I may take the liberty of a
+college man, and without offence, advise you not quite as a stranger.”
+
+Malcolmson with a bright smile held out his hand. “Shake! as they say
+in America,” he said. “I must thank you for your kindness and Mrs.
+Witham too, and your kindness deserves a return on my part. I promise
+to take no more strong tea—no tea at all till you let me—and I shall go
+to bed tonight at one o’clock at latest. Will that do?”
+
+“Capital,” said the doctor. “Now tell us all that you noticed in the
+old house,” and so Malcolmson then and there told in minute detail all
+that had happened in the last two nights. He was interrupted every now
+and then by some exclamation from Mrs. Witham, till finally when he
+told of the episode of the Bible the landlady’s pent-up emotions found
+vent in a shriek; and it was not till a stiff glass of brandy and water
+had been administered that she grew composed again. Dr. Thornhill
+listened with a face of growing gravity, and when the narrative was
+complete and Mrs. Witham had been restored he asked:
+
+“The rat always went up the rope of the alarm bell?”
+
+“Always.”
+
+“I suppose you know,” said the Doctor after a pause, “what the rope
+is?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“It is,” said the Doctor slowly, “the very rope which the hangman used
+for all the victims of the Judge’s judicial rancour!” Here he was
+interrupted by another scream from Mrs. Witham, and steps had to be
+taken for her recovery. Malcolmson having looked at his watch, and
+found that it was close to his dinner hour, had gone home before her
+complete recovery.
+
+When Mrs. Witham was herself again she almost assailed the Doctor with
+angry questions as to what he meant by putting such horrible ideas into
+the poor young man’s mind. “He has quite enough there already to upset
+him,” she added. Dr. Thornhill replied:
+
+“My dear madam, I had a distinct purpose in it! I wanted to draw his
+attention to the bell rope, and to fix it there. It may be that he is
+in a highly overwrought state, and has been studying too much, although
+I am bound to say that he seems as sound and healthy a young man,
+mentally and bodily, as ever I saw—but then the rats—and that
+suggestion of the devil.” The doctor shook his head and went on. “I
+would have offered to go and stay the first night with him but that I
+felt sure it would have been a cause of offence. He may get in the
+night some strange fright or hallucination; and if he does I want him
+to pull that rope. All alone as he is it will give us warning, and we
+may reach him in time to be of service. I shall be sitting up pretty
+late tonight and shall keep my ears open. Do not be alarmed if
+Benchurch gets a surprise before morning.”
+
+“Oh, Doctor, what do you mean? What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean this; that possibly—nay, more probably—we shall hear the great
+alarm bell from the Judge’s House tonight,” and the Doctor made about
+as effective an exit as could be thought of.
+
+When Malcolmson arrived home he found that it was a little after his
+usual time, and Mrs. Dempster had gone away—the rules of Greenhow’s
+Charity were not to be neglected. He was glad to see that the place was
+bright and tidy with a cheerful fire and a well-trimmed lamp. The
+evening was colder than might have been expected in April, and a heavy
+wind was blowing with such rapidly-increasing strength that there was
+every promise of a storm during the night. For a few minutes after his
+entrance the noise of the rats ceased; but so soon as they became
+accustomed to his presence they began again. He was glad to hear them,
+for he felt once more the feeling of companionship in their noise, and
+his mind ran back to the strange fact that they only ceased to manifest
+themselves when that other—the great rat with the baleful eyes—came
+upon the scene. The reading-lamp only was lit and its green shade kept
+the ceiling and the upper part of the room in darkness, so that the
+cheerful light from the hearth spreading over the floor and shining on
+the white cloth laid over the end of the table was warm and cheery.
+Malcolmson sat down to his dinner with a good appetite and a buoyant
+spirit. After his dinner and a cigarette he sat steadily down to work,
+determined not to let anything disturb him, for he remembered his
+promise to the doctor, and made up his mind to make the best of the
+time at his disposal.
+
+For an hour or so he worked all right, and then his thoughts began to
+wander from his books. The actual circumstances around him, the calls
+on his physical attention, and his nervous susceptibility were not to
+be denied. By this time the wind had become a gale, and the gale a
+storm. The old house, solid though it was, seemed to shake to its
+foundations, and the storm roared and raged through its many chimneys
+and its queer old gables, producing strange, unearthly sounds in the
+empty rooms and corridors. Even the great alarm bell on the roof must
+have felt the force of the wind, for the rope rose and fell slightly,
+as though the bell were moved a little from time to time and the limber
+rope fell on the oak floor with a hard and hollow sound.
+
+As Malcolmson listened to it he bethought himself of the doctor’s
+words, “It is the rope which the hangman used for the victims of the
+Judge’s judicial rancour,” and he went over to the corner of the
+fireplace and took it in his hand to look at it. There seemed a sort of
+deadly interest in it, and as he stood there he lost himself for a
+moment in speculation as to who these victims were, and the grim wish
+of the Judge to have such a ghastly relic ever under his eyes. As he
+stood there the swaying of the bell on the roof still lifted the rope
+now and again; but presently there came a new sensation—a sort of
+tremor in the rope, as though something was moving along it.
+
+Looking up instinctively Malcolmson saw the great rat coming slowly
+down towards him, glaring at him steadily. He dropped the rope and
+started back with a muttered curse, and the rat turning ran up the rope
+again and disappeared, and at the same instant Malcolmson became
+conscious that the noise of the rats, which had ceased for a while,
+began again.
+
+All this set him thinking, and it occurred to him that he had not
+investigated the lair of the rat or looked at the pictures, as he had
+intended. He lit the other lamp without the shade, and, holding it up
+went and stood opposite the third picture from the fireplace on the
+right-hand side where he had seen the rat disappear on the previous
+night.
+
+At the first glance he started back so suddenly that he almost dropped
+the lamp, and a deadly pallor overspread his face. His knees shook, and
+heavy drops of sweat came on his forehead, and he trembled like an
+aspen. But he was young and plucky, and pulled himself together, and
+after the pause of a few seconds stepped forward again, raised the
+lamp, and examined the picture which had been dusted and washed, and
+now stood out clearly.
+
+It was of a judge dressed in his robes of scarlet and ermine. His face
+was strong and merciless, evil, crafty, and vindictive, with a sensual
+mouth, hooked nose of ruddy colour, and shaped like the beak of a bird
+of prey. The rest of the face was of a cadaverous colour. The eyes were
+of peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression. As he
+looked at them, Malcolmson grew cold, for he saw there the very
+counterpart of the eyes of the great rat. The lamp almost fell from his
+hand, he saw the rat with its baleful eyes peering out through the hole
+in the corner of the picture, and noted the sudden cessation of the
+noise of the other rats. However, he pulled himself together, and went
+on with his examination of the picture.
+
+The Judge was seated in a great high-backed carved oak chair, on the
+right-hand side of a great stone fireplace where, in the corner, a rope
+hung down from the ceiling, its end lying coiled on the floor. With a
+feeling of something like horror, Malcolmson recognised the scene of
+the room as it stood, and gazed around him in an awestruck manner as
+though he expected to find some strange presence behind him. Then he
+looked over to the corner of the fireplace—and with a loud cry he let
+the lamp fall from his hand.
+
+There, in the Judge’s arm-chair, with the rope hanging behind, sat the
+rat with the Judge’s baleful eyes, now intensified and with a fiendish
+leer. Save for the howling of the storm without there was silence.
+
+The fallen lamp recalled Malcolmson to himself. Fortunately it was of
+metal, and so the oil was not spilt. However, the practical need of
+attending to it settled at once his nervous apprehensions. When he had
+turned it out, he wiped his brow and thought for a moment.
+
+“This will not do,” he said to himself. “If I go on like this I shall
+become a crazy fool. This must stop! I promised the doctor I would not
+take tea. Faith, he was pretty right! My nerves must have been getting
+into a queer state. Funny I did not notice it. I never felt better in
+my life. However, it is all right now, and I shall not be such a fool
+again.”
+
+Then he mixed himself a good stiff glass of brandy and water and
+resolutely sat down to his work.
+
+It was nearly an hour when he looked up from his book, disturbed by the
+sudden stillness. Without, the wind howled and roared louder than ever,
+and the rain drove in sheets against the windows, beating like hail on
+the glass; but within there was no sound whatever save the echo of the
+wind as it roared in the great chimney, and now and then a hiss as a
+few raindrops found their way down the chimney in a lull of the storm.
+The fire had fallen low and had ceased to flame, though it threw out a
+red glow. Malcolmson listened attentively, and presently heard a thin,
+squeaking noise, very faint. It came from the corner of the room where
+the rope hung down, and he thought it was the creaking of the rope on
+the floor as the swaying of the bell raised and lowered it. Looking up,
+however, he saw in the dim light the great rat clinging to the rope and
+gnawing it. The rope was already nearly gnawed through—he could see the
+lighter colour where the strands were laid bare. As he looked the job
+was completed, and the severed end of the rope fell clattering on the
+oaken floor, whilst for an instant the great rat remained like a knob
+or tassel at the end of the rope, which now began to sway to and fro.
+Malcolmson felt for a moment another pang of terror as he thought that
+now the possibility of calling the outer world to his assistance was
+cut off, but an intense anger took its place, and seizing the book he
+was reading he hurled it at the rat. The blow was well aimed, but
+before the missile could reach him the rat dropped off and struck the
+floor with a soft thud. Malcolmson instantly rushed over towards him,
+but it darted away and disappeared in the darkness of the shadows of
+the room. Malcolmson felt that his work was over for the night, and
+determined then and there to vary the monotony of the proceedings by a
+hunt for the rat, and took off the green shade of the lamp so as to
+insure a wider spreading light. As he did so the gloom of the upper
+part of the room was relieved, and in the new flood of light, great by
+comparison with the previous darkness, the pictures on the wall stood
+out boldly. From where he stood, Malcolmson saw right opposite to him
+the third picture on the wall from the right of the fireplace. He
+rubbed his eyes in surprise, and then a great fear began to come upon
+him.
+
+In the centre of the picture was a great irregular patch of brown
+canvas, as fresh as when it was stretched on the frame. The background
+was as before, with chair and chimney-corner and rope, but the figure
+of the Judge had disappeared.
+
+Malcolmson, almost in a chill of horror, turned slowly round, and then
+he began to shake and tremble like a man in a palsy. His strength
+seemed to have left him, and he was incapable of action or movement,
+hardly even of thought. He could only see and hear.
+
+There, on the great high-backed carved oak chair sat the Judge in his
+robes of scarlet and ermine, with his baleful eyes glaring
+vindictively, and a smile of triumph on the resolute, cruel mouth, as
+he lifted with his hands a _black cap_. Malcolmson felt as if the blood
+was running from his heart, as one does in moments of prolonged
+suspense. There was a singing in his ears. Without, he could hear the
+roar and howl of the tempest, and through it, swept on the storm, came
+the striking of midnight by the great chimes in the market place. He
+stood for a space of time that seemed to him endless still as a statue,
+and with wide-open, horror-struck eyes, breathless. As the clock
+struck, so the smile of triumph on the Judge’s face intensified, and at
+the last stroke of midnight he placed the black cap on his head.
+
+Slowly and deliberately the Judge rose from his chair and picked up the
+piece of the rope of the alarm bell which lay on the floor, drew it
+through his hands as if he enjoyed its touch, and then deliberately
+began to knot one end of it, fashioning it into a noose. This he
+tightened and tested with his foot, pulling hard at it till he was
+satisfied and then making a running noose of it, which he held in his
+hand. Then he began to move along the table on the opposite side to
+Malcolmson keeping his eyes on him until he had passed him, when with a
+quick movement he stood in front of the door. Malcolmson then began to
+feel that he was trapped, and tried to think of what he should do.
+There was some fascination in the Judge’s eyes, which he never took off
+him, and he had, perforce, to look. He saw the Judge approach—still
+keeping between him and the door—and raise the noose and throw it
+towards him as if to entangle him. With a great effort he made a quick
+movement to one side, and saw the rope fall beside him, and heard it
+strike the oaken floor. Again the Judge raised the noose and tried to
+ensnare him, ever keeping his baleful eyes fixed on him, and each time
+by a mighty effort the student just managed to evade it. So this went
+on for many times, the Judge seeming never discouraged nor discomposed
+at failure, but playing as a cat does with a mouse. At last in despair,
+which had reached its climax, Malcolmson cast a quick glance round him.
+The lamp seemed to have blazed up, and there was a fairly good light in
+the room. At the many rat-holes and in the chinks and crannies of the
+wainscot he saw the rats’ eyes; and this aspect, that was purely
+physical, gave him a gleam of comfort. He looked around and saw that
+the rope of the great alarm bell was laden with rats. Every inch of it
+was covered with them, and more and more were pouring through the small
+circular hole in the ceiling whence it emerged, so that with their
+weight the bell was beginning to sway.
+
+Hark! it had swayed till the clapper had touched the bell. The sound
+was but a tiny one, but the bell was only beginning to sway, and it
+would increase.
+
+At the sound the Judge, who had been keeping his eyes fixed on
+Malcolmson, looked up, and a scowl of diabolical anger overspread his
+face. His eyes fairly glowed like hot coals, and he stamped his foot
+with a sound that seemed to make the house shake. A dreadful peal of
+thunder broke overhead as he raised the rope again, whilst the rats
+kept running up and down the rope as though working against time. This
+time, instead of throwing it, he drew close to his victim, and held
+open the noose as he approached. As he came closer there seemed
+something paralysing in his very presence, and Malcolmson stood rigid
+as a corpse. He felt the Judge’s icy fingers touch his throat as he
+adjusted the rope. The noose tightened—tightened. Then the Judge,
+taking the rigid form of the student in his arms, carried him over and
+placed him standing in the oak chair, and stepping up beside him, put
+his hand up and caught the end of the swaying rope of the alarm bell.
+As he raised his hand the rats fled squeaking, and disappeared through
+the hole in the ceiling. Taking the end of the noose which was round
+Malcolmson’s neck he tied it to the hanging-bell rope, and then
+descending pulled away the chair.
+
+When the alarm bell of the Judge’s House began to sound a crowd soon
+assembled. Lights and torches of various kinds appeared, and soon a
+silent crowd was hurrying to the spot. They knocked loudly at the door,
+but there was no reply. Then they burst in the door, and poured into
+the great dining-room, the doctor at the head.
+
+There at the end of the rope of the great alarm bell hung the body of
+the student, and on the face of the Judge in the picture was a
+malignant smile.
+
+
+
+
+The Squaw
+
+
+Nurnberg at the time was not so much exploited as it has been since
+then. Irving had not been playing _Faust_, and the very name of the old
+town was hardly known to the great bulk of the travelling public. My
+wife and I being in the second week of our honeymoon, naturally wanted
+someone else to join our party, so that when the cheery stranger, Elias
+P. Hutcheson, hailing from Isthmian City, Bleeding Gulch, Maple Tree
+County, Neb. turned up at the station at Frankfort, and casually
+remarked that he was going on to see the most all-fired old Methuselah
+of a town in Yurrup, and that he guessed that so much travelling alone
+was enough to send an intelligent, active citizen into the melancholy
+ward of a daft house, we took the pretty broad hint and suggested that
+we should join forces. We found, on comparing notes afterwards, that we
+had each intended to speak with some diffidence or hesitation so as not
+to appear too eager, such not being a good compliment to the success of
+our married life; but the effect was entirely marred by our both
+beginning to speak at the same instant—stopping simultaneously and then
+going on together again. Anyhow, no matter how, it was done; and Elias
+P. Hutcheson became one of our party. Straightway Amelia and I found
+the pleasant benefit; instead of quarrelling, as we had been doing, we
+found that the restraining influence of a third party was such that we
+now took every opportunity of spooning in odd corners. Amelia declares
+that ever since she has, as the result of that experience, advised all
+her friends to take a friend on the honeymoon. Well, we “did” Nurnberg
+together, and much enjoyed the racy remarks of our Transatlantic
+friend, who, from his quaint speech and his wonderful stock of
+adventures, might have stepped out of a novel. We kept for the last
+object of interest in the city to be visited the Burg, and on the day
+appointed for the visit strolled round the outer wall of the city by
+the eastern side.
+
+The Burg is seated on a rock dominating the town and an immensely deep
+fosse guards it on the northern side. Nurnberg has been happy in that
+it was never sacked; had it been it would certainly not be so spick and
+span perfect as it is at present. The ditch has not been used for
+centuries, and now its base is spread with tea-gardens and orchards, of
+which some of the trees are of quite respectable growth. As we wandered
+round the wall, dawdling in the hot July sunshine, we often paused to
+admire the views spread before us, and in especial the great plain
+covered with towns and villages and bounded with a blue line of hills,
+like a landscape of Claude Lorraine. From this we always turned with
+new delight to the city itself, with its myriad of quaint old gables
+and acre-wide red roofs dotted with dormer windows, tier upon tier. A
+little to our right rose the towers of the Burg, and nearer still,
+standing grim, the Torture Tower, which was, and is, perhaps, the most
+interesting place in the city. For centuries the tradition of the Iron
+Virgin of Nurnberg has been handed down as an instance of the horrors
+of cruelty of which man is capable; we had long looked forward to
+seeing it; and here at last was its home.
+
+In one of our pauses we leaned over the wall of the moat and looked
+down. The garden seemed quite fifty or sixty feet below us, and the sun
+pouring into it with an intense, moveless heat like that of an oven.
+Beyond rose the grey, grim wall seemingly of endless height, and losing
+itself right and left in the angles of bastion and counterscarp. Trees
+and bushes crowned the wall, and above again towered the lofty houses
+on whose massive beauty Time has only set the hand of approval. The sun
+was hot and we were lazy; time was our own, and we lingered, leaning on
+the wall. Just below us was a pretty sight—a great black cat lying
+stretched in the sun, whilst round her gambolled prettily a tiny black
+kitten. The mother would wave her tail for the kitten to play with, or
+would raise her feet and push away the little one as an encouragement
+to further play. They were just at the foot of the wall, and Elias P.
+Hutcheson, in order to help the play, stooped and took from the walk a
+moderate sized pebble.
+
+“See!” he said, “I will drop it near the kitten, and they will both
+wonder where it came from.”
+
+“Oh, be careful,” said my wife; “you might hit the dear little thing!”
+
+“Not me, ma’am,” said Elias P. “Why, I’m as tender as a Maine
+cherry-tree. Lor, bless ye. I wouldn’t hurt the poor pooty little
+critter more’n I’d scalp a baby. An’ you may bet your variegated socks
+on that! See, I’ll drop it fur away on the outside so’s not to go near
+her!” Thus saying, he leaned over and held his arm out at full length
+and dropped the stone. It may be that there is some attractive force
+which draws lesser matters to greater; or more probably that the wall
+was not plump but sloped to its base—we not noticing the inclination
+from above; but the stone fell with a sickening thud that came up to us
+through the hot air, right on the kitten’s head, and shattered out its
+little brains then and there. The black cat cast a swift upward glance,
+and we saw her eyes like green fire fixed an instant on Elias P.
+Hutcheson; and then her attention was given to the kitten, which lay
+still with just a quiver of her tiny limbs, whilst a thin red stream
+trickled from a gaping wound. With a muffled cry, such as a human being
+might give, she bent over the kitten licking its wounds and moaning.
+Suddenly she seemed to realise that it was dead, and again threw her
+eyes up at us. I shall never forget the sight, for she looked the
+perfect incarnation of hate. Her green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and
+the white, sharp teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which
+dabbled her mouth and whiskers. She gnashed her teeth, and her claws
+stood out stark and at full length on every paw. Then she made a wild
+rush up the wall as if to reach us, but when the momentum ended fell
+back, and further added to her horrible appearance for she fell on the
+kitten, and rose with her black fur smeared with its brains and blood.
+Amelia turned quite faint, and I had to lift her back from the wall.
+There was a seat close by in shade of a spreading plane-tree, and here
+I placed her whilst she composed herself. Then I went back to
+Hutcheson, who stood without moving, looking down on the angry cat
+below.
+
+As I joined him, he said:
+
+“Wall, I guess that air the savagest beast I ever see—’cept once when
+an Apache squaw had an edge on a half-breed what they nicknamed
+‘Splinters’ “cos of the way he fixed up her papoose which he stole on a
+raid just to show that he appreciated the way they had given his mother
+the fire torture. She got that kinder look so set on her face that it
+jest seemed to grow there. She followed Splinters mor’n three year till
+at last the braves got him and handed him over to her. They did say
+that no man, white or Injun, had ever been so long a-dying under the
+tortures of the Apaches. The only time I ever see her smile was when I
+wiped her out. I kem on the camp just in time to see Splinters pass in
+his checks, and he wasn’t sorry to go either. He was a hard citizen,
+and though I never could shake with him after that papoose business—for
+it was bitter bad, and he should have been a white man, for he looked
+like one—I see he had got paid out in full. Durn me, but I took a piece
+of his hide from one of his skinnin’ posts an’ had it made into a
+pocket-book. It’s here now!” and he slapped the breast pocket of his
+coat.
+
+Whilst he was speaking the cat was continuing her frantic efforts to
+get up the wall. She would take a run back and then charge up,
+sometimes reaching an incredible height. She did not seem to mind the
+heavy fall which she got each time but started with renewed vigour; and
+at every tumble her appearance became more horrible. Hutcheson was a
+kind-hearted man—my wife and I had both noticed little acts of kindness
+to animals as well as to persons—and he seemed concerned at the state
+of fury to which the cat had wrought herself.
+
+“Wall, now!” he said, “I du declare that that poor critter seems quite
+desperate. There! there! poor thing, it was all an accident—though that
+won’t bring back your little one to you. Say! I wouldn’t have had such
+a thing happen for a thousand! Just shows what a clumsy fool of a man
+can do when he tries to play! Seems I’m too darned slipperhanded to
+even play with a cat. Say Colonel!” it was a pleasant way he had to
+bestow titles freely—“I hope your wife don’t hold no grudge against me
+on account of this unpleasantness? Why, I wouldn’t have had it occur on
+no account.”
+
+He came over to Amelia and apologised profusely, and she with her usual
+kindness of heart hastened to assure him that she quite understood that
+it was an accident. Then we all went again to the wall and looked over.
+
+The cat missing Hutcheson’s face had drawn back across the moat, and
+was sitting on her haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed, the very
+instant she saw him she did spring, and with a blind unreasoning fury,
+which would have been grotesque, only that it was so frightfully real.
+She did not try to run up the wall, but simply launched herself at him
+as though hate and fury could lend her wings to pass straight through
+the great distance between them. Amelia, womanlike, got quite
+concerned, and said to Elias P. in a warning voice:
+
+“Oh! you must be very careful. That animal would try to kill you if she
+were here; her eyes look like positive murder.”
+
+He laughed out jovially. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but I can’t help
+laughin’. Fancy a man that has fought grizzlies an’ Injuns bein’
+careful of bein’ murdered by a cat!”
+
+When the cat heard him laugh, her whole demeanour seemed to change. She
+no longer tried to jump or run up the wall, but went quietly over, and
+sitting again beside the dead kitten began to lick and fondle it as
+though it were alive.
+
+“See!” said I, “the effect of a really strong man. Even that animal in
+the midst of her fury recognises the voice of a master, and bows to
+him!”
+
+“Like a squaw!” was the only comment of Elias P. Hutcheson, as we moved
+on our way round the city fosse. Every now and then we looked over the
+wall and each time saw the cat following us. At first she had kept
+going back to the dead kitten, and then as the distance grew greater
+took it in her mouth and so followed. After a while, however, she
+abandoned this, for we saw her following all alone; she had evidently
+hidden the body somewhere. Amelia’s alarm grew at the cat’s
+persistence, and more than once she repeated her warning; but the
+American always laughed with amusement, till finally, seeing that she
+was beginning to be worried, he said:
+
+“I say, ma’am, you needn’t be skeered over that cat. I go heeled, I
+du!” Here he slapped his pistol pocket at the back of his lumbar
+region. “Why sooner’n have you worried, I’ll shoot the critter, right
+here, an’ risk the police interferin’ with a citizen of the United
+States for carryin’ arms contrairy to reg’lations!” As he spoke he
+looked over the wall, but the cat on seeing him, retreated, with a
+growl, into a bed of tall flowers, and was hidden. He went on: “Blest
+if that ar critter ain’t got more sense of what’s good for her than
+most Christians. I guess we’ve seen the last of her! You bet, she’ll go
+back now to that busted kitten and have a private funeral of it, all to
+herself!”
+
+Amelia did not like to say more, lest he might, in mistaken kindness to
+her, fulfil his threat of shooting the cat: and so we went on and
+crossed the little wooden bridge leading to the gateway whence ran the
+steep paved roadway between the Burg and the pentagonal Torture Tower.
+As we crossed the bridge we saw the cat again down below us. When she
+saw us her fury seemed to return, and she made frantic efforts to get
+up the steep wall. Hutcheson laughed as he looked down at her, and
+said:
+
+“Goodbye, old girl. Sorry I injured your feelin’s, but you’ll get over
+it in time! So long!” And then we passed through the long, dim archway
+and came to the gate of the Burg.
+
+When we came out again after our survey of this most beautiful old
+place which not even the well-intentioned efforts of the Gothic
+restorers of forty years ago have been able to spoil—though their
+restoration was then glaring white—we seemed to have quite forgotten
+the unpleasant episode of the morning. The old lime tree with its great
+trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries, the deep well
+cut through the heart of the rock by those captives of old, and the
+lovely view from the city wall whence we heard, spread over almost a
+full quarter of an hour, the multitudinous chimes of the city, had all
+helped to wipe out from our minds the incident of the slain kitten.
+
+We were the only visitors who had entered the Torture Tower that
+morning—so at least said the old custodian—and as we had the place all
+to ourselves were able to make a minute and more satisfactory survey
+than would have otherwise been possible. The custodian, looking to us
+as the sole source of his gains for the day, was willing to meet our
+wishes in any way. The Torture Tower is truly a grim place, even now
+when many thousands of visitors have sent a stream of life, and the joy
+that follows life, into the place; but at the time I mention it wore
+its grimmest and most gruesome aspect. The dust of ages seemed to have
+settled on it, and the darkness and the horror of its memories seem to
+have become sentient in a way that would have satisfied the Pantheistic
+souls of Philo or Spinoza. The lower chamber where we entered was
+seemingly, in its normal state, filled with incarnate darkness; even
+the hot sunlight streaming in through the door seemed to be lost in the
+vast thickness of the walls, and only showed the masonry rough as when
+the builder’s scaffolding had come down, but coated with dust and
+marked here and there with patches of dark stain which, if walls could
+speak, could have given their own dread memories of fear and pain. We
+were glad to pass up the dusty wooden staircase, the custodian leaving
+the outer door open to light us somewhat on our way; for to our eyes
+the one long-wick’d, evil-smelling candle stuck in a sconce on the wall
+gave an inadequate light. When we came up through the open trap in the
+corner of the chamber overhead, Amelia held on to me so tightly that I
+could actually feel her heart beat. I must say for my own part that I
+was not surprised at her fear, for this room was even more gruesome
+than that below. Here there was certainly more light, but only just
+sufficient to realise the horrible surroundings of the place. The
+builders of the tower had evidently intended that only they who should
+gain the top should have any of the joys of light and prospect. There,
+as we had noticed from below, were ranges of windows, albeit of
+mediaeval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower were only a very few
+narrow slits such as were habitual in places of mediaeval defence. A
+few of these only lit the chamber, and these so high up in the wall
+that from no part could the sky be seen through the thickness of the
+walls. In racks, and leaning in disorder against the walls, were a
+number of headsmen’s swords, great double-handed weapons with broad
+blade and keen edge. Hard by were several blocks whereon the necks of
+the victims had lain, with here and there deep notches where the steel
+had bitten through the guard of flesh and shored into the wood. Round
+the chamber, placed in all sorts of irregular ways, were many
+implements of torture which made one’s heart ache to see—chairs full of
+spikes which gave instant and excruciating pain; chairs and couches
+with dull knobs whose torture was seemingly less, but which, though
+slower, were equally efficacious; racks, belts, boots, gloves, collars,
+all made for compressing at will; steel baskets in which the head could
+be slowly crushed into a pulp if necessary; watchmen’s hooks with long
+handle and knife that cut at resistance—this a speciality of the old
+Nurnberg police system; and many, many other devices for man’s injury
+to man. Amelia grew quite pale with the horror of the things, but
+fortunately did not faint, for being a little overcome she sat down on
+a torture chair, but jumped up again with a shriek, all tendency to
+faint gone. We both pretended that it was the injury done to her dress
+by the dust of the chair, and the rusty spikes which had upset her, and
+Mr. Hutcheson acquiesced in accepting the explanation with a
+kind-hearted laugh.
+
+But the central object in the whole of this chamber of horrors was the
+engine known as the Iron Virgin, which stood near the centre of the
+room. It was a rudely-shaped figure of a woman, something of the bell
+order, or, to make a closer comparison, of the figure of Mrs. Noah in
+the children’s Ark, but without that slimness of waist and perfect
+_rondeur_ of hip which marks the aesthetic type of the Noah family. One
+would hardly have recognised it as intended for a human figure at all
+had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a
+woman’s face. This machine was coated with rust without, and covered
+with dust; a rope was fastened to a ring in the front of the figure,
+about where the waist should have been, and was drawn through a pulley,
+fastened on the wooden pillar which sustained the flooring above. The
+custodian pulling this rope showed that a section of the front was
+hinged like a door at one side; we then saw that the engine was of
+considerable thickness, leaving just room enough inside for a man to be
+placed. The door was of equal thickness and of great weight, for it
+took the custodian all his strength, aided though he was by the
+contrivance of the pulley, to open it. This weight was partly due to
+the fact that the door was of manifest purpose hung so as to throw its
+weight downwards, so that it might shut of its own accord when the
+strain was released. The inside was honeycombed with rust—nay more, the
+rust alone that comes through time would hardly have eaten so deep into
+the iron walls; the rust of the cruel stains was deep indeed! It was
+only, however, when we came to look at the inside of the door that the
+diabolical intention was manifest to the full. Here were several long
+spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the points,
+placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper
+ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart
+and vitals. The sight was too much for poor Amelia, and this time she
+fainted dead off, and I had to carry her down the stairs, and place her
+on a bench outside till she recovered. That she felt it to the quick
+was afterwards shown by the fact that my eldest son bears to this day a
+rude birthmark on his breast, which has, by family consent, been
+accepted as representing the Nurnberg Virgin.
+
+When we got back to the chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite the
+Iron Virgin; he had been evidently philosophising, and now gave us the
+benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exordium.
+
+“Wall, I guess I’ve been learnin’ somethin’ here while madam has been
+gettin’ over her faint. “Pears to me that we’re a long way behind the
+times on our side of the big drink. We uster think out on the plains
+that the Injun could give us points in tryin’ to make a man
+uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party could
+raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on the
+squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on him.
+The points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even the edges
+air eaten out by what uster be on them. It’d be a good thing for our
+Indian section to get some specimens of this here play-toy to send
+round to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin’ out of the bucks,
+and the squaws too, by showing them as how old civilisation lays over
+them at their best. Guess but I’ll get in that box a minute jest to see
+how it feels!”
+
+“Oh no! no!” said Amelia. “It is too terrible!”
+
+“Guess, ma’am, nothin’s too terrible to the explorin’ mind. I’ve been
+in some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse
+while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana Territory—an’ another
+time slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches was on the war path
+an’ I didn’t keer to leave my kyard on them. I’ve been two days in a
+caved-in tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico, an’ was
+one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson what
+slid over on her side when we was settin’ the foundations of the
+Buffalo Bridge. I’ve not funked an odd experience yet, an’ I don’t
+propose to begin now!”
+
+We saw that he was set on the experiment, so I said: “Well, hurry up,
+old man, and get through it quick!”
+
+“All right, General,” said he, “but I calculate we ain’t quite ready
+yet. The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that thar canister,
+didn’t volunteer for the office—not much! And I guess there was some
+ornamental tyin’ up before the big stroke was made. I want to go into
+this thing fair and square, so I must get fixed up proper first. I dare
+say this old galoot can rise some string and tie me up accordin’ to
+sample?”
+
+This was said interrogatively to the old custodian, but the latter, who
+understood the drift of his speech, though perhaps not appreciating to
+the full the niceties of dialect and imagery, shook his head. His
+protest was, however, only formal and made to be overcome. The American
+thrust a gold piece into his hand, saying: “Take it, pard! it’s your
+pot; and don’t be skeer’d. This ain’t no necktie party that you’re
+asked to assist in!” He produced some thin frayed rope and proceeded to
+bind our companion with sufficient strictness for the purpose. When the
+upper part of his body was bound, Hutcheson said:
+
+“Hold on a moment, Judge. Guess I’m too heavy for you to tote into the
+canister. You jest let me walk in, and then you can wash up regardin’
+my legs!”
+
+Whilst speaking he had backed himself into the opening which was just
+enough to hold him. It was a close fit and no mistake. Amelia looked on
+with fear in her eyes, but she evidently did not like to say anything.
+Then the custodian completed his task by tying the American’s feet
+together so that he was now absolutely helpless and fixed in his
+voluntary prison. He seemed to really enjoy it, and the incipient smile
+which was habitual to his face blossomed into actuality as he said:
+
+“Guess this here Eve was made out of the rib of a dwarf! There ain’t
+much room for a full-grown citizen of the United States to hustle. We
+uster make our coffins more roomier in Idaho territory. Now, Judge, you
+jest begin to let this door down, slow, on to me. I want to feel the
+same pleasure as the other jays had when those spikes began to move
+toward their eyes!”
+
+“Oh no! no! no!” broke in Amelia hysterically. “It is too terrible! I
+can’t bear to see it!—I can’t! I can’t!” But the American was obdurate.
+“Say, Colonel,” said he, “why not take Madame for a little promenade? I
+wouldn’t hurt her feelin’s for the world; but now that I am here,
+havin’ kem eight thousand miles, wouldn’t it be too hard to give up the
+very experience I’ve been pinin’ an’ pantin’ fur? A man can’t get to
+feel like canned goods every time! Me and the Judge here’ll fix up this
+thing in no time, an’ then you’ll come back, an’ we’ll all laugh
+together!”
+
+Once more the resolution that is born of curiosity triumphed, and
+Amelia stayed holding tight to my arm and shivering whilst the
+custodian began to slacken slowly inch by inch the rope that held back
+the iron door. Hutcheson’s face was positively radiant as his eyes
+followed the first movement of the spikes.
+
+“Wall!” he said, “I guess I’ve not had enjoyment like this since I left
+Noo York. Bar a scrap with a French sailor at Wapping—an’ that warn’t
+much of a picnic neither—I’ve not had a show fur real pleasure in this
+dod-rotted Continent, where there ain’t no b’ars nor no Injuns, an’
+wheer nary man goes heeled. Slow there, Judge! Don’t you rush this
+business! I want a show for my money this game—I du!”
+
+The custodian must have had in him some of the blood of his
+predecessors in that ghastly tower, for he worked the engine with a
+deliberate and excruciating slowness which after five minutes, in which
+the outer edge of the door had not moved half as many inches, began to
+overcome Amelia. I saw her lips whiten, and felt her hold upon my arm
+relax. I looked around an instant for a place whereon to lay her, and
+when I looked at her again found that her eye had become fixed on the
+side of the Virgin. Following its direction I saw the black cat
+crouching out of sight. Her green eyes shone like danger lamps in the
+gloom of the place, and their colour was heightened by the blood which
+still smeared her coat and reddened her mouth. I cried out:
+
+“The cat! look out for the cat!” for even then she sprang out before
+the engine. At this moment she looked like a triumphant demon. Her eyes
+blazed with ferocity, her hair bristled out till she seemed twice her
+normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger’s when the
+quarry is before it. Elias P. Hutcheson when he saw her was amused, and
+his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said:
+
+“Darned if the squaw hain’t got on all her war paint! Jest give her a
+shove off if she comes any of her tricks on me, for I’m so fixed
+everlastingly by the boss, that durn my skin if I can keep my eyes from
+her if she wants them! Easy there, Judge! don’t you slack that ar rope
+or I’m euchered!”
+
+At this moment Amelia completed her faint, and I had to clutch hold of
+her round the waist or she would have fallen to the floor. Whilst
+attending to her I saw the black cat crouching for a spring, and jumped
+up to turn the creature out.
+
+But at that instant, with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled herself,
+not as we expected at Hutcheson, but straight at the face of the
+custodian. Her claws seemed to be tearing wildly as one sees in the
+Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and as I looked I saw one of
+them light on the poor man’s eye, and actually tear through it and down
+his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood seemed to spurt
+from every vein.
+
+With a yell of sheer terror which came quicker than even his sense of
+pain, the man leaped back, dropping as he did so the rope which held
+back the iron door. I jumped for it, but was too late, for the cord ran
+like lightning through the pulley-block, and the heavy mass fell
+forward from its own weight.
+
+As the door closed I caught a glimpse of our poor companion’s face. He
+seemed frozen with terror. His eyes stared with a horrible anguish as
+if dazed, and no sound came from his lips.
+
+And then the spikes did their work. Happily the end was quick, for when
+I wrenched open the door they had pierced so deep that they had locked
+in the bones of the skull through which they had crushed, and actually
+tore him—it—out of his iron prison till, bound as he was, he fell at
+full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the face turning upward
+as he fell.
+
+I rushed to my wife, lifted her up and carried her out, for I feared
+for her very reason if she should wake from her faint to such a scene.
+I laid her on the bench outside and ran back. Leaning against the
+wooden column was the custodian moaning in pain whilst he held his
+reddening handkerchief to his eyes. And sitting on the head of the poor
+American was the cat, purring loudly as she licked the blood which
+trickled through the gashed socket of his eyes.
+
+I think no one will call me cruel because I seized one of the old
+executioner’s swords and shore her in two as she sat.
+
+
+
+
+The Secret of the Growing Gold
+
+
+When Margaret Delandre went to live at Brent’s Rock the whole
+neighbourhood awoke to the pleasure of an entirely new scandal.
+Scandals in connection with either the Delandre family or the Brents of
+Brent’s Rock, were not few; and if the secret history of the county had
+been written in full both names would have been found well represented.
+It is true that the status of each was so different that they might
+have belonged to different continents—or to different worlds for the
+matter of that—for hitherto their orbits had never crossed. The Brents
+were accorded by the whole section of the country a unique social
+dominance, and had ever held themselves as high above the yeoman class
+to which Margaret Delandre belonged, as a blue-blooded Spanish hidalgo
+out-tops his peasant tenantry.
+
+The Delandres had an ancient record and were proud of it in their way
+as the Brents were of theirs. But the family had never risen above
+yeomanry; and although they had been once well-to-do in the good old
+times of foreign wars and protection, their fortunes had withered under
+the scorching of the free trade sun and the “piping times of peace.”
+They had, as the elder members used to assert, “stuck to the land”,
+with the result that they had taken root in it, body and soul. In fact,
+they, having chosen the life of vegetables, had flourished as
+vegetation does—blossomed and thrived in the good season and suffered
+in the bad. Their holding, Dander’s Croft, seemed to have been worked
+out, and to be typical of the family which had inhabited it. The latter
+had declined generation after generation, sending out now and again
+some abortive shoot of unsatisfied energy in the shape of a soldier or
+sailor, who had worked his way to the minor grades of the services and
+had there stopped, cut short either from unheeding gallantry in action
+or from that destroying cause to men without breeding or youthful
+care—the recognition of a position above them which they feel unfitted
+to fill. So, little by little, the family dropped lower and lower, the
+men brooding and dissatisfied, and drinking themselves into the grave,
+the women drudging at home, or marrying beneath them—or worse. In
+process of time all disappeared, leaving only two in the Croft, Wykham
+Delandre and his sister Margaret. The man and woman seemed to have
+inherited in masculine and feminine form respectively the evil tendency
+of their race, sharing in common the principles, though manifesting
+them in different ways, of sullen passion, voluptuousness and
+recklessness.
+
+The history of the Brents had been something similar, but showing the
+causes of decadence in their aristocratic and not their plebeian forms.
+They, too, had sent their shoots to the wars; but their positions had
+been different and they had often attained honour—for without flaw they
+were gallant, and brave deeds were done by them before the selfish
+dissipation which marked them had sapped their vigour.
+
+The present head of the family—if family it could now be called when
+one remained of the direct line—was Geoffrey Brent. He was almost a
+type of worn out race, manifesting in some ways its most brilliant
+qualities, and in others its utter degradation. He might be fairly
+compared with some of those antique Italian nobles whom the painters
+have preserved to us with their courage, their unscrupulousness, their
+refinement of lust and cruelty—the voluptuary actual with the fiend
+potential. He was certainly handsome, with that dark, aquiline,
+commanding beauty which women so generally recognise as dominant. With
+men he was distant and cold; but such a bearing never deters womankind.
+The inscrutable laws of sex have so arranged that even a timid woman is
+not afraid of a fierce and haughty man. And so it was that there was
+hardly a woman of any kind or degree, who lived within view of Brent’s
+Rock, who did not cherish some form of secret admiration for the
+handsome wastrel. The category was a wide one, for Brent’s Rock rose up
+steeply from the midst of a level region and for a circuit of a hundred
+miles it lay on the horizon, with its high old towers and steep roofs
+cutting the level edge of wood and hamlet, and far-scattered mansions.
+
+So long as Geoffrey Brent confined his dissipations to London and Paris
+and Vienna—anywhere out of sight and sound of his home—opinion was
+silent. It is easy to listen to far off echoes unmoved, and we can
+treat them with disbelief, or scorn, or disdain, or whatever attitude
+of coldness may suit our purpose. But when the scandal came close home
+it was another matter; and the feelings of independence and integrity
+which is in people of every community which is not utterly spoiled,
+asserted itself and demanded that condemnation should be expressed.
+Still there was a certain reticence in all, and no more notice was
+taken of the existing facts than was absolutely necessary. Margaret
+Delandre bore herself so fearlessly and so openly—she accepted her
+position as the justified companion of Geoffrey Brent so naturally that
+people came to believe that she was secretly married to him, and
+therefore thought it wiser to hold their tongues lest time should
+justify her and also make her an active enemy.
+
+The one person who, by his interference, could have settled all doubts
+was debarred by circumstances from interfering in the matter. Wykham
+Delandre had quarrelled with his sister—or perhaps it was that she had
+quarrelled with him—and they were on terms not merely of armed
+neutrality but of bitter hatred. The quarrel had been antecedent to
+Margaret going to Brent’s Rock. She and Wykham had almost come to
+blows. There had certainly been threats on one side and on the other;
+and in the end Wykham, overcome with passion, had ordered his sister to
+leave his house. She had risen straightway, and, without waiting to
+pack up even her own personal belongings, had walked out of the house.
+On the threshold she had paused for a moment to hurl a bitter threat at
+Wykham that he would rue in shame and despair to the last hour of his
+life his act of that day. Some weeks had since passed; and it was
+understood in the neighbourhood that Margaret had gone to London, when
+she suddenly appeared driving out with Geoffrey Brent, and the entire
+neighbourhood knew before nightfall that she had taken up her abode at
+the Rock. It was no subject of surprise that Brent had come back
+unexpectedly, for such was his usual custom. Even his own servants
+never knew when to expect him, for there was a private door, of which
+he alone had the key, by which he sometimes entered without anyone in
+the house being aware of his coming. This was his usual method of
+appearing after a long absence.
+
+Wykham Delandre was furious at the news. He vowed vengeance—and to keep
+his mind level with his passion drank deeper than ever. He tried
+several times to see his sister, but she contemptuously refused to meet
+him. He tried to have an interview with Brent and was refused by him
+also. Then he tried to stop him in the road, but without avail, for
+Geoffrey was not a man to be stopped against his will. Several actual
+encounters took place between the two men, and many more were
+threatened and avoided. At last Wykham Delandre settled down to a
+morose, vengeful acceptance of the situation.
+
+Neither Margaret nor Geoffrey was of a pacific temperament, and it was
+not long before there began to be quarrels between them. One thing
+would lead to another, and wine flowed freely at Brent’s Rock. Now and
+again the quarrels would assume a bitter aspect, and threats would be
+exchanged in uncompromising language that fairly awed the listening
+servants. But such quarrels generally ended where domestic altercations
+do, in reconciliation, and in a mutual respect for the fighting
+qualities proportionate to their manifestation. Fighting for its own
+sake is found by a certain class of persons, all the world over, to be
+a matter of absorbing interest, and there is no reason to believe that
+domestic conditions minimise its potency. Geoffrey and Margaret made
+occasional absences from Brent’s Rock, and on each of these occasions
+Wykham Delandre also absented himself; but as he generally heard of the
+absence too late to be of any service, he returned home each time in a
+more bitter and discontented frame of mind than before.
+
+At last there came a time when the absence from Brent’s Rock became
+longer than before. Only a few days earlier there had been a quarrel,
+exceeding in bitterness anything which had gone before; but this, too,
+had been made up, and a trip on the Continent had been mentioned before
+the servants. After a few days Wykham Delandre also went away, and it
+was some weeks before he returned. It was noticed that he was full of
+some new importance—satisfaction, exaltation—they hardly knew how to
+call it. He went straightway to Brent’s Rock, and demanded to see
+Geoffrey Brent, and on being told that he had not yet returned, said,
+with a grim decision which the servants noted:
+
+“I shall come again. My news is solid—it can wait!” and turned away.
+Week after week went by, and month after month; and then there came a
+rumour, certified later on, that an accident had occurred in the
+Zermatt valley. Whilst crossing a dangerous pass the carriage
+containing an English lady and the driver had fallen over a precipice,
+the gentleman of the party, Mr. Geoffrey Brent, having been fortunately
+saved as he had been walking up the hill to ease the horses. He gave
+information, and search was made. The broken rail, the excoriated
+roadway, the marks where the horses had struggled on the decline before
+finally pitching over into the torrent—all told the sad tale. It was a
+wet season, and there had been much snow in the winter, so that the
+river was swollen beyond its usual volume, and the eddies of the stream
+were packed with ice. All search was made, and finally the wreck of the
+carriage and the body of one horse were found in an eddy of the river.
+Later on the body of the driver was found on the sandy, torrent-swept
+waste near Täsch; but the body of the lady, like that of the other
+horse, had quite disappeared, and was—what was left of it by that
+time—whirling amongst the eddies of the Rhone on its way down to the
+Lake of Geneva.
+
+Wykham Delandre made all the enquiries possible, but could not find any
+trace of the missing woman. He found, however, in the books of the
+various hotels the name of “Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Brent”. And he had a
+stone erected at Zermatt to his sister’s memory, under her married
+name, and a tablet put up in the church at Bretten, the parish in which
+both Brent’s Rock and Dander’s Croft were situated.
+
+There was a lapse of nearly a year, after the excitement of the matter
+had worn away, and the whole neighbourhood had gone on its accustomed
+way. Brent was still absent, and Delandre more drunken, more morose,
+and more revengeful than before.
+
+Then there was a new excitement. Brent’s Rock was being made ready for
+a new mistress. It was officially announced by Geoffrey himself in a
+letter to the Vicar, that he had been married some months before to an
+Italian lady, and that they were then on their way home. Then a small
+army of workmen invaded the house; and hammer and plane sounded, and a
+general air of size and paint pervaded the atmosphere. One wing of the
+old house, the south, was entirely re-done; and then the great body of
+the workmen departed, leaving only materials for the doing of the old
+hall when Geoffrey Brent should have returned, for he had directed that
+the decoration was only to be done under his own eyes. He had brought
+with him accurate drawings of a hall in the house of his bride’s
+father, for he wished to reproduce for her the place to which she had
+been accustomed. As the moulding had all to be re-done, some
+scaffolding poles and boards were brought in and laid on one side of
+the great hall, and also a great wooden tank or box for mixing the
+lime, which was laid in bags beside it.
+
+When the new mistress of Brent’s Rock arrived the bells of the church
+rang out, and there was a general jubilation. She was a beautiful
+creature, full of the poetry and fire and passion of the South; and the
+few English words which she had learned were spoken in such a sweet and
+pretty broken way that she won the hearts of the people almost as much
+by the music of her voice as by the melting beauty of her dark eyes.
+
+Geoffrey Brent seemed more happy than he had ever before appeared; but
+there was a dark, anxious look on his face that was new to those who
+knew him of old, and he started at times as though at some noise that
+was unheard by others.
+
+And so months passed and the whisper grew that at last Brent’s Rock was
+to have an heir. Geoffrey was very tender to his wife, and the new bond
+between them seemed to soften him. He took more interest in his tenants
+and their needs than he had ever done; and works of charity on his part
+as well as on his sweet young wife’s were not lacking. He seemed to
+have set all his hopes on the child that was coming, and as he looked
+deeper into the future the dark shadow that had come over his face
+seemed to die gradually away.
+
+All the time Wykham Delandre nursed his revenge. Deep in his heart had
+grown up a purpose of vengeance which only waited an opportunity to
+crystallise and take a definite shape. His vague idea was somehow
+centred in the wife of Brent, for he knew that he could strike him best
+through those he loved, and the coming time seemed to hold in its womb
+the opportunity for which he longed. One night he sat alone in the
+living-room of his house. It had once been a handsome room in its way,
+but time and neglect had done their work and it was now little better
+than a ruin, without dignity or picturesqueness of any kind. He had
+been drinking heavily for some time and was more than half stupefied.
+He thought he heard a noise as of someone at the door and looked up.
+Then he called half savagely to come in; but there was no response.
+With a muttered blasphemy he renewed his potations. Presently he forgot
+all around him, sank into a daze, but suddenly awoke to see standing
+before him someone or something like a battered, ghostly edition of his
+sister. For a few moments there came upon him a sort of fear. The woman
+before him, with distorted features and burning eyes seemed hardly
+human, and the only thing that seemed a reality of his sister, as she
+had been, was her wealth of golden hair, and this was now streaked with
+grey. She eyed her brother with a long, cold stare; and he, too, as he
+looked and began to realise the actuality of her presence, found the
+hatred of her which he had had, once again surging up in his heart. All
+the brooding passion of the past year seemed to find a voice at once as
+he asked her:
+
+“Why are you here? You’re dead and buried.”
+
+“I am here, Wykham Delandre, for no love of you, but because I hate
+another even more than I do you!” A great passion blazed in her eyes.
+
+“Him?” he asked, in so fierce a whisper that even the woman was for an
+instant startled till she regained her calm.
+
+“Yes, him!” she answered. “But make no mistake, my revenge is my own;
+and I merely use you to help me to it.” Wykham asked suddenly:
+
+“Did he marry you?”
+
+The woman’s distorted face broadened out in a ghastly attempt at a
+smile. It was a hideous mockery, for the broken features and seamed
+scars took strange shapes and strange colours, and queer lines of white
+showed out as the straining muscles pressed on the old cicatrices.
+
+“So you would like to know! It would please your pride to feel that
+your sister was truly married! Well, you shall not know. That was my
+revenge on you, and I do not mean to change it by a hair’s breadth. I
+have come here tonight simply to let you know that I am alive, so that
+if any violence be done me where I am going there may be a witness.”
+
+“Where are you going?” demanded her brother.
+
+“That is my affair! and I have not the least intention of letting you
+know!” Wykham stood up, but the drink was on him and he reeled and
+fell. As he lay on the floor he announced his intention of following
+his sister; and with an outburst of splenetic humour told her that he
+would follow her through the darkness by the light of her hair, and of
+her beauty. At this she turned on him, and said that there were others
+beside him that would rue her hair and her beauty too. “As he will,”
+she hissed; “for the hair remains though the beauty be gone. When he
+withdrew the lynch-pin and sent us over the precipice into the torrent,
+he had little thought of my beauty. Perhaps his beauty would be scarred
+like mine were he whirled, as I was, among the rocks of the Visp, and
+frozen on the ice pack in the drift of the river. But let him beware!
+His time is coming!” and with a fierce gesture she flung open the door
+and passed out into the night.
+
+Later on that night, Mrs. Brent, who was but half-asleep, became
+suddenly awake and spoke to her husband:
+
+“Geoffrey, was not that the click of a lock somewhere below our
+window?”
+
+But Geoffrey—though she thought that he, too, had started at the
+noise—seemed sound asleep, and breathed heavily. Again Mrs. Brent
+dozed; but this time awoke to the fact that her husband had arisen and
+was partially dressed. He was deadly pale, and when the light of the
+lamp which he had in his hand fell on his face, she was frightened at
+the look in his eyes.
+
+“What is it, Geoffrey? What dost thou?” she asked.
+
+“Hush! little one,” he answered, in a strange, hoarse voice. “Go to
+sleep. I am restless, and wish to finish some work I left undone.”
+
+“Bring it here, my husband,” she said; “I am lonely and I fear when
+thou art away.”
+
+For reply he merely kissed her and went out, closing the door behind
+him. She lay awake for awhile, and then nature asserted itself, and she
+slept.
+
+Suddenly she started broad awake with the memory in her ears of a
+smothered cry from somewhere not far off. She jumped up and ran to the
+door and listened, but there was no sound. She grew alarmed for her
+husband, and called out: “Geoffrey! Geoffrey!”
+
+After a few moments the door of the great hall opened, and Geoffrey
+appeared at it, but without his lamp.
+
+“Hush!” he said, in a sort of whisper, and his voice was harsh and
+stern. “Hush! Get to bed! I am working, and must not be disturbed. Go
+to sleep, and do not wake the house!”
+
+With a chill in her heart—for the harshness of her husband’s voice was
+new to her—she crept back to bed and lay there trembling, too
+frightened to cry, and listened to every sound. There was a long pause
+of silence, and then the sound of some iron implement striking muffled
+blows! Then there came a clang of a heavy stone falling, followed by a
+muffled curse. Then a dragging sound, and then more noise of stone on
+stone. She lay all the while in an agony of fear, and her heart beat
+dreadfully. She heard a curious sort of scraping sound; and then there
+was silence. Presently the door opened gently, and Geoffrey appeared.
+His wife pretended to be asleep; but through her eyelashes she saw him
+wash from his hands something white that looked like lime.
+
+In the morning he made no allusion to the previous night, and she was
+afraid to ask any question.
+
+From that day there seemed some shadow over Geoffrey Brent. He neither
+ate nor slept as he had been accustomed, and his former habit of
+turning suddenly as though someone were speaking from behind him
+revived. The old hall seemed to have some kind of fascination for him.
+He used to go there many times in the day, but grew impatient if
+anyone, even his wife, entered it. When the builder’s foreman came to
+inquire about continuing his work Geoffrey was out driving; the man
+went into the hall, and when Geoffrey returned the servant told him of
+his arrival and where he was. With a frightful oath he pushed the
+servant aside and hurried up to the old hall. The workman met him
+almost at the door; and as Geoffrey burst into the room he ran against
+him. The man apologised:
+
+“Beg pardon, sir, but I was just going out to make some enquiries. I
+directed twelve sacks of lime to be sent here, but I see there are only
+ten.”
+
+“Damn the ten sacks and the twelve too!” was the ungracious and
+incomprehensible rejoinder.
+
+The workman looked surprised, and tried to turn the conversation.
+
+“I see, sir, there is a little matter which our people must have done;
+but the governor will of course see it set right at his own cost.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“That “ere “arth-stone, sir: Some idiot must have put a scaffold pole
+on it and cracked it right down the middle, and it’s thick enough you’d
+think to stand hanythink.” Geoffrey was silent for quite a minute, and
+then said in a constrained voice and with much gentler manner:
+
+“Tell your people that I am not going on with the work in the hall at
+present. I want to leave it as it is for a while longer.”
+
+“All right sir. I’ll send up a few of our chaps to take away these
+poles and lime bags and tidy the place up a bit.”
+
+“No! No!” said Geoffrey, “leave them where they are. I shall send and
+tell you when you are to get on with the work.” So the foreman went
+away, and his comment to his master was:
+
+“I’d send in the bill, sir, for the work already done. “Pears to me
+that money’s a little shaky in that quarter.”
+
+Once or twice Delandre tried to stop Brent on the road, and, at last,
+finding that he could not attain his object rode after the carriage,
+calling out:
+
+“What has become of my sister, your wife?” Geoffrey lashed his horses
+into a gallop, and the other, seeing from his white face and from his
+wife’s collapse almost into a faint that his object was attained, rode
+away with a scowl and a laugh.
+
+That night when Geoffrey went into the hall he passed over to the great
+fireplace, and all at once started back with a smothered cry. Then with
+an effort he pulled himself together and went away, returning with a
+light. He bent down over the broken hearth-stone to see if the
+moonlight falling through the storied window had in any way deceived
+him. Then with a groan of anguish he sank to his knees.
+
+There, sure enough, through the crack in the broken stone were
+protruding a multitude of threads of golden hair just tinged with grey!
+
+He was disturbed by a noise at the door, and looking round, saw his
+wife standing in the doorway. In the desperation of the moment he took
+action to prevent discovery, and lighting a match at the lamp, stooped
+down and burned away the hair that rose through the broken stone. Then
+rising nonchalantly as he could, he pretended surprise at seeing his
+wife beside him.
+
+For the next week he lived in an agony; for, whether by accident or
+design, he could not find himself alone in the hall for any length of
+time. At each visit the hair had grown afresh through the crack, and he
+had to watch it carefully lest his terrible secret should be
+discovered. He tried to find a receptacle for the body of the murdered
+woman outside the house, but someone always interrupted him; and once,
+when he was coming out of the private doorway, he was met by his wife,
+who began to question him about it, and manifested surprise that she
+should not have before noticed the key which he now reluctantly showed
+her. Geoffrey dearly and passionately loved his wife, so that any
+possibility of her discovering his dread secrets, or even of doubting
+him, filled him with anguish; and after a couple of days had passed, he
+could not help coming to the conclusion that, at least, she suspected
+something.
+
+That very evening she came into the hall after her drive and found him
+there sitting moodily by the deserted fireplace. She spoke to him
+directly.
+
+“Geoffrey, I have been spoken to by that fellow Delandre, and he says
+horrible things. He tells to me that a week ago his sister returned to
+his house, the wreck and ruin of her former self, with only her golden
+hair as of old, and announced some fell intention. He asked me where
+she is—and oh, Geoffrey, she is dead, she is dead! So how can she have
+returned? Oh! I am in dread, and I know not where to turn!”
+
+For answer, Geoffrey burst into a torrent of blasphemy which made her
+shudder. He cursed Delandre and his sister and all their kind, and in
+especial he hurled curse after curse on her golden hair.
+
+“Oh, hush! hush!” she said, and was then silent, for she feared her
+husband when she saw the evil effect of his humour. Geoffrey in the
+torrent of his anger stood up and moved away from the hearth; but
+suddenly stopped as he saw a new look of terror in his wife’s eyes. He
+followed their glance, and then he too, shuddered—for there on the
+broken hearth-stone lay a golden streak as the point of the hair rose
+though the crack.
+
+“Look, look!” she shrieked. “Is it some ghost of the dead! Come
+away—come away!” and seizing her husband by the wrist with the frenzy
+of madness, she pulled him from the room.
+
+That night she was in a raging fever. The doctor of the district
+attended her at once, and special aid was telegraphed for to London.
+Geoffrey was in despair, and in his anguish at the danger of his young
+wife almost forgot his own crime and its consequences. In the evening
+the doctor had to leave to attend to others; but he left Geoffrey in
+charge of his wife. His last words were:
+
+“Remember, you must humour her till I come in the morning, or till some
+other doctor has her case in hand. What you have to dread is another
+attack of emotion. See that she is kept warm. Nothing more can be
+done.”
+
+Late in the evening, when the rest of the household had retired,
+Geoffrey’s wife got up from her bed and called to her husband.
+
+“Come!” she said. “Come to the old hall! I know where the gold comes
+from! I want to see it grow!”
+
+Geoffrey would fain have stopped her, but he feared for her life or
+reason on the one hand, and lest in a paroxysm she should shriek out
+her terrible suspicion, and seeing that it was useless to try to
+prevent her, wrapped a warm rug around her and went with her to the old
+hall. When they entered, she turned and shut the door and locked it.
+
+“We want no strangers amongst us three tonight!” she whispered with a
+wan smile.
+
+“We three! nay we are but two,” said Geoffrey with a shudder; he feared
+to say more.
+
+“Sit here,” said his wife as she put out the light. “Sit here by the
+hearth and watch the gold growing. The silver moonlight is jealous!
+See, it steals along the floor towards the gold—our gold!” Geoffrey
+looked with growing horror, and saw that during the hours that had
+passed the golden hair had protruded further through the broken
+hearth-stone. He tried to hide it by placing his feet over the broken
+place; and his wife, drawing her chair beside him, leant over and laid
+her head on his shoulder.
+
+“Now do not stir, dear,” she said; “let us sit still and watch. We
+shall find the secret of the growing gold!” He passed his arm round her
+and sat silent; and as the moonlight stole along the floor she sank to
+sleep.
+
+He feared to wake her; and so sat silent and miserable as the hours
+stole away.
+
+Before his horror-struck eyes the golden-hair from the broken stone
+grew and grew; and as it increased, so his heart got colder and colder,
+till at last he had not power to stir, and sat with eyes full of terror
+watching his doom.
+
+
+In the morning when the London doctor came, neither Geoffrey nor his
+wife could be found. Search was made in all the rooms, but without
+avail. As a last resource the great door of the old hall was broken
+open, and those who entered saw a grim and sorry sight.
+
+There by the deserted hearth Geoffrey Brent and his young wife sat cold
+and white and dead. Her face was peaceful, and her eyes were closed in
+sleep; but his face was a sight that made all who saw it shudder, for
+there was on it a look of unutterable horror. The eyes were open and
+stared glassily at his feet, which were twined with tresses of golden
+hair, streaked with grey, which came through the broken hearth-stone.
+
+
+
+
+The Gipsy Prophecy
+
+
+“I really think,” said the Doctor, “that, at any rate, one of us should
+go and try whether or not the thing is an imposture.”
+
+“Good!” said Considine. “After dinner we will take our cigars and
+stroll over to the camp.”
+
+Accordingly, when the dinner was over, and the _La Tour_ finished,
+Joshua Considine and his friend, Dr Burleigh, went over to the east
+side of the moor, where the gipsy encampment lay. As they were leaving,
+Mary Considine, who had walked as far as the end of the garden where it
+opened into the laneway, called after her husband:
+
+“Mind, Joshua, you are to give them a fair chance, but don’t give them
+any clue to a fortune—and don’t you get flirting with any of the gipsy
+maidens—and take care to keep Gerald out of harm.”
+
+For answer Considine held up his hand, as if taking a stage oath, and
+whistled the air of the old song, “The Gipsy Countess.” Gerald joined
+in the strain, and then, breaking into merry laughter, the two men
+passed along the laneway to the common, turning now and then to wave
+their hands to Mary, who leaned over the gate, in the twilight, looking
+after them.
+
+It was a lovely evening in the summer; the very air was full of rest
+and quiet happiness, as though an outward type of the peacefulness and
+joy which made a heaven of the home of the young married folk.
+Considine’s life had not been an eventful one. The only disturbing
+element which he had ever known was in his wooing of Mary Winston, and
+the long-continued objection of her ambitious parents, who expected a
+brilliant match for their only daughter. When Mr. and Mrs. Winston had
+discovered the attachment of the young barrister, they had tried to
+keep the young people apart by sending their daughter away for a long
+round of visits, having made her promise not to correspond with her
+lover during her absence. Love, however, had stood the test. Neither
+absence nor neglect seemed to cool the passion of the young man, and
+jealousy seemed a thing unknown to his sanguine nature; so, after a
+long period of waiting, the parents had given in, and the young folk
+were married.
+
+They had been living in the cottage a few months, and were just
+beginning to feel at home. Gerald Burleigh, Joshua’s old college chum,
+and himself a sometime victim of Mary’s beauty, had arrived a week
+before, to stay with them for as long a time as he could tear himself
+away from his work in London.
+
+When her husband had quite disappeared Mary went into the house, and,
+sitting down at the piano, gave an hour to Mendelssohn.
+
+It was but a short walk across the common, and before the cigars
+required renewing the two men had reached the gipsy camp. The place was
+as picturesque as gipsy camps—when in villages and when business is
+good—usually are. There were some few persons round the fire, investing
+their money in prophecy, and a large number of others, poorer or more
+parsimonious, who stayed just outside the bounds but near enough to see
+all that went on.
+
+As the two gentlemen approached, the villagers, who knew Joshua, made
+way a little, and a pretty, keen-eyed gipsy girl tripped up and asked
+to tell their fortunes. Joshua held out his hand, but the girl, without
+seeming to see it, stared at his face in a very odd manner. Gerald
+nudged him:
+
+“You must cross her hand with silver,” he said. “It is one of the most
+important parts of the mystery.” Joshua took from his pocket a
+half-crown and held it out to her, but, without looking at it, she
+answered:
+
+“You have to cross the gipsy’s hand with gold.”
+
+Gerald laughed. “You are at a premium as a subject,” he said. Joshua
+was of the kind of man—the universal kind—who can tolerate being stared
+at by a pretty girl; so, with some little deliberation, he answered:
+
+“All right; here you are, my pretty girl; but you must give me a real
+good fortune for it,” and he handed her a half sovereign, which she
+took, saying:
+
+“It is not for me to give good fortune or bad, but only to read what
+the Stars have said.” She took his right hand and turned it palm
+upward; but the instant her eyes met it she dropped it as though it had
+been red hot, and, with a startled look, glided swiftly away. Lifting
+the curtain of the large tent, which occupied the centre of the camp,
+she disappeared within.
+
+“Sold again!” said the cynical Gerald. Joshua stood a little amazed,
+and not altogether satisfied. They both watched the large tent. In a
+few moments there emerged from the opening not the young girl, but a
+stately looking woman of middle age and commanding presence.
+
+The instant she appeared the whole camp seemed to stand still. The
+clamour of tongues, the laughter and noise of the work were, for a
+second or two, arrested, and every man or woman who sat, or crouched,
+or lay, stood up and faced the imperial looking gipsy.
+
+“The Queen, of course,” murmured Gerald. “We are in luck tonight.” The
+gipsy Queen threw a searching glance around the camp, and then, without
+hesitating an instant, came straight over and stood before Joshua.
+
+“Hold out your hand,” she said in a commanding tone.
+
+Again Gerald spoke, _sotto voce_: “I have not been spoken to in that
+way since I was at school.”
+
+“Your hand must be crossed with gold.”
+
+“A hundred per cent. at this game,” whispered Gerald, as Joshua laid
+another half sovereign on his upturned palm.
+
+The gipsy looked at the hand with knitted brows; then suddenly looking
+up into his face, said:
+
+“Have you a strong will—have you a true heart that can be brave for one
+you love?”
+
+“I hope so; but I am afraid I have not vanity enough to say ‘yes’.”
+
+“Then I will answer for you; for I read resolution in your
+face—resolution desperate and determined if need be. You have a wife
+you love?”
+
+“Yes,” emphatically.
+
+“Then leave her at once—never see her face again. Go from her now,
+while love is fresh and your heart is free from wicked intent. Go
+quick—go far, and never see her face again!”
+
+Joshua drew away his hand quickly, and said, “Thank you!” stiffly but
+sarcastically, as he began to move away.
+
+“I say!” said Gerald, “you’re not going like that, old man; no use in
+being indignant with the Stars or their prophet—and, moreover, your
+sovereign—what of it? At least, hear the matter out.”
+
+“Silence, ribald!” commanded the Queen, “you know not what you do. Let
+him go—and go ignorant, if he will not be warned.”
+
+Joshua immediately turned back. “At all events, we will see this thing
+out,” he said. “Now, madam, you have given me advice, but I paid for a
+fortune.”
+
+“Be warned!” said the gipsy. “The Stars have been silent for long; let
+the mystery still wrap them round.”
+
+“My dear madam, I do not get within touch of a mystery every day, and I
+prefer for my money knowledge rather than ignorance. I can get the
+latter commodity for nothing when I want any of it.”
+
+Gerald echoed the sentiment. “As for me I have a large and unsaleable
+stock on hand.”
+
+The gipsy Queen eyed the two men sternly, and then said: “As you wish.
+You have chosen for yourself, and have met warning with scorn, and
+appeal with levity. On your own heads be the doom!”
+
+“Amen!” said Gerald.
+
+With an imperious gesture the Queen took Joshua’s hand again, and began
+to tell his fortune.
+
+“I see here the flowing of blood; it will flow before long; it is
+running in my sight. It flows through the broken circle of a severed
+ring.”
+
+“Go on!” said Joshua, smiling. Gerald was silent.
+
+“Must I speak plainer?”
+
+“Certainly; we commonplace mortals want something definite. The Stars
+are a long way off, and their words get somewhat dulled in the
+message.”
+
+The gipsy shuddered, and then spoke impressively. “This is the hand of
+a murderer—the murderer of his wife!” She dropped the hand and turned
+away.
+
+Joshua laughed. “Do you know,” said he, “I think if I were you I should
+prophesy some jurisprudence into my system. For instance, you say ‘this
+hand is the hand of a murderer.’ Well, whatever it may be in the
+future—or potentially—it is at present not one. You ought to give your
+prophecy in such terms as ‘the hand which will be a murderer’s’, or,
+rather, ‘the hand of one who will be the murderer of his wife’. The
+Stars are really not good on technical questions.”
+
+The gipsy made no reply of any kind, but, with drooping head and
+despondent mien, walked slowly to her tent, and, lifting the curtain,
+disappeared.
+
+Without speaking the two men turned homewards, and walked across the
+moor. Presently, after some little hesitation, Gerald spoke.
+
+“Of course, old man, this is all a joke; a ghastly one, but still a
+joke. But would it not be well to keep it to ourselves?”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“Well, not tell your wife. It might alarm her.”
+
+“Alarm her! My dear Gerald, what are you thinking of? Why, she would
+not be alarmed or afraid of me if all the gipsies that ever didn’t come
+from Bohemia agreed that I was to murder her, or even to have a hard
+thought of her, whilst so long as she was saying ‘Jack Robinson.’”
+
+Gerald remonstrated. “Old fellow, women are superstitious—far more than
+we men are; and, also they are blessed—or cursed—with a nervous system
+to which we are strangers. I see too much of it in my work not to
+realise it. Take my advice and do not let her know, or you will
+frighten her.”
+
+Joshua’s lips unconsciously hardened as he answered: “My dear fellow, I
+would not have a secret from my wife. Why, it would be the beginning of
+a new order of things between us. We have no secrets from each other.
+If we ever have, then you may begin to look out for something odd
+between us.”
+
+“Still,” said Gerald, “at the risk of unwelcome interference, I say
+again be warned in time.”
+
+“The gipsy’s very words,” said Joshua. “You and she seem quite of one
+accord. Tell me, old man, is this a put-up thing? You told me of the
+gipsy camp—did you arrange it all with Her Majesty?” This was said with
+an air of bantering earnestness. Gerald assured him that he only heard
+of the camp that morning; but he made fun of every answer of his
+friend, and, in the process of this raillery, the time passed, and they
+entered the cottage.
+
+Mary was sitting at the piano but not playing. The dim twilight had
+waked some very tender feelings in her breast, and her eyes were full
+of gentle tears. When the men came in she stole over to her husband’s
+side and kissed him. Joshua struck a tragic attitude.
+
+“Mary,” he said in a deep voice, “before you approach me, listen to the
+words of Fate. The Stars have spoken and the doom is sealed.”
+
+“What is it, dear? Tell me the fortune, but do not frighten me.”
+
+“Not at all, my dear; but there is a truth which it is well that you
+should know. Nay, it is necessary so that all your arrangements can be
+made beforehand, and everything be decently done and in order.”
+
+“Go on, dear; I am listening.”
+
+“Mary Considine, your effigy may yet be seen at Madame Tussaud’s. The
+juris-imprudent Stars have announced their fell tidings that this hand
+is red with blood—your blood. Mary! Mary! my God!” He sprang forward,
+but too late to catch her as she fell fainting on the floor.
+
+“I told you,” said Gerald. “You don’t know them as well as I do.”
+
+After a little while Mary recovered from her swoon, but only to fall
+into strong hysterics, in which she laughed and wept and raved and
+cried, “Keep him from me—from me, Joshua, my husband,” and many other
+words of entreaty and of fear.
+
+Joshua Considine was in a state of mind bordering on agony, and when at
+last Mary became calm he knelt by her and kissed her feet and hands and
+hair and called her all the sweet names and said all the tender things
+his lips could frame. All that night he sat by her bedside and held her
+hand. Far through the night and up to the early morning she kept waking
+from sleep and crying out as if in fear, till she was comforted by the
+consciousness that her husband was watching beside her.
+
+Breakfast was late the next morning, but during it Joshua received a
+telegram which required him to drive over to Withering, nearly twenty
+miles. He was loth to go; but Mary would not hear of his remaining, and
+so before noon he drove off in his dog-cart alone.
+
+When he was gone Mary retired to her room. She did not appear at lunch,
+but when afternoon tea was served on the lawn under the great weeping
+willow, she came to join her guest. She was looking quite recovered
+from her illness of the evening before. After some casual remarks, she
+said to Gerald: “Of course it was very silly about last night, but I
+could not help feeling frightened. Indeed I would feel so still if I
+let myself think of it. But, after all these people may only imagine
+things, and I have got a test that can hardly fail to show that the
+prediction is false—if indeed it be false,” she added sadly.
+
+“What is your plan?” asked Gerald.
+
+“I shall go myself to the gipsy camp, and have my fortune told by the
+Queen.”
+
+“Capital. May I go with you?”
+
+“Oh, no! That would spoil it. She might know you and guess at me, and
+suit her utterance accordingly. I shall go alone this afternoon.”
+
+When the afternoon was gone Mary Considine took her way to the gipsy
+encampment. Gerald went with her as far as the near edge of the common,
+and returned alone.
+
+Half-an-hour had hardly elapsed when Mary entered the drawing-room,
+where he lay on a sofa reading. She was ghastly pale and was in a state
+of extreme excitement. Hardly had she passed over the threshold when
+she collapsed and sank moaning on the carpet. Gerald rushed to aid her,
+but by a great effort she controlled herself and motioned him to be
+silent. He waited, and his ready attention to her wish seemed to be her
+best help, for, in a few minutes, she had somewhat recovered, and was
+able to tell him what had passed.
+
+“When I got to the camp,” she said, “there did not seem to be a soul
+about, I went into the centre and stood there. Suddenly a tall woman
+stood beside me. ‘Something told me I was wanted!’ she said. I held out
+my hand and laid a piece of silver on it. She took from her neck a
+small golden trinket and laid it there also; and then, seizing the two,
+threw them into the stream that ran by. Then she took my hand in hers
+and spoke: ‘Naught but blood in this guilty place,’ and turned away. I
+caught hold of her and asked her to tell me more. After some
+hesitation, she said: ‘Alas! alas! I see you lying at your husband’s
+feet, and his hands are red with blood.’”
+
+Gerald did not feel at all at ease, and tried to laugh it off.
+“Surely,” he said, “this woman has a craze about murder.”
+
+“Do not laugh,” said Mary, “I cannot bear it,” and then, as if with a
+sudden impulse, she left the room.
+
+Not long after Joshua returned, bright and cheery, and as hungry as a
+hunter after his long drive. His presence cheered his wife, who seemed
+much brighter, but she did not mention the episode of the visit to the
+gipsy camp, so Gerald did not mention it either. As if by tacit consent
+the subject was not alluded to during the evening. But there was a
+strange, settled look on Mary’s face, which Gerald could not but
+observe.
+
+In the morning Joshua came down to breakfast later than usual. Mary had
+been up and about the house from an early hour; but as the time drew on
+she seemed to get a little nervous and now and again threw around an
+anxious look.
+
+Gerald could not help noticing that none of those at breakfast could
+get on satisfactorily with their food. It was not altogether that the
+chops were tough, but that the knives were all so blunt. Being a guest,
+he, of course, made no sign; but presently saw Joshua draw his thumb
+across the edge of his knife in an unconscious sort of way. At the
+action Mary turned pale and almost fainted.
+
+After breakfast they all went out on the lawn. Mary was making up a
+bouquet, and said to her husband, “Get me a few of the tea-roses,
+dear.”
+
+Joshua pulled down a cluster from the front of the house. The stem
+bent, but was too tough to break. He put his hand in his pocket to get
+his knife; but in vain. “Lend me your knife, Gerald,” he said. But
+Gerald had not got one, so he went into the breakfast room and took one
+from the table. He came out feeling its edge and grumbling. “What on
+earth has happened to all the knives—the edges seem all ground off?”
+Mary turned away hurriedly and entered the house.
+
+Joshua tried to sever the stalk with the blunt knife as country cooks
+sever the necks of fowl—as schoolboys cut twine. With a little effort
+he finished the task. The cluster of roses grew thick, so he determined
+to gather a great bunch.
+
+He could not find a single sharp knife in the sideboard where the
+cutlery was kept, so he called Mary, and when she came, told her the
+state of things. She looked so agitated and so miserable that he could
+not help knowing the truth, and, as if astounded and hurt, asked her:
+
+“Do you mean to say that _you_ have done it?”
+
+She broke in, “Oh, Joshua, I was so afraid.”
+
+He paused, and a set, white look came over his face. “Mary!” said he,
+“is this all the trust you have in me? I would not have believed it.”
+
+“Oh, Joshua! Joshua!” she cried entreatingly, “forgive me,” and wept
+bitterly.
+
+Joshua thought a moment and then said: “I see how it is. We shall
+better end this or we shall all go mad.”
+
+He ran into the drawing-room.
+
+“Where are you going?” almost screamed Mary.
+
+Gerald saw what he meant—that he would not be tied to blunt instruments
+by the force of a superstition, and was not surprised when he saw him
+come out through the French window, bearing in his hand a large Ghourka
+knife, which usually lay on the centre table, and which his brother had
+sent him from Northern India. It was one of those great hunting-knives
+which worked such havoc, at close quarters with the enemies of the
+loyal Ghourkas during the mutiny, of great weight but so evenly
+balanced in the hand as to seem light, and with an edge like a razor.
+With one of these knives a Ghourka can cut a sheep in two.
+
+When Mary saw him come out of the room with the weapon in his hand she
+screamed in an agony of fright, and the hysterics of last night were
+promptly renewed.
+
+Joshua ran toward her, and, seeing her falling, threw down the knife
+and tried to catch her.
+
+However, he was just a second too late, and the two men cried out in
+horror simultaneously as they saw her fall upon the naked blade.
+
+When Gerald rushed over he found that in falling her left hand had
+struck the blade, which lay partly upwards on the grass. Some of the
+small veins were cut through, and the blood gushed freely from the
+wound. As he was tying it up he pointed out to Joshua that the wedding
+ring was severed by the steel.
+
+They carried her fainting to the house. When, after a while, she came
+out, with her arm in a sling, she was peaceful in her mind and happy.
+She said to her husband:
+
+“The gipsy was wonderfully near the truth; too near for the real thing
+ever to occur now, dear.”
+
+Joshua bent over and kissed the wounded hand.
+
+
+
+
+The Coming of Abel Behenna
+
+
+The little Cornish port of Pencastle was bright in the early April,
+when the sun had seemingly come to stay after a long and bitter winter.
+Boldly and blackly the rock stood out against a background of shaded
+blue, where the sky fading into mist met the far horizon. The sea was
+of true Cornish hue—sapphire, save where it became deep emerald green
+in the fathomless depths under the cliffs, where the seal caves opened
+their grim jaws. On the slopes the grass was parched and brown. The
+spikes of furze bushes were ashy grey, but the golden yellow of their
+flowers streamed along the hillside, dipping out in lines as the rock
+cropped up, and lessening into patches and dots till finally it died
+away all together where the sea winds swept round the jutting cliffs
+and cut short the vegetation as though with an ever-working aerial
+shears. The whole hillside, with its body of brown and flashes of
+yellow, was just like a colossal yellow-hammer.
+
+The little harbour opened from the sea between towering cliffs, and
+behind a lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through
+which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a
+fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westwards in a serpentine
+course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left and
+right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and held
+together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence, it flowed up
+the rocky bed of the stream whose winter torrents had of old cut out
+its way amongst the hills. This stream was deep at first, with here and
+there, where it widened, patches of broken rock exposed at low water,
+full of holes where crabs and lobsters were to be found at the ebb of
+the tide. From amongst the rocks rose sturdy posts, used for warping in
+the little coasting vessels which frequented the port. Higher up, the
+stream still flowed deeply, for the tide ran far inland, but always
+calmly for all the force of the wildest storm was broken below. Some
+quarter mile inland the stream was deep at high water, but at low tide
+there were at each side patches of the same broken rock as lower down,
+through the chinks of which the sweet water of the natural stream
+trickled and murmured after the tide had ebbed away. Here, too, rose
+mooring posts for the fishermen’s boats. At either side of the river
+was a row of cottages down almost on the level of high tide. They were
+pretty cottages, strongly and snugly built, with trim narrow gardens in
+front, full of old-fashioned plants, flowering currants, coloured
+primroses, wallflower, and stonecrop. Over the fronts of many of them
+climbed clematis and wisteria. The window sides and door posts of all
+were as white as snow, and the little pathway to each was paved with
+light coloured stones. At some of the doors were tiny porches, whilst
+at others were rustic seats cut from tree trunks or from old barrels;
+in nearly every case the window ledges were filled with boxes or pots
+of flowers or foliage plants.
+
+Two men lived in cottages exactly opposite each other across the
+stream. Two men, both young, both good-looking, both prosperous, and
+who had been companions and rivals from their boyhood. Abel Behenna was
+dark with the gypsy darkness which the Phœnician mining wanderers left
+in their track; Eric Sanson—which the local antiquarian said was a
+corruption of Sagamanson—was fair, with the ruddy hue which marked the
+path of the wild Norseman. These two seemed to have singled out each
+other from the very beginning to work and strive together, to fight for
+each other and to stand back to back in all endeavours. They had now
+put the coping-stone on their Temple of Unity by falling in love with
+the same girl. Sarah Trefusis was certainly the prettiest girl in
+Pencastle, and there was many a young man who would gladly have tried
+his fortune with her, but that there were two to contend against, and
+each of these the strongest and most resolute man in the port—except
+the other. The average young man thought that this was very hard, and
+on account of it bore no good will to either of the three principals:
+whilst the average young woman who had, lest worse should befall, to
+put up with the grumbling of her sweetheart, and the sense of being
+only second best which it implied, did not either, be sure, regard
+Sarah with friendly eye. Thus it came, in the course of a year or so,
+for rustic courtship is a slow process, that the two men and woman
+found themselves thrown much together. They were all satisfied, so it
+did not matter, and Sarah, who was vain and something frivolous, took
+care to have her revenge on both men and women in a quiet way. When a
+young woman in her “walking out” can only boast one not-quite-satisfied
+young man, it is no particular pleasure to her to see her escort cast
+sheep’s eyes at a better-looking girl supported by two devoted swains.
+
+At length there came a time which Sarah dreaded, and which she had
+tried to keep distant—the time when she had to make her choice between
+the two men. She liked them both, and, indeed, either of them might
+have satisfied the ideas of even a more exacting girl. But her mind was
+so constituted that she thought more of what she might lose, than of
+what she might gain; and whenever she thought she had made up her mind
+she became instantly assailed with doubts as to the wisdom of her
+choice. Always the man whom she had presumably lost became endowed
+afresh with a newer and more bountiful crop of advantages than had ever
+arisen from the possibility of his acceptance. She promised each man
+that on her birthday she would give him his answer, and that day, the
+11th of April, had now arrived. The promises had been given singly and
+confidentially, but each was given to a man who was not likely to
+forget. Early in the morning she found both men hovering round her
+door. Neither had taken the other into his confidence, and each was
+simply seeking an early opportunity of getting his answer, and
+advancing his suit if necessary. Damon, as a rule, does not take
+Pythias with him when making a proposal; and in the heart of each man
+his own affairs had a claim far above any requirements of friendship.
+So, throughout the day, they kept seeing each other out. The position
+was doubtless somewhat embarrassing to Sarah, and though the
+satisfaction of her vanity that she should be thus adored was very
+pleasing, yet there were moments when she was annoyed with both men for
+being so persistent. Her only consolation at such moments was that she
+saw, through the elaborate smiles of the other girls when in passing
+they noticed her door thus doubly guarded, the jealousy which filled
+their hearts. Sarah’s mother was a person of commonplace and sordid
+ideas, and, seeing all along the state of affairs, her one intention,
+persistently expressed to her daughter in the plainest words, was to so
+arrange matters that Sarah should get all that was possible out of both
+men. With this purpose she had cunningly kept herself as far as
+possible in the background in the matter of her daughter’s wooings, and
+watched in silence. At first Sarah had been indignant with her for her
+sordid views; but, as usual, her weak nature gave way before
+persistence, and she had now got to the stage of acceptance. She was
+not surprised when her mother whispered to her in the little yard
+behind the house:—
+
+“Go up the hillside for a while; I want to talk to these two. They’re
+both red-hot for ye, and now’s the time to get things fixed!” Sarah
+began a feeble remonstrance, but her mother cut her short.
+
+“I tell ye, girl, that my mind is made up! Both these men want ye, and
+only one can have ye, but before ye choose it’ll be so arranged that
+ye’ll have all that both have got! Don’t argy, child! Go up the
+hillside, and when ye come back I’ll have it fixed—I see a way quite
+easy!” So Sarah went up the hillside through the narrow paths between
+the golden furze, and Mrs. Trefusis joined the two men in the
+living-room of the little house.
+
+She opened the attack with the desperate courage which is in all
+mothers when they think for their children, howsoever mean the thoughts
+may be.
+
+“Ye two men, ye’re both in love with my Sarah!”
+
+Their bashful silence gave consent to the barefaced proposition. She
+went on.
+
+“Neither of ye has much!” Again they tacitly acquiesced in the soft
+impeachment.
+
+“I don’t know that either of ye could keep a wife!” Though neither said
+a word their looks and bearing expressed distinct dissent. Mrs.
+Trefusis went on:
+
+“But if ye’d put what ye both have together ye’d make a comfortable
+home for one of ye—and Sarah!” She eyed the men keenly, with her
+cunning eyes half shut, as she spoke; then satisfied from her scrutiny
+that the idea was accepted she went on quickly, as if to prevent
+argument:
+
+“The girl likes ye both, and mayhap it’s hard for her to choose. Why
+don’t ye toss up for her? First put your money together—ye’ve each got
+a bit put by, I know. Let the lucky man take the lot and trade with it
+a bit, and then come home and marry her. Neither of ye’s afraid, I
+suppose! And neither of ye’ll say that he won’t do that much for the
+girl that ye both say ye love!”
+
+Abel broke the silence:
+
+“It don’t seem the square thing to toss for the girl! She wouldn’t like
+it herself, and it doesn’t seem—seem respectful like to her—” Eric
+interrupted. He was conscious that his chance was not so good as Abel’s
+in case Sarah should wish to choose between them:
+
+“Are ye afraid of the hazard?”
+
+“Not me!” said Abel, boldly. Mrs. Trefusis, seeing that her idea was
+beginning to work, followed up the advantage.
+
+“It is settled that ye put yer money together to make a home for her,
+whether ye toss for her or leave it for her to choose?”
+
+“Yes,” said Eric quickly, and Abel agreed with equal sturdiness. Mrs.
+Trefusis’ little cunning eyes twinkled. She heard Sarah’s step in the
+yard, and said:
+
+“Well! here she comes, and I leave it to her.” And she went out.
+
+During her brief walk on the hillside Sarah had been trying to make up
+her mind. She was feeling almost angry with both men for being the
+cause of her difficulty, and as she came into the room said shortly:
+
+“I want to have a word with you both—come to the Flagstaff Rock, where
+we can be alone.” She took her hat and went out of the house up the
+winding path to the steep rock crowned with a high flagstaff, where
+once the wreckers’ fire basket used to burn. This was the rock which
+formed the northern jaw of the little harbour. There was only room on
+the path for two abreast, and it marked the state of things pretty well
+when, by a sort of implied arrangement, Sarah went first, and the two
+men followed, walking abreast and keeping step. By this time, each
+man’s heart was boiling with jealousy. When they came to the top of the
+rock, Sarah stood against the flagstaff, and the two young men stood
+opposite her. She had chosen her position with knowledge and intention,
+for there was no room for anyone to stand beside her. They were all
+silent for a while; then Sarah began to laugh and said:—
+
+“I promised the both of you to give you an answer to-day. I’ve been
+thinking and thinking and thinking, till I began to get angry with you
+both for plaguing me so; and even now I don’t seem any nearer than ever
+I was to making up my mind.” Eric said suddenly:
+
+“Let us toss for it, lass!” Sarah showed no indignation whatever at the
+proposition; her mother’s eternal suggestion had schooled her to the
+acceptance of something of the kind, and her weak nature made it easy
+to her to grasp at any way out of the difficulty. She stood with
+downcast eyes idly picking at the sleeve of her dress, seeming to have
+tacitly acquiesced in the proposal. Both men instinctively realising
+this pulled each a coin from his pocket, spun it in the air, and
+dropped his other hand over the palm on which it lay. For a few seconds
+they remained thus, all silent; then Abel, who was the more thoughtful
+of the men, spoke:
+
+“Sarah! is this good?” As he spoke he removed the upper hand from the
+coin and placed the latter back in his pocket. Sarah was nettled.
+
+“Good or bad, it’s good enough for me! Take it or leave it as you
+like,” she said, to which he replied quickly:
+
+“Nay lass! Aught that concerns you is good enow for me. I did but think
+of you lest you might have pain or disappointment hereafter. If you
+love Eric better nor me, in God’s name say so, and I think I’m man enow
+to stand aside. Likewise, if I’m the one, don’t make us both miserable
+for life!” Face to face with a difficulty, Sarah’s weak nature
+proclaimed itself; she put her hands before her face and began to cry,
+saying—
+
+“It was my mother. She keeps telling me!” The silence which followed
+was broken by Eric, who said hotly to Abel:
+
+“Let the lass alone, can’t you? If she wants to choose this way, let
+her. It’s good enough for me—and for you, too! She’s said it now, and
+must abide by it!” Hereupon Sarah turned upon him in sudden fury, and
+cried:
+
+“Hold your tongue! what is it to you, at any rate?” and she resumed her
+crying. Eric was so flabbergasted that he had not a word to say, but
+stood looking particularly foolish, with his mouth open and his hands
+held out with the coin still between them. All were silent till Sarah,
+taking her hands from her face laughed hysterically and said:
+
+“As you two can’t make up your minds, I’m going home!” and she turned
+to go.
+
+“Stop,” said Abel, in an authoritative voice. “Eric, you hold the coin,
+and I’ll cry. Now, before we settle it, let us clearly understand: the
+man who wins takes all the money that we both have got, brings it to
+Bristol and ships on a voyage and trades with it. Then he comes back
+and marries Sarah, and they two keep all, whatever there may be, as the
+result of the trading. Is this what we understand?”
+
+“Yes,” said Eric.
+
+“I’ll marry him on my next birthday,” said Sarah. Having said it the
+intolerably mercenary spirit of her action seemed to strike her, and
+impulsively she turned away with a bright blush. Fire seemed to sparkle
+in the eyes of both men. Said Eric: “A year so be! The man that wins is
+to have one year.”
+
+“Toss!” cried Abel, and the coin spun in the air. Eric caught it, and
+again held it between his outstretched hands.
+
+“Heads!” cried Abel, a pallor sweeping over his face as he spoke. As he
+leaned forward to look Sarah leaned forward too, and their heads almost
+touched. He could feel her hair blowing on his cheek, and it thrilled
+through him like fire. Eric lifted his upper hand; the coin lay with
+its head up. Abel stepped forward and took Sarah in his arms. With a
+curse Eric hurled the coin far into the sea. Then he leaned against the
+flagstaff and scowled at the others with his hands thrust deep into his
+pockets. Abel whispered wild words of passion and delight into Sarah’s
+ears, and as she listened she began to believe that fortune had rightly
+interpreted the wishes of her secret heart, and that she loved Abel
+best.
+
+Presently Abel looked up and caught sight of Eric’s face as the last
+ray of sunset struck it. The red light intensified the natural
+ruddiness of his complexion, and he looked as though he were steeped in
+blood. Abel did not mind his scowl, for now that his own heart was at
+rest he could feel unalloyed pity for his friend. He stepped over
+meaning to comfort him, and held out his hand, saying:
+
+“It was my chance, old lad. Don’t grudge it me. I’ll try to make Sarah
+a happy woman, and you shall be a brother to us both!”
+
+“Brother be damned!” was all the answer Eric made, as he turned away.
+When he had gone a few steps down the rocky path he turned and came
+back. Standing before Abel and Sarah, who had their arms round each
+other, he said:
+
+“You have a year. Make the most of it! And be sure you’re in time to
+claim your wife! Be back to have your banns up in time to be married on
+the 11th April. If you’re not, I tell you I shall have my banns up, and
+you may get back too late.”
+
+“What do you mean, Eric? You are mad!”
+
+“No more mad than you are, Abel Behenna. You go, that’s your chance! I
+stay, that’s mine! I don’t mean to let the grass grow under my feet.
+Sarah cared no more for you than for me five minutes ago, and she may
+come back to that five minutes after you’re gone! You won by a point
+only—the game may change.”
+
+“The game won’t change!” said Abel shortly. “Sarah, you’ll be true to
+me? You won’t marry till I return?”
+
+“For a year!” added Eric, quickly, “that’s the bargain.”
+
+“I promise for the year,” said Sarah. A dark look came over Abel’s
+face, and he was about to speak, but he mastered himself and smiled.
+
+“I mustn’t be too hard or get angry tonight! Come, Eric! we played and
+fought together. I won fairly. I played fairly all the game of our
+wooing! You know that as well as I do; and now when I am going away, I
+shall look to my old and true comrade to help me when I am gone!”
+
+“I’ll help you none,” said Eric, “so help me God!”
+
+“It was God helped me,” said Abel simply.
+
+“Then let Him go on helping you,” said Eric angrily. “The Devil is good
+enough for me!” and without another word he rushed down the steep path
+and disappeared behind the rocks.
+
+When he had gone Abel hoped for some tender passage with Sarah, but the
+first remark she made chilled him.
+
+“How lonely it all seems without Eric!” and this note sounded till he
+had left her at home—and after.
+
+Early on the next morning Abel heard a noise at his door, and on going
+out saw Eric walking rapidly away: a small canvas bag full of gold and
+silver lay on the threshold; on a small slip of paper pinned to it was
+written:
+
+“Take the money and go. I stay. God for you! The Devil for me! Remember
+the 11th of April.—ERIC SANSON.” That afternoon Abel went off to
+Bristol, and a week later sailed on the _Star of the Sea_ bound for
+Pahang. His money—including that which had been Eric’s—was on board in
+the shape of a venture of cheap toys. He had been advised by a shrewd
+old mariner of Bristol whom he knew, and who knew the ways of the
+Chersonese, who predicted that every penny invested would be returned
+with a shilling to boot.
+
+As the year wore on Sarah became more and more disturbed in her mind.
+Eric was always at hand to make love to her in his own persistent,
+masterful manner, and to this she did not object. Only one letter came
+from Abel, to say that his venture had proved successful, and that he
+had sent some two hundred pounds to the bank at Bristol, and was
+trading with fifty pounds still remaining in goods for China, whither
+the _Star of the Sea_ was bound and whence she would return to Bristol.
+He suggested that Eric’s share of the venture should be returned to him
+with his share of the profits. This proposition was treated with anger
+by Eric, and as simply childish by Sarah’s mother.
+
+More than six months had since then elapsed, but no other letter had
+come, and Eric’s hopes which had been dashed down by the letter from
+Pahang, began to rise again. He perpetually assailed Sarah with an
+“if!” If Abel did not return, would she then marry him? If the 11th
+April went by without Abel being in the port, would she give him over?
+If Abel had taken his fortune, and married another girl on the head of
+it, would she marry him, Eric, as soon as the truth were known? And so
+on in an endless variety of possibilities. The power of the strong will
+and the determined purpose over the woman’s weaker nature became in
+time manifest. Sarah began to lose her faith in Abel and to regard Eric
+as a possible husband; and a possible husband is in a woman’s eye
+different to all other men. A new affection for him began to arise in
+her breast, and the daily familiarities of permitted courtship
+furthered the growing affection. Sarah began to regard Abel as rather a
+rock in the road of her life, and had it not been for her mother’s
+constantly reminding her of the good fortune already laid by in the
+Bristol Bank she would have tried to have shut her eyes altogether to
+the fact of Abel’s existence.
+
+The 11th April was Saturday, so that in order to have the marriage on
+that day it would be necessary that the banns should be called on
+Sunday, 22nd March. From the beginning of that month Eric kept
+perpetually on the subject of Abel’s absence, and his outspoken opinion
+that the latter was either dead or married began to become a reality to
+the woman’s mind. As the first half of the month wore on Eric became
+more jubilant, and after church on the 15th he took Sarah for a walk to
+the Flagstaff Rock. There he asserted himself strongly:
+
+“I told Abel, and you too, that if he was not here to put up his banns
+in time for the eleventh, I would put up mine for the twelfth. Now the
+time has come when I mean to do it. He hasn’t kept his word”—here Sarah
+struck in out of her weakness and indecision:
+
+“He hasn’t broken it yet!” Eric ground his teeth with anger.
+
+“If you mean to stick up for him,” he said, as he smote his hands
+savagely on the flagstaff, which sent forth a shivering murmur, “well
+and good. I’ll keep my part of the bargain. On Sunday I shall give
+notice of the banns, and you can deny them in the church if you will.
+If Abel is in Pencastle on the eleventh, he can have them cancelled,
+and his own put up; but till then, I take my course, and woe to anyone
+who stands in my way!” With that he flung himself down the rocky
+pathway, and Sarah could not but admire his Viking strength and spirit,
+as, crossing the hill, he strode away along the cliffs towards Bude.
+
+During the week no news was heard of Abel, and on Saturday Eric gave
+notice of the banns of marriage between himself and Sarah Trefusis. The
+clergyman would have remonstrated with him, for although nothing formal
+had been told to the neighbours, it had been understood since Abel’s
+departure that on his return he was to marry Sarah; but Eric would not
+discuss the question.
+
+“It is a painful subject, sir,” he said with a firmness which the
+parson, who was a very young man, could not but be swayed by. “Surely
+there is nothing against Sarah or me. Why should there be any bones
+made about the matter?” The parson said no more, and on the next day he
+read out the banns for the first time amidst an audible buzz from the
+congregation. Sarah was present, contrary to custom, and though she
+blushed furiously enjoyed her triumph over the other girls whose banns
+had not yet come. Before the week was over she began to make her
+wedding dress. Eric used to come and look at her at work and the sight
+thrilled through him. He used to say all sorts of pretty things to her
+at such times, and there were to both delicious moments of love-making.
+
+The banns were read a second time on the 29th, and Eric’s hope grew
+more and more fixed though there were to him moments of acute despair
+when he realised that the cup of happiness might be dashed from his
+lips at any moment, right up to the last. At such times he was full of
+passion—desperate and remorseless—and he ground his teeth and clenched
+his hands in a wild way as though some taint of the old Berserker fury
+of his ancestors still lingered in his blood. On the Thursday of that
+week he looked in on Sarah and found her, amid a flood of sunshine,
+putting finishing touches to her white wedding gown. His own heart was
+full of gaiety, and the sight of the woman who was so soon to be his
+own so occupied, filled him with a joy unspeakable, and he felt faint
+with languorous ecstasy. Bending over he kissed Sarah on the mouth, and
+then whispered in her rosy ear—
+
+“Your wedding dress, Sarah! And for me!” As he drew back to admire her
+she looked up saucily, and said to him—
+
+“Perhaps not for you. There is more than a week yet for Abel!” and then
+cried out in dismay, for with a wild gesture and a fierce oath Eric
+dashed out of the house, banging the door behind him. The incident
+disturbed Sarah more than she could have thought possible, for it awoke
+all her fears and doubts and indecision afresh. She cried a little, and
+put by her dress, and to soothe herself went out to sit for a while on
+the summit of the Flagstaff Rock. When she arrived she found there a
+little group anxiously discussing the weather. The sea was calm and the
+sun bright, but across the sea were strange lines of darkness and
+light, and close in to shore the rocks were fringed with foam, which
+spread out in great white curves and circles as the currents drifted.
+The wind had backed, and came in sharp, cold puffs. The blow-hole,
+which ran under the Flagstaff Rock, from the rocky bay without to the
+harbour within, was booming at intervals, and the seagulls were
+screaming ceaselessly as they wheeled about the entrance of the port.
+
+“It looks bad,” she heard an old fisherman say to the coastguard. “I
+seen it just like this once before, when the East Indiaman _Coromandel_
+went to pieces in Dizzard Bay!” Sarah did not wait to hear more. She
+was of a timid nature where danger was concerned, and could not bear to
+hear of wrecks and disasters. She went home and resumed the completion
+of her dress, secretly determined to appease Eric when she should meet
+him with a sweet apology—and to take the earliest opportunity of being
+even with him after her marriage. The old fisherman’s weather prophecy
+was justified. That night at dusk a wild storm came on. The sea rose
+and lashed the western coasts from Skye to Scilly and left a tale of
+disaster everywhere. The sailors and fishermen of Pencastle all turned
+out on the rocks and cliffs and watched eagerly. Presently, by a flash
+of lightning, a “ketch” was seen drifting under only a jib about
+half-a-mile outside the port. All eyes and all glasses were
+concentrated on her, waiting for the next flash, and when it came a
+chorus went up that it was the _Lovely Alice_, trading between Bristol
+and Penzance, and touching at all the little ports between. “God help
+them!” said the harbour-master, “for nothing in this world can save
+them when they are between Bude and Tintagel and the wind on shore!”
+The coastguards exerted themselves, and, aided by brave hearts and
+willing hands, they brought the rocket apparatus up on the summit of
+the Flagstaff Rock. Then they burned blue lights so that those on board
+might see the harbour opening in case they could make any effort to
+reach it. They worked gallantly enough on board; but no skill or
+strength of man could avail. Before many minutes were over the _Lovely
+Alice_ rushed to her doom on the great island rock that guarded the
+mouth of the port. The screams of those on board were faintly borne on
+the tempest as they flung themselves into the sea in a last chance for
+life. The blue lights were kept burning, and eager eyes peered into the
+depths of the waters in case any face could be seen; and ropes were
+held ready to fling out in aid. But never a face was seen, and the
+willing arms rested idle. Eric was there amongst his fellows. His old
+Icelandic origin was never more apparent than in that wild hour. He
+took a rope, and shouted in the ear of the harbour-master:
+
+“I shall go down on the rock over the seal cave. The tide is running
+up, and someone may drift in there!”
+
+“Keep back, man!” came the answer. “Are you mad? One slip on that rock
+and you are lost: and no man could keep his feet in the dark on such a
+place in such a tempest!”
+
+“Not a bit,” came the reply. “You remember how Abel Behenna saved me
+there on a night like this when my boat went on the Gull Rock. He
+dragged me up from the deep water in the seal cave, and now someone may
+drift in there again as I did,” and he was gone into the darkness. The
+projecting rock hid the light on the Flagstaff Rock, but he knew his
+way too well to miss it. His boldness and sureness of foot standing to
+him, he shortly stood on the great round-topped rock cut away beneath
+by the action of the waves over the entrance of the seal cave, where
+the water was fathomless. There he stood in comparative safety, for the
+concave shape of the rock beat back the waves with their own force, and
+though the water below him seemed to boil like a seething cauldron,
+just beyond the spot there was a space of almost calm. The rock, too,
+seemed here to shut off the sound of the gale, and he listened as well
+as watched. As he stood there ready, with his coil of rope poised to
+throw, he thought he heard below him, just beyond the whirl of the
+water, a faint, despairing cry. He echoed it with a shout that rang
+into the night. Then he waited for the flash of lightning, and as it
+passed flung his rope out into the darkness where he had seen a face
+rising through the swirl of the foam. The rope was caught, for he felt
+a pull on it, and he shouted again in his mighty voice:
+
+“Tie it round your waist, and I shall pull you up.” Then when he felt
+that it was fast he moved along the rock to the far side of the sea
+cave, where the deep water was something stiller, and where he could
+get foothold secure enough to drag the rescued man on the overhanging
+rock. He began to pull, and shortly he knew from the rope taken in that
+the man he was now rescuing must soon be close to the top of the rock.
+He steadied himself for a moment, and drew a long breath, that he might
+at the next effort complete the rescue. He had just bent his back to
+the work when a flash of lightning revealed to each other the two
+men—the rescuer and the rescued.
+
+Eric Sanson and Abel Behenna were face to face—and none knew of the
+meeting save themselves; and God.
+
+On the instant a wave of passion swept through Eric’s heart. All his
+hopes were shattered, and with the hatred of Cain his eyes looked out.
+He saw in the instant of recognition the joy in Abel’s face that his
+was the hand to succour him, and this intensified his hate. Whilst the
+passion was on him he started back, and the rope ran out between his
+hands. His moment of hate was followed by an impulse of his better
+manhood, but it was too late.
+
+Before he could recover himself, Abel encumbered with the rope that
+should have aided him, was plunged with a despairing cry back into the
+darkness of the devouring sea.
+
+Then, feeling all the madness and the doom of Cain upon him, Eric
+rushed back over the rocks, heedless of the danger and eager only for
+one thing—to be amongst other people whose living noises would shut out
+that last cry which seemed to ring still in his ears. When he regained
+the Flagstaff Rock the men surrounded him, and through the fury of the
+storm he heard the harbour-master say:—
+
+“We feared you were lost when we heard a cry! How white you are! Where
+is your rope? Was there anyone drifted in?”
+
+“No one,” he shouted in answer, for he felt that he could never explain
+that he had let his old comrade slip back into the sea, and at the very
+place and under the very circumstances in which that comrade had saved
+his own life. He hoped by one bold lie to set the matter at rest for
+ever. There was no one to bear witness—and if he should have to carry
+that still white face in his eyes and that despairing cry in his ears
+for evermore—at least none should know of it. “No one,” he cried, more
+loudly still. “I slipped on the rock, and the rope fell into the sea!”
+So saying he left them, and, rushing down the steep path, gained his
+own cottage and locked himself within.
+
+The remainder of that night he passed lying on his bed—dressed and
+motionless—staring upwards, and seeming to see through the darkness a
+pale face gleaming wet in the lightning, with its glad recognition
+turning to ghastly despair, and to hear a cry which never ceased to
+echo in his soul.
+
+In the morning the storm was over and all was smiling again, except
+that the sea was still boisterous with its unspent fury. Great pieces
+of wreck drifted into the port, and the sea around the island rock was
+strewn with others. Two bodies also drifted into the harbour—one the
+master of the wrecked ketch, the other a strange seaman whom no one
+knew.
+
+Sarah saw nothing of Eric till the evening, and then he only looked in
+for a minute. He did not come into the house, but simply put his head
+in through the open window.
+
+“Well, Sarah,” he called out in a loud voice, though to her it did not
+ring truly, “is the wedding dress done? Sunday week, mind! Sunday
+week!”
+
+Sarah was glad to have the reconciliation so easy; but, womanlike, when
+she saw the storm was over and her own fears groundless, she at once
+repeated the cause of offence.
+
+“Sunday so be it,” she said without looking up, “if Abel isn’t there on
+Saturday!” Then she looked up saucily, though her heart was full of
+fear of another outburst on the part of her impetuous lover. But the
+window was empty; Eric had taken himself off, and with a pout she
+resumed her work. She saw Eric no more till Sunday afternoon, after the
+banns had been called the third time, when he came up to her before all
+the people with an air of proprietorship which half-pleased and
+half-annoyed her.
+
+“Not yet, mister!” she said, pushing him away, as the other girls
+giggled. “Wait till Sunday next, if you please—the day after Saturday!”
+she added, looking at him saucily. The girls giggled again, and the
+young men guffawed. They thought it was the snub that touched him so
+that he became as white as a sheet as he turned away. But Sarah, who
+knew more than they did, laughed, for she saw triumph through the spasm
+of pain that overspread his face.
+
+The week passed uneventfully; however, as Saturday drew nigh Sarah had
+occasional moments of anxiety, and as to Eric he went about at
+night-time like a man possessed. He restrained himself when others were
+by, but now and again he went down amongst the rocks and caves and
+shouted aloud. This seemed to relieve him somewhat, and he was better
+able to restrain himself for some time after. All Saturday he stayed in
+his own house and never left it. As he was to be married on the morrow,
+the neighbours thought it was shyness on his part, and did not trouble
+or notice him. Only once was he disturbed, and that was when the chief
+boatman came to him and sat down, and after a pause said:
+
+“Eric, I was over in Bristol yesterday. I was in the ropemaker’s
+getting a coil to replace the one you lost the night of the storm, and
+there I saw Michael Heavens of this place, who is a salesman there. He
+told me that Abel Behenna had come home the week ere last on the _Star
+of the Sea_ from Canton, and that he had lodged a sight of money in the
+Bristol Bank in the name of Sarah Behenna. He told Michael so
+himself—and that he had taken passage on the _Lovely Alice_ to
+Pencastle. “Bear up, man,” for Eric had with a groan dropped his head
+on his knees, with his face between his hands. “He was your old
+comrade, I know, but you couldn’t help him. He must have gone down with
+the rest that awful night. I thought I’d better tell you, lest it might
+come some other way, and you might keep Sarah Trefusis from being
+frightened. They were good friends once, and women take these things to
+heart. It would not do to let her be pained with such a thing on her
+wedding day!” Then he rose and went away, leaving Eric still sitting
+disconsolately with his head on his knees.
+
+“Poor fellow!” murmured the chief boatman to himself; “he takes it to
+heart. Well, well! right enough! They were true comrades once, and Abel
+saved him!”
+
+The afternoon of that day, when the children had left school, they
+strayed as usual on half-holidays along the quay and the paths by the
+cliffs. Presently some of them came running in a state of great
+excitement to the harbour, where a few men were unloading a coal ketch,
+and a great many were superintending the operation. One of the children
+called out:
+
+“There is a porpoise in the harbour mouth! We saw it come through the
+blow-hole! It had a long tail, and was deep under the water!”
+
+“It was no porpoise,” said another; “it was a seal; but it had a long
+tail! It came out of the seal cave!” The other children bore various
+testimony, but on two points they were unanimous—it, whatever “it” was,
+had come through the blow-hole deep under the water, and had a long,
+thin tail—a tail so long that they could not see the end of it. There
+was much unmerciful chaffing of the children by the men on this point,
+but as it was evident that they had seen something, quite a number of
+persons, young and old, male and female, went along the high paths on
+either side of the harbour mouth to catch a glimpse of this new
+addition to the fauna of the sea, a long-tailed porpoise or seal. The
+tide was now coming in. There was a slight breeze, and the surface of
+the water was rippled so that it was only at moments that anyone could
+see clearly into the deep water. After a spell of watching a woman
+called out that she saw something moving up the channel, just below
+where she was standing. There was a stampede to the spot, but by the
+time the crowd had gathered the breeze had freshened, and it was
+impossible to see with any distinctness below the surface of the water.
+On being questioned the woman described what she had seen, but in such
+an incoherent way that the whole thing was put down as an effect of
+imagination; had it not been for the children’s report she would not
+have been credited at all. Her semi-hysterical statement that what she
+saw was “like a pig with the entrails out” was only thought anything of
+by an old coastguard, who shook his head but did not make any remark.
+For the remainder of the daylight this man was seen always on the bank,
+looking into the water, but always with disappointment manifest on his
+face.
+
+Eric arose early on the next morning—he had not slept all night, and it
+was a relief to him to move about in the light. He shaved himself with
+a hand that did not tremble, and dressed himself in his wedding
+clothes. There was a haggard look on his face, and he seemed as though
+he had grown years older in the last few days. Still there was a wild,
+uneasy light of triumph in his eyes, and he kept murmuring to himself
+over and over again:
+
+“This is my wedding-day! Abel cannot claim her now—living or
+dead!—living or dead! Living or dead!” He sat in his arm-chair, waiting
+with an uncanny quietness for the church hour to arrive. When the bell
+began to ring he arose and passed out of his house, closing the door
+behind him. He looked at the river and saw the tide had just turned. In
+the church he sat with Sarah and her mother, holding Sarah’s hand
+tightly in his all the time, as though he feared to lose her. When the
+service was over they stood up together, and were married in the
+presence of the entire congregation; for no one left the church. Both
+made the responses clearly—Eric’s being even on the defiant side. When
+the wedding was over Sarah took her husband’s arm, and they walked away
+together, the boys and younger girls being cuffed by their elders into
+a decorous behaviour, for they would fain have followed close behind
+their heels.
+
+The way from the church led down to the back of Eric’s cottage, a
+narrow passage being between it and that of his next neighbour. When
+the bridal couple had passed through this the remainder of the
+congregation, who had followed them at a little distance, were startled
+by a long, shrill scream from the bride. They rushed through the
+passage and found her on the bank with wild eyes, pointing to the river
+bed opposite Eric Sanson’s door.
+
+The falling tide had deposited there the body of Abel Behenna stark
+upon the broken rocks. The rope trailing from its waist had been
+twisted by the current round the mooring post, and had held it back
+whilst the tide had ebbed away from it. The right elbow had fallen in a
+chink in the rock, leaving the hand outstretched toward Sarah, with the
+open palm upward as though it were extended to receive hers, the pale
+drooping fingers open to the clasp.
+
+All that happened afterwards was never quite known to Sarah Sanson.
+Whenever she would try to recollect there would become a buzzing in her
+ears and a dimness in her eyes, and all would pass away. The only thing
+that she could remember of it all—and this she never forgot—was Eric’s
+breathing heavily, with his face whiter than that of the dead man, as
+he muttered under his breath:
+
+“Devil’s help! Devil’s faith! Devil’s price!”
+
+
+
+
+The Burial of the Rats
+
+
+Leaving Paris by the Orleans road, cross the Enceinte, and, turning to
+the right, you find yourself in a somewhat wild and not at all savoury
+district. Right and left, before and behind, on every side rise great
+heaps of dust and waste accumulated by the process of time.
+
+Paris has its night as well as its day life, and the sojourner who
+enters his hotel in the Rue de Rivoli or the Rue St. Honore late at
+night or leaves it early in the morning, can guess, in coming near
+Montrouge—if he has not done so already—the purpose of those great
+waggons that look like boilers on wheels which he finds halting
+everywhere as he passes.
+
+Every city has its peculiar institutions created out of its own needs;
+and one of the most notable institutions of Paris is its rag-picking
+population. In the early morning—and Parisian life commences at an
+early hour—may be seen in most streets standing on the pathway opposite
+every court and alley and between every few houses, as still in some
+American cities, even in parts of New York, large wooden boxes into
+which the domestics or tenement-holders empty the accumulated dust of
+the past day. Round these boxes gather and pass on, when the work is
+done, to fresh fields of labour and pastures new, squalid
+hungry-looking men and women, the implements of whose craft consist of
+a coarse bag or basket slung over the shoulder and a little rake with
+which they turn over and probe and examine in the minutest manner the
+dustbins. They pick up and deposit in their baskets, by aid of their
+rakes, whatever they may find, with the same facility as a Chinaman
+uses his chopsticks.
+
+Paris is a city of centralisation—and centralisation and classification
+are closely allied. In the early times, when centralisation is becoming
+a fact, its forerunner is classification. All things which are similar
+or analogous become grouped together, and from the grouping of groups
+rises one whole or central point. We see radiating many long arms with
+innumerable tentaculae, and in the centre rises a gigantic head with a
+comprehensive brain and keen eyes to look on every side and ears
+sensitive to hear—and a voracious mouth to swallow.
+
+Other cities resemble all the birds and beasts and fishes whose
+appetites and digestions are normal. Paris alone is the analogical
+apotheosis of the octopus. Product of centralisation carried to an _ad
+absurdum_, it fairly represents the devil fish; and in no respects is
+the resemblance more curious than in the similarity of the digestive
+apparatus.
+
+Those intelligent tourists who, having surrendered their individuality
+into the hands of Messrs. Cook or Gaze, “do” Paris in three days, are
+often puzzled to know how it is that the dinner which in London would
+cost about six shillings, can be had for three francs in a café in the
+Palais Royal. They need have no more wonder if they will but consider
+the classification which is a theoretic speciality of Parisian life,
+and adopt all round the fact from which the chiffonier has his genesis.
+
+The Paris of 1850 was not like the Paris of to-day, and those who see
+the Paris of Napoleon and Baron Hausseman can hardly realise the
+existence of the state of things forty-five years ago.
+
+Amongst other things, however, which have not changed are those
+districts where the waste is gathered. Dust is dust all the world over,
+in every age, and the family likeness of dust-heaps is perfect. The
+traveller, therefore, who visits the environs of Montrouge can go go
+back in fancy without difficulty to the year 1850.
+
+In this year I was making a prolonged stay in Paris. I was very much in
+love with a young lady who, though she returned my passion, so far
+yielded to the wishes of her parents that she had promised not to see
+me or to correspond with me for a year. I, too, had been compelled to
+accede to these conditions under a vague hope of parental approval.
+During the term of probation I had promised to remain out of the
+country and not to write to my dear one until the expiration of the
+year.
+
+Naturally the time went heavily with me. There was not one of my own
+family or circle who could tell me of Alice, and none of her own folk
+had, I am sorry to say, sufficient generosity to send me even an
+occasional word of comfort regarding her health and well-being. I spent
+six months wandering about Europe, but as I could find no satisfactory
+distraction in travel, I determined to come to Paris, where, at least,
+I would be within easy hail of London in case any good fortune should
+call me thither before the appointed time. That “hope deferred maketh
+the heart sick” was never better exemplified than in my case, for in
+addition to the perpetual longing to see the face I loved there was
+always with me a harrowing anxiety lest some accident should prevent me
+showing Alice in due time that I had, throughout the long period of
+probation, been faithful to her trust and my own love. Thus, every
+adventure which I undertook had a fierce pleasure of its own, for it
+was fraught with possible consequences greater than it would have
+ordinarily borne.
+
+Like all travellers I exhausted the places of most interest in the
+first month of my stay, and was driven in the second month to look for
+amusement whithersoever I might. Having made sundry journeys to the
+better-known suburbs, I began to see that there was a _terra
+incognita_, in so far as the guide book was concerned, in the social
+wilderness lying between these attractive points. Accordingly I began
+to systematise my researches, and each day took up the thread of my
+exploration at the place where I had on the previous day dropped it.
+
+In the process of time my wanderings led me near Montrouge, and I saw
+that hereabouts lay the Ultima Thule of social exploration—a country as
+little known as that round the source of the White Nile. And so I
+determined to investigate philosophically the chiffonier—his habitat,
+his life, and his means of life.
+
+The job was an unsavoury one, difficult of accomplishment, and with
+little hope of adequate reward. However, despite reason, obstinacy
+prevailed, and I entered into my new investigation with a keener energy
+than I could have summoned to aid me in any investigation leading to
+any end, valuable or worthy.
+
+One day, late in a fine afternoon, toward the end of September, I
+entered the holy of holies of the city of dust. The place was evidently
+the recognised abode of a number of chiffoniers, for some sort of
+arrangement was manifested in the formation of the dust heaps near the
+road. I passed amongst these heaps, which stood like orderly sentries,
+determined to penetrate further and trace dust to its ultimate
+location.
+
+As I passed along I saw behind the dust heaps a few forms that flitted
+to and fro, evidently watching with interest the advent of any stranger
+to such a place. The district was like a small Switzerland, and as I
+went forward my tortuous course shut out the path behind me.
+
+Presently I got into what seemed a small city or community of
+chiffoniers. There were a number of shanties or huts, such as may be
+met with in the remote parts of the Bog of Allan—rude places with
+wattled walls, plastered with mud and roofs of rude thatch made from
+stable refuse—such places as one would not like to enter for any
+consideration, and which even in water-colour could only look
+picturesque if judiciously treated. In the midst of these huts was one
+of the strangest adaptations—I cannot say habitations—I had ever seen.
+An immense old wardrobe, the colossal remnant of some boudoir of
+Charles VII, or Henry II, had been converted into a dwelling-house. The
+double doors lay open, so that the entire ménage was open to public
+view. In the open half of the wardrobe was a common sitting-room of
+some four feet by six, in which sat, smoking their pipes round a
+charcoal brazier, no fewer than six old soldiers of the First Republic,
+with their uniforms torn and worn threadbare. Evidently they were of
+the _mauvais sujet_ class; their bleary eyes and limp jaws told plainly
+of a common love of absinthe; and their eyes had that haggard, worn
+look of slumbering ferocity which follows hard in the wake of drink.
+The other side stood as of old, with its shelves intact, save that they
+were cut to half their depth, and in each shelf of which there were
+six, was a bed made with rags and straw. The half-dozen of worthies who
+inhabited this structure looked at me curiously as I passed; and when I
+looked back after going a little way I saw their heads together in a
+whispered conference. I did not like the look of this at all, for the
+place was very lonely, and the men looked very, very villainous.
+However, I did not see any cause for fear, and went on my way,
+penetrating further and further into the Sahara. The way was tortuous
+to a degree, and from going round in a series of semi-circles, as one
+goes in skating with the Dutch roll, I got rather confused with regard
+to the points of the compass.
+
+When I had penetrated a little way I saw, as I turned the corner of a
+half-made heap, sitting on a heap of straw an old soldier with
+threadbare coat.
+
+“Hallo!” said I to myself; “the First Republic is well represented here
+in its soldiery.”
+
+As I passed him the old man never even looked up at me, but gazed on
+the ground with stolid persistency. Again I remarked to myself: “See
+what a life of rude warfare can do! This old man’s curiosity is a thing
+of the past.”
+
+When I had gone a few steps, however, I looked back suddenly, and saw
+that curiosity was not dead, for the veteran had raised his head and
+was regarding me with a very queer expression. He seemed to me to look
+very like one of the six worthies in the press. When he saw me looking
+he dropped his head; and without thinking further of him I went on my
+way, satisfied that there was a strange likeness between these old
+warriors.
+
+Presently I met another old soldier in a similar manner. He, too, did
+not notice me whilst I was passing.
+
+By this time it was getting late in the afternoon, and I began to think
+of retracing my steps. Accordingly I turned to go back, but could see a
+number of tracks leading between different mounds and could not
+ascertain which of them I should take. In my perplexity I wanted to see
+someone of whom to ask the way, but could see no one. I determined to
+go on a few mounds further and so try to see someone—not a veteran.
+
+I gained my object, for after going a couple of hundred yards I saw
+before me a single shanty such as I had seen before—with, however, the
+difference that this was not one for living in, but merely a roof with
+three walls open in front. From the evidences which the neighbourhood
+exhibited I took it to be a place for sorting. Within it was an old
+woman wrinkled and bent with age; I approached her to ask the way.
+
+She rose as I came close and I asked her my way. She immediately
+commenced a conversation; and it occurred to me that here in the very
+centre of the Kingdom of Dust was the place to gather details of the
+history of Parisian rag-picking—particularly as I could do so from the
+lips of one who looked like the oldest inhabitant.
+
+I began my inquiries, and the old woman gave me most interesting
+answers—she had been one of the ceteuces who sat daily before the
+guillotine and had taken an active part among the women who signalised
+themselves by their violence in the revolution. While we were talking
+she said suddenly: “But m’sieur must be tired standing,” and dusted a
+rickety old stool for me to sit down. I hardly liked to do so for many
+reasons; but the poor old woman was so civil that I did not like to run
+the risk of hurting her by refusing, and moreover the conversation of
+one who had been at the taking of the Bastille was so interesting that
+I sat down and so our conversation went on.
+
+While we were talking an old man—older and more bent and wrinkled even
+than the woman—appeared from behind the shanty. “Here is Pierre,” said
+she. “M’sieur can hear stories now if he wishes, for Pierre was in
+everything, from the Bastille to Waterloo.” The old man took another
+stool at my request and we plunged into a sea of revolutionary
+reminiscences. This old man, albeit clothed like a scarecrow, was like
+any one of the six veterans.
+
+I was now sitting in the centre of the low hut with the woman on my
+left hand and the man on my right, each of them being somewhat in front
+of me. The place was full of all sorts of curious objects of lumber,
+and of many things that I wished far away. In one corner was a heap of
+rags which seemed to move from the number of vermin it contained, and
+in the other a heap of bones whose odour was something shocking. Every
+now and then, glancing at the heaps, I could see the gleaming eyes of
+some of the rats which infested the place. These loathsome objects were
+bad enough, but what looked even more dreadful was an old butcher’s axe
+with an iron handle stained with clots of blood leaning up against the
+wall on the right hand side. Still, these things did not give me much
+concern. The talk of the two old people was so fascinating that I
+stayed on and on, till the evening came and the dust heaps threw dark
+shadows over the vales between them.
+
+After a time I began to grow uneasy. I could not tell how or why, but
+somehow I did not feel satisfied. Uneasiness is an instinct and means
+warning. The psychic faculties are often the sentries of the intellect,
+and when they sound alarm the reason begins to act, although perhaps
+not consciously.
+
+This was so with me. I began to bethink me where I was and by what
+surrounded, and to wonder how I should fare in case I should be
+attacked; and then the thought suddenly burst upon me, although without
+any overt cause, that I was in danger. Prudence whispered: “Be still
+and make no sign,” and so I was still and made no sign, for I knew that
+four cunning eyes were on me. “Four eyes—if not more.” My God, what a
+horrible thought! The whole shanty might be surrounded on three sides
+with villains! I might be in the midst of a band of such desperadoes as
+only half a century of periodic revolution can produce.
+
+With a sense of danger my intellect and observation quickened, and I
+grew more watchful than was my wont. I noticed that the old woman’s
+eyes were constantly wandering towards my hands. I looked at them too,
+and saw the cause—my rings. On my left little finger I had a large
+signet and on the right a good diamond.
+
+I thought that if there was any danger my first care was to avert
+suspicion. Accordingly I began to work the conversation round to
+rag-picking—to the drains—of the things found there; and so by easy
+stages to jewels. Then, seizing a favourable opportunity, I asked the
+old woman if she knew anything of such things. She answered that she
+did, a little. I held out my right hand, and, showing her the diamond,
+asked her what she thought of that. She answered that her eyes were
+bad, and stooped over my hand. I said as nonchalantly as I could:
+“Pardon me! You will see better thus!” and taking it off handed it to
+her. An unholy light came into her withered old face, as she touched
+it. She stole one glance at me swift and keen as a flash of lightning.
+
+She bent over the ring for a moment, her face quite concealed as though
+examining it. The old man looked straight out of the front of the
+shanty before him, at the same time fumbling in his pockets and
+producing a screw of tobacco in a paper and a pipe, which he proceeded
+to fill. I took advantage of the pause and the momentary rest from the
+searching eyes on my face to look carefully round the place, now dim
+and shadowy in the gloaming. There still lay all the heaps of varied
+reeking foulness; there the terrible blood-stained axe leaning against
+the wall in the right hand corner, and everywhere, despite the gloom,
+the baleful glitter of the eyes of the rats. I could see them even
+through some of the chinks of the boards at the back low down close to
+the ground. But stay! these latter eyes seemed more than usually large
+and bright and baleful!
+
+For an instant my heart stood still, and I felt in that whirling
+condition of mind in which one feels a sort of spiritual drunkenness,
+and as though the body is only maintained erect in that there is no
+time for it to fall before recovery. Then, in another second, I was
+calm—coldly calm, with all my energies in full vigour, with a
+self-control which I felt to be perfect and with all my feeling and
+instincts alert.
+
+Now I knew the full extent of my danger: I was watched and surrounded
+by desperate people! I could not even guess at how many of them were
+lying there on the ground behind the shanty, waiting for the moment to
+strike. I knew that I was big and strong, and they knew it, too. They
+knew also, as I did, that I was an Englishman and would make a fight
+for it; and so we waited. I had, I felt, gained an advantage in the
+last few seconds, for I knew my danger and understood the situation.
+Now, I thought, is the test of my courage—the enduring test: the
+fighting test may come later!
+
+The old woman raised her head and said to me in a satisfied kind of
+way:
+
+“A very fine ring, indeed—a beautiful ring! Oh, me! I once had such
+rings, plenty of them, and bracelets and earrings! Oh! for in those
+fine days I led the town a dance! But they’ve forgotten me now! They’ve
+forgotten me! They? Why they never heard of me! Perhaps their
+grandfathers remember me, some of them!” and she laughed a harsh,
+croaking laugh. And then I am bound to say that she astonished me, for
+she handed me back the ring with a certain suggestion of old-fashioned
+grace which was not without its pathos.
+
+The old man eyed her with a sort of sudden ferocity, half rising from
+his stool, and said to me suddenly and hoarsely:
+
+“Let me see!”
+
+I was about to hand the ring when the old woman said:
+
+“No! no, do not give it to Pierre! Pierre is eccentric. He loses
+things; and such a pretty ring!”
+
+“Cat!” said the old man, savagely. Suddenly the old woman said, rather
+more loudly than was necessary:
+
+“Wait! I shall tell you something about a ring.” There was something in
+the sound of her voice that jarred upon me. Perhaps it was my
+hyper-sensitiveness, wrought up as I was to such a pitch of nervous
+excitement, but I seemed to think that she was not addressing me. As I
+stole a glance round the place I saw the eyes of the rats in the bone
+heaps, but missed the eyes along the back. But even as I looked I saw
+them again appear. The old woman’s “Wait!” had given me a respite from
+attack, and the men had sunk back to their reclining posture.
+
+“I once lost a ring—a beautiful diamond hoop that had belonged to a
+queen, and which was given to me by a farmer of the taxes, who
+afterwards cut his throat because I sent him away. I thought it must
+have been stolen, and taxed my people; but I could get no trace. The
+police came and suggested that it had found its way to the drain. We
+descended—I in my fine clothes, for I would not trust them with my
+beautiful ring! I know more of the drains since then, and of rats, too!
+but I shall never forget the horror of that place—alive with blazing
+eyes, a wall of them just outside the light of our torches. Well, we
+got beneath my house. We searched the outlet of the drain, and there in
+the filth found my ring, and we came out.
+
+“But we found something else also before we came! As we were coming
+toward the opening a lot of sewer rats—human ones this time—came
+towards us. They told the police that one of their number had gone into
+the drain, but had not returned. He had gone in only shortly before we
+had, and, if lost, could hardly be far off. They asked help to seek
+him, so we turned back. They tried to prevent me going, but I insisted.
+It was a new excitement, and had I not recovered my ring? Not far did
+we go till we came on something. There was but little water, and the
+bottom of the drain was raised with brick, rubbish, and much matter of
+the kind. He had made a fight for it, even when his torch had gone out.
+But they were too many for him! They had not been long about it! The
+bones were still warm; but they were picked clean. They had even eaten
+their own dead ones and there were bones of rats as well as of the man.
+They took it cool enough those other—the human ones—and joked of their
+comrade when they found him dead, though they would have helped him
+living. Bah! what matters it—life or death?”
+
+“And had you no fear?” I asked her.
+
+“Fear!” she said with a laugh. “Me have fear? Ask Pierre! But I was
+younger then, and, as I came through that horrible drain with its wall
+of greedy eyes, always moving with the circle of the light from the
+torches, I did not feel easy. I kept on before the men, though! It is a
+way I have! I never let the men get it before me. All I want is a
+chance and a means! And they ate him up—took every trace away except
+the bones; and no one knew it, nor no sound of him was ever heard!”
+Here she broke into a chuckling fit of the ghastliest merriment which
+it was ever my lot to hear and see. A great poetess describes her
+heroine singing: “Oh! to see or hear her singing! Scarce I know which
+is the divinest.”
+
+And I can apply the same idea to the old crone—in all save the
+divinity, for I scarce could tell which was the most hellish—the harsh,
+malicious, satisfied, cruel laugh, or the leering grin, and the
+horrible square opening of the mouth like a tragic mask, and the yellow
+gleam of the few discoloured teeth in the shapeless gums. In that laugh
+and with that grin and the chuckling satisfaction I knew as well as if
+it had been spoken to me in words of thunder that my murder was
+settled, and the murderers only bided the proper time for its
+accomplishment. I could read between the lines of her gruesome story
+the commands to her accomplices. “Wait,” she seemed to say, “bide your
+time. I shall strike the first blow. Find the weapon for me, and I
+shall make the opportunity! He shall not escape! Keep him quiet, and
+then no one will be wiser. There will be no outcry, and the rats will
+do their work!”
+
+It was growing darker and darker; the night was coming. I stole a
+glance round the shanty, still all the same! The bloody axe in the
+corner, the heaps of filth, and the eyes on the bone heaps and in the
+crannies of the floor.
+
+Pierre had been still ostensibly filling his pipe; he now struck a
+light and began to puff away at it. The old woman said:
+
+“Dear heart, how dark it is! Pierre, like a good lad, light the lamp!”
+
+Pierre got up and with the lighted match in his hand touched the wick
+of a lamp which hung at one side of the entrance to the shanty, and
+which had a reflector that threw the light all over the place. It was
+evidently that which was used for their sorting at night.
+
+“Not that, stupid! Not that! the lantern!” she called out to him.
+
+He immediately blew it out, saying: “All right, mother I’ll find it,”
+and he hustled about the left corner of the room—the old woman saying
+through the darkness:
+
+“The lantern! the lantern! Oh! That is the light that is most useful to
+us poor folks. The lantern was the friend of the revolution! It is the
+friend of the chiffonier! It helps us when all else fails.”
+
+Hardly had she said the word when there was a kind of creaking of the
+whole place, and something was steadily dragged over the roof.
+
+Again I seemed to read between the lines of her words. I knew the
+lesson of the lantern.
+
+“One of you get on the roof with a noose and strangle him as he passes
+out if we fail within.”
+
+As I looked out of the opening I saw the loop of a rope outlined black
+against the lurid sky. I was now, indeed, beset!
+
+Pierre was not long in finding the lantern. I kept my eyes fixed
+through the darkness on the old woman. Pierre struck his light, and by
+its flash I saw the old woman raise from the ground beside her where it
+had mysteriously appeared, and then hide in the folds of her gown, a
+long sharp knife or dagger. It seemed to be like a butcher’s sharpening
+iron fined to a keen point.
+
+The lantern was lit.
+
+“Bring it here, Pierre,” she said. “Place it in the doorway where we
+can see it. See how nice it is! It shuts out the darkness from us; it
+is just right!”
+
+Just right for her and her purposes! It threw all its light on my face,
+leaving in gloom the faces of both Pierre and the woman, who sat
+outside of me on each side.
+
+I felt that the time of action was approaching, but I knew now that the
+first signal and movement would come from the woman, and so watched
+her.
+
+I was all unarmed, but I had made up my mind what to do. At the first
+movement I would seize the butcher’s axe in the right-hand corner and
+fight my way out. At least, I would die hard. I stole a glance round to
+fix its exact locality so that I could not fail to seize it at the
+first effort, for then, if ever, time and accuracy would be precious.
+
+Good God! It was gone! All the horror of the situation burst upon me;
+but the bitterest thought of all was that if the issue of the terrible
+position should be against me Alice would infallibly suffer. Either she
+would believe me false—and any lover, or any one who has ever been one,
+can imagine the bitterness of the thought—or else she would go on
+loving long after I had been lost to her and to the world, so that her
+life would be broken and embittered, shattered with disappointment and
+despair. The very magnitude of the pain braced me up and nerved me to
+bear the dread scrutiny of the plotters.
+
+I think I did not betray myself. The old woman was watching me as a cat
+does a mouse; she had her right hand hidden in the folds of her gown,
+clutching, I knew, that long, cruel-looking dagger. Had she seen any
+disappointment in my face she would, I felt, have known that the moment
+had come, and would have sprung on me like a tigress, certain of taking
+me unprepared.
+
+I looked out into the night, and there I saw new cause for danger.
+Before and around the hut were at a little distance some shadowy forms;
+they were quite still, but I knew that they were all alert and on
+guard. Small chance for me now in that direction.
+
+Again I stole a glance round the place. In moments of great excitement
+and of great danger, which is excitement, the mind works very quickly,
+and the keenness of the faculties which depend on the mind grows in
+proportion. I now felt this. In an instant I took in the whole
+situation. I saw that the axe had been taken through a small hole made
+in one of the rotten boards. How rotten they must be to allow of such a
+thing being done without a particle of noise.
+
+The hut was a regular murder-trap, and was guarded all around. A
+garroter lay on the roof ready to entangle me with his noose if I
+should escape the dagger of the old hag. In front the way was guarded
+by I know not how many watchers. And at the back was a row of desperate
+men—I had seen their eyes still through the crack in the boards of the
+floor, when last I looked—as they lay prone waiting for the signal to
+start erect. If it was to be ever, now for it!
+
+As nonchalantly as I could I turned slightly on my stool so as to get
+my right leg well under me. Then with a sudden jump, turning my head,
+and guarding it with my hands, and with the fighting instinct of the
+knights of old, I breathed my lady’s name, and hurled myself against
+the back wall of the hut.
+
+Watchful as they were, the suddenness of my movement surprised both
+Pierre and the old woman. As I crashed through the rotten timbers I saw
+the old woman rise with a leap like a tiger and heard her low gasp of
+baffled rage. My feet lit on something that moved, and as I jumped away
+I knew that I had stepped on the back of one of the row of men lying on
+their faces outside the hut. I was torn with nails and splinters, but
+otherwise unhurt. Breathless I rushed up the mound in front of me,
+hearing as I went the dull crash of the shanty as it collapsed into a
+mass.
+
+It was a nightmare climb. The mound, though but low, was awfully steep,
+and with each step I took the mass of dust and cinders tore down with
+me and gave way under my feet. The dust rose and choked me; it was
+sickening, fœtid, awful; but my climb was, I felt, for life or death,
+and I struggled on. The seconds seemed hours; but the few moments I had
+in starting, combined with my youth and strength, gave me a great
+advantage, and, though several forms struggled after me in deadly
+silence which was more dreadful than any sound, I easily reached the
+top. Since then I have climbed the cone of Vesuvius, and as I struggled
+up that dreary steep amid the sulphurous fumes the memory of that awful
+night at Montrouge came back to me so vividly that I almost grew faint.
+
+The mound was one of the tallest in the region of dust, and as I
+struggled to the top, panting for breath and with my heart beating like
+a sledge-hammer, I saw away to my left the dull red gleam of the sky,
+and nearer still the flashing of lights. Thank God! I knew where I was
+now and where lay the road to Paris!
+
+For two or three seconds I paused and looked back. My pursuers were
+still well behind me, but struggling up resolutely, and in deadly
+silence. Beyond, the shanty was a wreck—a mass of timber and moving
+forms. I could see it well, for flames were already bursting out; the
+rags and straw had evidently caught fire from the lantern. Still
+silence there! Not a sound! These old wretches could die game, anyhow.
+
+I had no time for more than a passing glance, for as I cast an eye
+round the mound preparatory to making my descent I saw several dark
+forms rushing round on either side to cut me off on my way. It was now
+a race for life. They were trying to head me on my way to Paris, and
+with the instinct of the moment I dashed down to the right-hand side. I
+was just in time, for, though I came as it seemed to me down the steep
+in a few steps, the wary old men who were watching me turned back, and
+one, as I rushed by into the opening between the two mounds in front,
+almost struck me a blow with that terrible butcher’s axe. There could
+surely not be two such weapons about!
+
+Then began a really horrible chase. I easily ran ahead of the old men,
+and even when some younger ones and a few women joined in the hunt I
+easily distanced them. But I did not know the way, and I could not even
+guide myself by the light in the sky, for I was running away from it. I
+had heard that, unless of conscious purpose, hunted men turn always to
+the left, and so I found it now; and so, I suppose, knew also my
+pursuers, who were more animals than men, and with cunning or instinct
+had found out such secrets for themselves: for on finishing a quick
+spurt, after which I intended to take a moment’s breathing space, I
+suddenly saw ahead of me two or three forms swiftly passing behind a
+mound to the right.
+
+I was in the spider’s web now indeed! But with the thought of this new
+danger came the resource of the hunted, and so I darted down the next
+turning to the right. I continued in this direction for some hundred
+yards, and then, making a turn to the left again, felt certain that I
+had, at any rate, avoided the danger of being surrounded.
+
+But not of pursuit, for on came the rabble after me, steady, dogged,
+relentless, and still in grim silence.
+
+In the greater darkness the mounds seemed now to be somewhat smaller
+than before, although—for the night was closing—they looked bigger in
+proportion. I was now well ahead of my pursuers, so I made a dart up
+the mound in front.
+
+Oh joy of joys! I was close to the edge of this inferno of dustheaps.
+Away behind me the red light of Paris was in the sky, and towering up
+behind rose the heights of Montmarte—a dim light, with here and there
+brilliant points like stars.
+
+Restored to vigour in a moment, I ran over the few remaining mounds of
+decreasing size, and found myself on the level land beyond. Even then,
+however, the prospect was not inviting. All before me was dark and
+dismal, and I had evidently come on one of those dank, low-lying waste
+places which are found here and there in the neighbourhood of great
+cities. Places of waste and desolation, where the space is required for
+the ultimate agglomeration of all that is noxious, and the ground is so
+poor as to create no desire of occupancy even in the lowest squatter.
+With eyes accustomed to the gloom of the evening, and away now from the
+shadows of those dreadful dustheaps, I could see much more easily than
+I could a little while ago. It might have been, of course, that the
+glare in the sky of the lights of Paris, though the city was some miles
+away, was reflected here. Howsoever it was, I saw well enough to take
+bearings for certainly some little distance around me.
+
+In front was a bleak, flat waste that seemed almost dead level, with
+here and there the dark shimmering of stagnant pools. Seemingly far off
+on the right, amid a small cluster of scattered lights, rose a dark
+mass of Fort Montrouge, and away to the left in the dim distance,
+pointed with stray gleams from cottage windows, the lights in the sky
+showed the locality of Bicêtre. A moment’s thought decided me to take
+to the right and try to reach Montrouge. There at least would be some
+sort of safety, and I might possibly long before come on some of the
+cross roads which I knew. Somewhere, not far off, must lie the
+strategic road made to connect the outlying chain of forts circling the
+city.
+
+Then I looked back. Coming over the mounds, and outlined black against
+the glare of the Parisian horizon, I saw several moving figures, and
+still a way to the right several more deploying out between me and my
+destination. They evidently meant to cut me off in this direction, and
+so my choice became constricted; it lay now between going straight
+ahead or turning to the left. Stooping to the ground, so as to get the
+advantage of the horizon as a line of sight, I looked carefully in this
+direction, but could detect no sign of my enemies. I argued that as
+they had not guarded or were not trying to guard that point, there was
+evidently danger to me there already. So I made up my mind to go
+straight on before me.
+
+It was not an inviting prospect, and as I went on the reality grew
+worse. The ground became soft and oozy, and now and again gave way
+beneath me in a sickening kind of way. I seemed somehow to be going
+down, for I saw round me places seemingly more elevated than where I
+was, and this in a place which from a little way back seemed dead
+level. I looked around, but could see none of my pursuers. This was
+strange, for all along these birds of the night had followed me through
+the darkness as well as though it was broad daylight. How I blamed
+myself for coming out in my light-coloured tourist suit of tweed. The
+silence, and my not being able to see my enemies, whilst I felt that
+they were watching me, grew appalling, and in the hope of some one not
+of this ghastly crew hearing me I raised my voice and shouted several
+times. There was not the slightest response; not even an echo rewarded
+my efforts. For a while I stood stock still and kept my eyes in one
+direction. On one of the rising places around me I saw something dark
+move along, then another, and another. This was to my left, and
+seemingly moving to head me off.
+
+I thought that again I might with my skill as a runner elude my enemies
+at this game, and so with all my speed darted forward.
+
+Splash!
+
+My feet had given way in a mass of slimy rubbish, and I had fallen
+headlong into a reeking, stagnant pool. The water and the mud in which
+my arms sank up to the elbows was filthy and nauseous beyond
+description, and in the suddenness of my fall I had actually swallowed
+some of the filthy stuff, which nearly choked me, and made me gasp for
+breath. Never shall I forget the moments during which I stood trying to
+recover myself almost fainting from the fœtid odour of the filthy pool,
+whose white mist rose ghostlike around. Worst of all, with the acute
+despair of the hunted animal when he sees the pursuing pack closing on
+him, I saw before my eyes whilst I stood helpless the dark forms of my
+pursuers moving swiftly to surround me.
+
+It is curious how our minds work on odd matters even when the energies
+of thought are seemingly concentrated on some terrible and pressing
+need. I was in momentary peril of my life: my safety depended on my
+action, and my choice of alternatives coming now with almost every step
+I took, and yet I could not but think of the strange dogged persistency
+of these old men. Their silent resolution, their steadfast, grim,
+persistency even in such a cause commanded, as well as fear, even a
+measure of respect. What must they have been in the vigour of their
+youth. I could understand now that whirlwind rush on the bridge of
+Arcola, that scornful exclamation of the Old Guard at Waterloo!
+Unconscious cerebration has its own pleasures, even at such moments;
+but fortunately it does not in any way clash with the thought from
+which action springs.
+
+I realised at a glance that so far I was defeated in my object, my
+enemies as yet had won. They had succeeded in surrounding me on three
+sides, and were bent on driving me off to the left-hand, where there
+was already some danger for me, for they had left no guard. I accepted
+the alternative—it was a case of Hobson’s choice and run. I had to keep
+the lower ground, for my pursuers were on the higher places. However,
+though the ooze and broken ground impeded me my youth and training made
+me able to hold my ground, and by keeping a diagonal line I not only
+kept them from gaining on me but even began to distance them. This gave
+me new heart and strength, and by this time habitual training was
+beginning to tell and my second wind had come. Before me the ground
+rose slightly. I rushed up the slope and found before me a waste of
+watery slime, with a low dyke or bank looking black and grim beyond. I
+felt that if I could but reach that dyke in safety I could there, with
+solid ground under my feet and some kind of path to guide me, find with
+comparative ease a way out of my troubles. After a glance right and
+left and seeing no one near, I kept my eyes for a few minutes to their
+rightful work of aiding my feet whilst I crossed the swamp. It was
+rough, hard work, but there was little danger, merely toil; and a short
+time took me to the dyke. I rushed up the slope exulting; but here
+again I met a new shock. On either side of me rose a number of
+crouching figures. From right and left they rushed at me. Each body
+held a rope.
+
+The cordon was nearly complete. I could pass on neither side, and the
+end was near.
+
+There was only one chance, and I took it. I hurled myself across the
+dyke, and escaping out of the very clutches of my foes threw myself
+into the stream.
+
+At any other time I should have thought that water foul and filthy, but
+now it was as welcome as the most crystal stream to the parched
+traveller. It was a highway of safety!
+
+My pursuers rushed after me. Had only one of them held the rope it
+would have been all up with me, for he could have entangled me before I
+had time to swim a stroke; but the many hands holding it embarrassed
+and delayed them, and when the rope struck the water I heard the splash
+well behind me. A few minutes’ hard swimming took me across the stream.
+Refreshed with the immersion and encouraged by the escape, I climbed
+the dyke in comparative gaiety of spirits.
+
+From the top I looked back. Through the darkness I saw my assailants
+scattering up and down along the dyke. The pursuit was evidently not
+ended, and again I had to choose my course. Beyond the dyke where I
+stood was a wild, swampy space very similar to that which I had
+crossed. I determined to shun such a place, and thought for a moment
+whether I would take up or down the dyke. I thought I heard a sound—the
+muffled sound of oars, so I listened, and then shouted.
+
+No response; but the sound ceased. My enemies had evidently got a boat
+of some kind. As they were on the up side of me I took the down path
+and began to run. As I passed to the left of where I had entered the
+water I heard several splashes, soft and stealthy, like the sound a rat
+makes as he plunges into the stream, but vastly greater; and as I
+looked I saw the dark sheen of the water broken by the ripples of
+several advancing heads. Some of my enemies were swimming the stream
+also.
+
+And now behind me, up the stream, the silence was broken by the quick
+rattle and creak of oars; my enemies were in hot pursuit. I put my best
+leg foremost and ran on. After a break of a couple of minutes I looked
+back, and by a gleam of light through the ragged clouds I saw several
+dark forms climbing the bank behind me. The wind had now begun to rise,
+and the water beside me was ruffled and beginning to break in tiny
+waves on the bank. I had to keep my eyes pretty well on the ground
+before me, lest I should stumble, for I knew that to stumble was death.
+After a few minutes I looked back behind me. On the dyke were only a
+few dark figures, but crossing the waste, swampy ground were many more.
+What new danger this portended I did not know—could only guess. Then as
+I ran it seemed to me that my track kept ever sloping away to the
+right. I looked up ahead and saw that the river was much wider than
+before, and that the dyke on which I stood fell quite away, and beyond
+it was another stream on whose near bank I saw some of the dark forms
+now across the marsh. I was on an island of some kind.
+
+My situation was now indeed terrible, for my enemies had hemmed me in
+on every side. Behind came the quickening roll of the oars, as though
+my pursuers knew that the end was close. Around me on every side was
+desolation; there was not a roof or light, as far as I could see. Far
+off to the right rose some dark mass, but what it was I knew not. For a
+moment I paused to think what I should do, not for more, for my
+pursuers were drawing closer. Then my mind was made up. I slipped down
+the bank and took to the water. I struck out straight ahead so as to
+gain the current by clearing the backwater of the island, for such I
+presume it was, when I had passed into the stream. I waited till a
+cloud came driving across the moon and leaving all in darkness. Then I
+took off my hat and laid it softly on the water floating with the
+stream, and a second after dived to the right and struck out under
+water with all my might. I was, I suppose, half a minute under water,
+and when I rose came up as softly as I could, and turning, looked back.
+There went my light brown hat floating merrily away. Close behind it
+came a rickety old boat, driven furiously by a pair of oars. The moon
+was still partly obscured by the drifting clouds, but in the partial
+light I could see a man in the bows holding aloft ready to strike what
+appeared to me to be that same dreadful pole-axe which I had before
+escaped. As I looked the boat drew closer, closer, and the man struck
+savagely. The hat disappeared. The man fell forward, almost out of the
+boat. His comrades dragged him in but without the axe, and then as I
+turned with all my energies bent on reaching the further bank, I heard
+the fierce whirr of the muttered “Sacre!” which marked the anger of my
+baffled pursuers.
+
+That was the first sound I had heard from human lips during all this
+dreadful chase, and full as it was of menace and danger to me it was a
+welcome sound for it broke that awful silence which shrouded and
+appalled me. It was as though an overt sign that my opponents were men
+and not ghosts, and that with them I had, at least, the chance of a
+man, though but one against many.
+
+But now that the spell of silence was broken the sounds came thick and
+fast. From boat to shore and back from shore to boat came quick
+question and answer, all in the fiercest whispers. I looked back—a
+fatal thing to do—for in the instant someone caught sight of my face,
+which showed white on the dark water, and shouted. Hands pointed to me,
+and in a moment or two the boat was under weigh, and following hard
+after me. I had but a little way to go, but quicker and quicker came
+the boat after me. A few more strokes and I would be on the shore, but
+I felt the oncoming of the boat, and expected each second to feel the
+crash of an oar or other weapon on my head. Had I not seen that
+dreadful axe disappear in the water I do not think that I could have
+won the shore. I heard the muttered curses of those not rowing and the
+laboured breath of the rowers. With one supreme effort for life or
+liberty I touched the bank and sprang up it. There was not a single
+second to spare, for hard behind me the boat grounded and several dark
+forms sprang after me. I gained the top of the dyke, and keeping to the
+left ran on again. The boat put off and followed down the stream.
+Seeing this I feared danger in this direction, and quickly turning, ran
+down the dyke on the other side, and after passing a short stretch of
+marshy ground gained a wild, open flat country and sped on.
+
+Still behind me came on my relentless pursuers. Far away, below me, I
+saw the same dark mass as before, but now grown closer and greater. My
+heart gave a great thrill of delight, for I knew that it must be the
+fortress of Bicêtre, and with new courage I ran on. I had heard that
+between each and all of the protecting forts of Paris there are
+strategic ways, deep sunk roads where soldiers marching should be
+sheltered from an enemy. I knew that if I could gain this road I would
+be safe, but in the darkness I could not see any sign of it, so, in
+blind hope of striking it, I ran on.
+
+Presently I came to the edge of a deep cut, and found that down below
+me ran a road guarded on each side by a ditch of water fenced on either
+side by a straight, high wall.
+
+Getting fainter and dizzier, I ran on; the ground got more broken—more
+and more still, till I staggered and fell, and rose again, and ran on
+in the blind anguish of the hunted. Again the thought of Alice nerved
+me. I would not be lost and wreck her life: I would fight and struggle
+for life to the bitter end. With a great effort I caught the top of the
+wall. As, scrambling like a catamount, I drew myself up, I actually
+felt a hand touch the sole of my foot. I was now on a sort of causeway,
+and before me I saw a dim light. Blind and dizzy, I ran on, staggered,
+and fell, rising, covered with dust and blood.
+
+“Halt la!”
+
+The words sounded like a voice from heaven. A blaze of light seemed to
+enwrap me, and I shouted with joy.
+
+“Qui va la?” The rattle of musketry, the flash of steel before my eyes.
+Instinctively I stopped, though close behind me came a rush of my
+pursuers.
+
+Another word or two, and out from a gateway poured, as it seemed to me,
+a tide of red and blue, as the guard turned out. All around seemed
+blazing with light, and the flash of steel, the clink and rattle of
+arms, and the loud, harsh voices of command. As I fell forward, utterly
+exhausted, a soldier caught me. I looked back in dreadful expectation,
+and saw the mass of dark forms disappearing into the night. Then I must
+have fainted. When I recovered my senses I was in the guard room. They
+gave me brandy, and after a while I was able to tell them something of
+what had passed. Then a commissary of police appeared, apparently out
+of the empty air, as is the way of the Parisian police officer. He
+listened attentively, and then had a moment’s consultation with the
+officer in command. Apparently they were agreed, for they asked me if I
+were ready now to come with them.
+
+“Where to?” I asked, rising to go.
+
+“Back to the dust heaps. We shall, perhaps, catch them yet!”
+
+“I shall try!” said I.
+
+He eyed me for a moment keenly, and said suddenly:
+
+“Would you like to wait a while or till tomorrow, young Englishman?”
+This touched me to the quick, as, perhaps, he intended, and I jumped to
+my feet.
+
+“Come now!” I said; “now! now! An Englishman is always ready for his
+duty!”
+
+The commissary was a good fellow, as well as a shrewd one; he slapped
+my shoulder kindly. “Brave garçon!” he said. “Forgive me, but I knew
+what would do you most good. The guard is ready. Come!”
+
+And so, passing right through the guard room, and through a long
+vaulted passage, we were out into the night. A few of the men in front
+had powerful lanterns. Through courtyards and down a sloping way we
+passed out through a low archway to a sunken road, the same that I had
+seen in my flight. The order was given to get at the double, and with a
+quick, springing stride, half run, half walk, the soldiers went swiftly
+along. I felt my strength renewed again—such is the difference between
+hunter and hunted. A very short distance took us to a low-lying pontoon
+bridge across the stream, and evidently very little higher up than I
+had struck it. Some effort had evidently been made to damage it, for
+the ropes had all been cut, and one of the chains had been broken. I
+heard the officer say to the commissary:
+
+“We are just in time! A few more minutes, and they would have destroyed
+the bridge. Forward, quicker still!” and on we went. Again we reached a
+pontoon on the winding stream; as we came up we heard the hollow boom
+of the metal drums as the efforts to destroy the bridge was again
+renewed. A word of command was given, and several men raised their
+rifles.
+
+“Fire!” A volley rang out. There was a muffled cry, and the dark forms
+dispersed. But the evil was done, and we saw the far end of the pontoon
+swing into the stream. This was a serious delay, and it was nearly an
+hour before we had renewed ropes and restored the bridge sufficiently
+to allow us to cross.
+
+We renewed the chase. Quicker, quicker we went towards the dust heaps.
+
+After a time we came to a place that I knew. There were the remains of
+a fire—a few smouldering wood ashes still cast a red glow, but the bulk
+of the ashes were cold. I knew the site of the hut and the hill behind
+it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes of the
+rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence. The commissary spoke a
+word to the officer, and he cried:
+
+“Halt!”
+
+The soldiers were ordered to spread around and watch, and then we
+commenced to examine the ruins. The commissary himself began to lift
+away the charred boards and rubbish. These the soldiers took and piled
+together. Presently he started back, then bent down and rising beckoned
+me.
+
+“See!” he said.
+
+It was a gruesome sight. There lay a skeleton face downwards, a woman
+by the lines—an old woman by the coarse fibre of the bone. Between the
+ribs rose a long spike-like dagger made from a butcher’s sharpening
+knife, its keen point buried in the spine.
+
+“You will observe,” said the commissary to the officer and to me as he
+took out his note book, “that the woman must have fallen on her dagger.
+The rats are many here—see their eyes glistening among that heap of
+bones—and you will also notice”—I shuddered as he placed his hand on
+the skeleton—“that but little time was lost by them, for the bones are
+scarcely cold!”
+
+There was no other sign of any one near, living or dead; and so
+deploying again into line the soldiers passed on. Presently we came to
+the hut made of the old wardrobe. We approached. In five of the six
+compartments was an old man sleeping—sleeping so soundly that even the
+glare of the lanterns did not wake them. Old and grim and grizzled they
+looked, with their gaunt, wrinkled, bronzed faces and their white
+moustaches.
+
+The officer called out harshly and loudly a word of command, and in an
+instant each one of them was on his feet before us and standing at
+“attention!”
+
+“What do you here?”
+
+“We sleep,” was the answer.
+
+“Where are the other chiffoniers?” asked the commissary.
+
+“Gone to work.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“We are on guard!”
+
+“Peste!” laughed the officer grimly, as he looked at the old men one
+after the other in the face and added with cool deliberate cruelty:
+“Asleep on duty! Is this the manner of the Old Guard? No wonder, then,
+a Waterloo!”
+
+By the gleam of the lantern I saw the grim old faces grow deadly pale,
+and almost shuddered at the look in the eyes of the old men as the
+laugh of the soldiers echoed the grim pleasantry of the officer.
+
+I felt in that moment that I was in some measure avenged.
+
+For a moment they looked as if they would throw themselves on the
+taunter, but years of their life had schooled them and they remained
+still.
+
+“You are but five,” said the commissary; “where is the sixth?” The
+answer came with a grim chuckle.
+
+“He is there!” and the speaker pointed to the bottom of the wardrobe.
+“He died last night. You won’t find much of him. The burial of the rats
+is quick!”
+
+The commissary stooped and looked in. Then he turned to the officer and
+said calmly:
+
+“We may as well go back. No trace here now; nothing to prove that man
+was the one wounded by your soldiers’ bullets! Probably they murdered
+him to cover up the trace. See!” again he stooped and placed his hands
+on the skeleton. “The rats work quickly and they are many. These bones
+are warm!”
+
+I shuddered, and so did many more of those around me.
+
+“Form!” said the officer, and so in marching order, with the lanterns
+swinging in front and the manacled veterans in the midst, with steady
+tramp we took ourselves out of the dustheaps and turned backward to the
+fortress of Bicêtre.
+
+
+My year of probation has long since ended, and Alice is my wife. But
+when I look back upon that trying twelvemonth one of the most vivid
+incidents that memory recalls is that associated with my visit to the
+City of Dust.
+
+
+
+
+A Dream of Red Hands
+
+
+The first opinion given to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simple
+descriptive statement, “He’s a down-in-the-mouth chap”: but I found
+that it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow-workmen.
+There was in the phrase a certain easy tolerance, an absence of
+positive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete opinion, which
+marked pretty accurately the man’s place in public esteem. Still, there
+was some dissimilarity between this and his appearance which
+unconsciously set me thinking, and by degrees, as I saw more of the
+place and the workmen, I came to have a special interest in him. He
+was, I found, for ever doing kindnesses, not involving money expenses
+beyond his humble means, but in the manifold ways of forethought and
+forbearance and self-repression which are of the truer charities of
+life. Women and children trusted him implicitly, though, strangely
+enough, he rather shunned them, except when anyone was sick, and then
+he made his appearance to help if he could, timidly and awkwardly. He
+led a very solitary life, keeping house by himself in a tiny cottage,
+or rather hut, of one room, far on the edge of the moorland. His
+existence seemed so sad and solitary that I wished to cheer it up, and
+for the purpose took the occasion when we had both been sitting up with
+a child, injured by me through accident, to offer to lend him books. He
+gladly accepted, and as we parted in the grey of the dawn I felt that
+something of mutual confidence had been established between us.
+
+The books were always most carefully and punctually returned, and in
+time Jacob Settle and I became quite friends. Once or twice as I
+crossed the moorland on Sundays I looked in on him; but on such
+occasions he was shy and ill at ease so that I felt diffident about
+calling to see him. He would never under any circumstances come into my
+own lodgings.
+
+One Sunday afternoon, I was coming back from a long walk beyond the
+moor, and as I passed Settle’s cottage stopped at the door to say “How
+do you do?” to him. As the door was shut, I thought that he was out,
+and merely knocked for form’s sake, or through habit, not expecting to
+get any answer. To my surprise, I heard a feeble voice from within,
+though what was said I could not hear. I entered at once, and found
+Jacob lying half-dressed upon his bed. He was as pale as death, and the
+sweat was simply rolling off his face. His hands were unconsciously
+gripping the bedclothes as a drowning man holds on to whatever he may
+grasp. As I came in he half arose, with a wild, hunted look in his
+eyes, which were wide open and staring, as though something of horror
+had come before him; but when he recognised me he sank back on the
+couch with a smothered sob of relief and closed his eyes. I stood by
+him for a while, quite a minute or two, while he gasped. Then he opened
+his eyes and looked at me, but with such a despairing, woeful
+expression that, as I am a living man, I would have rather seen that
+frozen look of horror. I sat down beside him and asked after his
+health. For a while he would not answer me except to say that he was
+not ill; but then, after scrutinising me closely, he half arose on his
+elbow and said:
+
+“I thank you kindly, sir, but I’m simply telling you the truth. I am
+not ill, as men call it, though God knows whether there be not worse
+sicknesses than doctors know of. I’ll tell you, as you are so kind, but
+I trust that you won’t even mention such a thing to a living soul, for
+it might work me more and greater woe. I am suffering from a bad
+dream.”
+
+“A bad dream!” I said, hoping to cheer him; “but dreams pass away with
+the light—even with waking.” There I stopped, for before he spoke I saw
+the answer in his desolate look round the little place.
+
+“No! no! that’s all well for people that live in comfort and with those
+they love around them. It is a thousand times worse for those who live
+alone and have to do so. What cheer is there for me, waking here in the
+silence of the night, with the wide moor around me full of voices and
+full of faces that make my waking a worse dream than my sleep? Ah,
+young sir, you have no past that can send its legions to people the
+darkness and the empty space, and I pray the good God that you may
+never have!” As he spoke, there was such an almost irresistible gravity
+of conviction in his manner that I abandoned my remonstrance about his
+solitary life. I felt that I was in the presence of some secret
+influence which I could not fathom. To my relief, for I knew not what
+to say, he went on:
+
+“Two nights past have I dreamed it. It was hard enough the first night,
+but I came through it. Last night the expectation was in itself almost
+worse than the dream—until the dream came, and then it swept away every
+remembrance of lesser pain. I stayed awake till just before the dawn,
+and then it came again, and ever since I have been in such an agony as
+I am sure the dying feel, and with it all the dread of tonight.” Before
+he had got to the end of the sentence my mind was made up, and I felt
+that I could speak to him more cheerfully.
+
+“Try and get to sleep early tonight—in fact, before the evening has
+passed away. The sleep will refresh you, and I promise you there will
+not be any bad dreams after tonight.” He shook his head hopelessly, so
+I sat a little longer and then left him.
+
+When I got home I made my arrangements for the night, for I had made up
+my mind to share Jacob Settle’s lonely vigil in his cottage on the
+moor. I judged that if he got to sleep before sunset he would wake well
+before midnight, and so, just as the bells of the city were striking
+eleven, I stood opposite his door armed with a bag, in which were my
+supper, an extra large flask, a couple of candles, and a book. The
+moonlight was bright, and flooded the whole moor, till it was almost as
+light as day; but ever and anon black clouds drove across the sky, and
+made a darkness which by comparison seemed almost tangible. I opened
+the door softly, and entered without waking Jacob, who lay asleep with
+his white face upward. He was still, and again bathed in sweat. I tried
+to imagine what visions were passing before those closed eyes which
+could bring with them the misery and woe which were stamped on the
+face, but fancy failed me, and I waited for the awakening. It came
+suddenly, and in a fashion which touched me to the quick, for the
+hollow groan that broke from the man’s white lips as he half arose and
+sank back was manifestly the realisation or completion of some train of
+thought which had gone before.
+
+“If this be dreaming,” said I to myself, “then it must be based on some
+very terrible reality. What can have been that unhappy fact that he
+spoke of?”
+
+While I thus spoke, he realised that I was with him. It struck me as
+strange that he had no period of that doubt as to whether dream or
+reality surrounded him which commonly marks an expected environment of
+waking men. With a positive cry of joy, he seized my hand and held it
+in his two wet, trembling hands, as a frightened child clings on to
+someone whom it loves. I tried to soothe him:
+
+“There, there! it is all right. I have come to stay with you tonight,
+and together we will try to fight this evil dream.” He let go my hand
+suddenly, and sank back on his bed and covered his eyes with his hands.
+
+“Fight it?—the evil dream! Ah! no, sir, no! No mortal power can fight
+that dream, for it comes from God—and is burned in here;” and he beat
+upon his forehead. Then he went on:
+
+“It is the same dream, ever the same, and yet it grows in its power to
+torture me every time it comes.”
+
+“What is the dream?” I asked, thinking that the speaking of it might
+give him some relief, but he shrank away from me, and after a long
+pause said:
+
+“No, I had better not tell it. It may not come again.”
+
+There was manifestly something to conceal from me—something that lay
+behind the dream, so I answered:
+
+“All right. I hope you have seen the last of it. But if it should come
+again, you will tell me, will you not? I ask, not out of curiosity, but
+because I think it may relieve you to speak.” He answered with what I
+thought was almost an undue amount of solemnity:
+
+“If it comes again, I shall tell you all.”
+
+Then I tried to get his mind away from the subject to more mundane
+things, so I produced supper, and made him share it with me, including
+the contents of the flask. After a little he braced up, and when I lit
+my cigar, having given him another, we smoked a full hour, and talked
+of many things. Little by little the comfort of his body stole over his
+mind, and I could see sleep laying her gentle hands on his eyelids. He
+felt it, too, and told me that now he felt all right, and I might
+safely leave him; but I told him that, right or wrong, I was going to
+see in the daylight. So I lit my other candle, and began to read as he
+fell asleep.
+
+By degrees I got interested in my book, so interested that presently I
+was startled by its dropping out of my hands. I looked and saw that
+Jacob was still asleep, and I was rejoiced to see that there was on his
+face a look of unwonted happiness, while his lips seemed to move with
+unspoken words. Then I turned to my work again, and again woke, but
+this time to feel chilled to my very marrow by hearing the voice from
+the bed beside me:
+
+“Not with those red hands! Never! never!” On looking at him, I found
+that he was still asleep. He woke, however, in an instant, and did not
+seem surprised to see me; there was again that strange apathy as to his
+surroundings. Then I said:
+
+“Settle, tell me your dream. You may speak freely, for I shall hold
+your confidence sacred. While we both live I shall never mention what
+you may choose to tell me.”
+
+He replied:
+
+“I said I would; but I had better tell you first what goes before the
+dream, that you may understand. I was a schoolmaster when I was a very
+young man; it was only a parish school in a little village in the West
+Country. No need to mention any names. Better not. I was engaged to be
+married to a young girl whom I loved and almost reverenced. It was the
+old story. While we were waiting for the time when we could afford to
+set up house together, another man came along. He was nearly as young
+as I was, and handsome, and a gentleman, with all a gentleman’s
+attractive ways for a woman of our class. He would go fishing, and she
+would meet him while I was at my work in school. I reasoned with her
+and implored her to give him up. I offered to get married at once and
+go away and begin the world in a strange country; but she would not
+listen to anything I could say, and I could see that she was infatuated
+with him. Then I took it on myself to meet the man and ask him to deal
+well with the girl, for I thought he might mean honestly by her, so
+that there might be no talk or chance of talk on the part of others. I
+went where I should meet him with none by, and we met!” Here Jacob
+Settle had to pause, for something seemed to rise in his throat, and he
+almost gasped for breath. Then he went on:
+
+“Sir, as God is above us, there was no selfish thought in my heart that
+day, I loved my pretty Mabel too well to be content with a part of her
+love, and I had thought of my own unhappiness too often not to have
+come to realise that, whatever might come to her, my hope was gone. He
+was insolent to me—you, sir, who are a gentleman, cannot know, perhaps,
+how galling can be the insolence of one who is above you in station—but
+I bore with that. I implored him to deal well with the girl, for what
+might be only a pastime of an idle hour with him might be the breaking
+of her heart. For I never had a thought of her truth, or that the worst
+of harm could come to her—it was only the unhappiness to her heart I
+feared. But when I asked him when he intended to marry her his laughter
+galled me so that I lost my temper and told him that I would not stand
+by and see her life made unhappy. Then he grew angry too, and in his
+anger said such cruel things of her that then and there I swore he
+should not live to do her harm. God knows how it came about, for in
+such moments of passion it is hard to remember the steps from a word to
+a blow, but I found myself standing over his dead body, with my hands
+crimson with the blood that welled from his torn throat. We were alone
+and he was a stranger, with none of his kin to seek for him and murder
+does not always out—not all at once. His bones may be whitening still,
+for all I know, in the pool of the river where I left him. No one
+suspected his absence, or why it was, except my poor Mabel, and she
+dared not speak. But it was all in vain, for when I came back again
+after an absence of months—for I could not live in the place—I learned
+that her shame had come and that she had died in it. Hitherto I had
+been borne up by the thought that my ill deed had saved her future, but
+now, when I learned that I had been too late, and that my poor love was
+smirched with that man’s sin, I fled away with the sense of my useless
+guilt upon me more heavily than I could bear. Ah! sir, you that have
+not done such a sin don’t know what it is to carry it with you. You may
+think that custom makes it easy to you, but it is not so. It grows and
+grows with every hour, till it becomes intolerable, and with it
+growing, too, the feeling that you must for ever stand outside Heaven.
+You don’t know what that means, and I pray God that you never may.
+Ordinary men, to whom all things are possible, don’t often, if ever,
+think of Heaven. It is a name, and nothing more, and they are content
+to wait and let things be, but to those who are doomed to be shut out
+for ever you cannot think what it means, you cannot guess or measure
+the terrible endless longing to see the gates opened, and to be able to
+join the white figures within.
+
+“And this brings me to my dream. It seemed that the portal was before
+me, with great gates of massive steel with bars of the thickness of a
+mast, rising to the very clouds, and so close that between them was
+just a glimpse of a crystal grotto, on whose shining walls were figured
+many white-clad forms with faces radiant with joy. When I stood before
+the gate my heart and my soul were so full of rapture and longing that
+I forgot. And there stood at the gate two mighty angels with sweeping
+wings, and, oh! so stern of countenance. They held each in one hand a
+flaming sword, and in the other the latchet, which moved to and fro at
+their lightest touch. Nearer were figures all draped in black, with
+heads covered so that only the eyes were seen, and they handed to each
+who came white garments such as the angels wear. A low murmur came that
+told that all should put on their own robes, and without soil, or the
+angels would not pass them in, but would smite them down with the
+flaming swords. I was eager to don my own garment, and hurriedly threw
+it over me and stepped swiftly to the gate; but it moved not, and the
+angels, loosing the latchet, pointed to my dress, I looked down, and
+was aghast, for the whole robe was smeared with blood. My hands were
+red; they glittered with the blood that dripped from them as on that
+day by the river bank. And then the angels raised their flaming swords
+to smite me down, and the horror was complete—I awoke. Again, and
+again, and again, that awful dream comes to me. I never learn from the
+experience, I never remember, but at the beginning the hope is ever
+there to make the end more appalling; and I know that the dream does
+not come out of the common darkness where the dreams abide, but that it
+is sent from God as a punishment! Never, never shall I be able to pass
+the gate, for the soil on the angel garments must ever come from these
+bloody hands!”
+
+I listened as in a spell as Jacob Settle spoke. There was something so
+far away in the tone of his voice—something so dreamy and mystic in the
+eyes that looked as if through me at some spirit beyond—something so
+lofty in his very diction and in such marked contrast to his workworn
+clothes and his poor surroundings that I wondered if the whole thing
+were not a dream.
+
+We were both silent for a long time. I kept looking at the man before
+me in growing wonderment. Now that his confession had been made, his
+soul, which had been crushed to the very earth, seemed to leap back
+again to uprightness with some resilient force. I suppose I ought to
+have been horrified with his story, but, strange to say, I was not. It
+certainly is not pleasant to be made the recipient of the confidence of
+a murderer, but this poor fellow seemed to have had, not only so much
+provocation, but so much self-denying purpose in his deed of blood that
+I did not feel called upon to pass judgment upon him. My purpose was to
+comfort, so I spoke out with what calmness I could, for my heart was
+beating fast and heavily:
+
+“You need not despair, Jacob Settle. God is very good, and His mercy is
+great. Live on and work on in the hope that some day you may feel that
+you have atoned for the past.” Here I paused, for I could see that
+deep, natural sleep this time, was creeping upon him. “Go to sleep,” I
+said; “I shall watch with you here and we shall have no more evil
+dreams tonight.”
+
+He made an effort to pull himself together, and answered:
+
+“I don’t know how to thank you for your goodness to me this night, but
+I think you had best leave me now. I’ll try and sleep this out; I feel
+a weight off my mind since I have told you all. If there’s anything of
+the man left in me, I must try and fight out life alone.”
+
+“I’ll go tonight, as you wish it,” I said; “but take my advice, and do
+not live in such a solitary way. Go among men and women; live among
+them. Share their joys and sorrows, and it will help you to forget.
+This solitude will make you melancholy mad.”
+
+“I will!” he answered, half unconsciously, for sleep was overmastering
+him.
+
+I turned to go, and he looked after me. When I had touched the latch I
+dropped it, and, coming back to the bed, held out my hand. He grasped
+it with both his as he rose to a sitting posture, and I said my
+goodnight, trying to cheer him:
+
+“Heart, man, heart! There is work in the world for you to do, Jacob
+Settle. You can wear those white robes yet and pass through that gate
+of steel!”
+
+Then I left him.
+
+A week after I found his cottage deserted, and on asking at the works
+was told that he had “gone north”, no one exactly knew whither.
+
+Two years afterwards, I was staying for a few days with my friend Dr.
+Munro in Glasgow. He was a busy man, and could not spare much time for
+going about with me, so I spent my days in excursions to the Trossachs
+and Loch Katrine and down the Clyde. On the second last evening of my
+stay I came back somewhat later than I had arranged, but found that my
+host was late too. The maid told me that he had been sent for to the
+hospital—a case of accident at the gas-works, and the dinner was
+postponed an hour; so telling her I would stroll down to find her
+master and walk back with him, I went out. At the hospital I found him
+washing his hands preparatory to starting for home. Casually, I asked
+him what his case was.
+
+“Oh, the usual thing! A rotten rope and men’s lives of no account. Two
+men were working in a gasometer, when the rope that held their
+scaffolding broke. It must have occurred just before the dinner hour,
+for no one noticed their absence till the men had returned. There was
+about seven feet of water in the gasometer, so they had a hard fight
+for it, poor fellows. However, one of them was alive, just alive, but
+we have had a hard job to pull him through. It seems that he owes his
+life to his mate, for I have never heard of greater heroism. They swam
+together while their strength lasted, but at the end they were so done
+up that even the lights above, and the men slung with ropes, coming
+down to help them, could not keep them up. But one of them stood on the
+bottom and held up his comrade over his head, and those few breaths
+made all the difference between life and death. They were a shocking
+sight when they were taken out, for that water is like a purple dye
+with the gas and the tar. The man upstairs looked as if he had been
+washed in blood. Ugh!”
+
+“And the other?”
+
+“Oh, he’s worse still. But he must have been a very noble fellow. That
+struggle under the water must have been fearful; one can see that by
+the way the blood has been drawn from the extremities. It makes the
+idea of the _Stigmata_ possible to look at him. Resolution like this
+could, you would think, do anything in the world. Ay! it might almost
+unbar the gates of Heaven. Look here, old man, it is not a very
+pleasant sight, especially just before dinner, but you are a writer,
+and this is an odd case. Here is something you would not like to miss,
+for in all human probability you will never see anything like it
+again.” While he was speaking he had brought me into the mortuary of
+the hospital.
+
+On the bier lay a body covered with a white sheet, which was wrapped
+close round it.
+
+“Looks like a chrysalis, don’t it? I say, Jack, if there be anything in
+the old myth that a soul is typified by a butterfly, well, then the one
+that this chrysalis sent forth was a very noble specimen and took all
+the sunlight on its wings. See here!” He uncovered the face. Horrible,
+indeed, it looked, as though stained with blood. But I knew him at
+once, Jacob Settle! My friend pulled the winding sheet further down.
+
+The hands were crossed on the purple breast as they had been reverently
+placed by some tender-hearted person. As I saw them my heart throbbed
+with a great exultation, for the memory of his harrowing dream rushed
+across my mind. There was no stain now on those poor, brave hands, for
+they were blanched white as snow.
+
+And somehow as I looked I felt that the evil dream was all over. That
+noble soul had won a way through the gate at last. The white robe had
+now no stain from the hands that had put it on.
+
+
+
+
+Crooken Sands
+
+
+Mr Arthur Fernlee Markam, who took what was known as the Red House
+above the Mains of Crooken, was a London merchant, and being
+essentially a cockney, thought it necessary when he went for the summer
+holidays to Scotland to provide an entire rig-out as a Highland
+chieftain, as manifested in chromolithographs and on the music-hall
+stage. He had once seen in the Empire the Great Prince—“The Bounder
+King”—bring down the house by appearing as “The MacSlogan of that Ilk,”
+and singing the celebrated Scotch song, “There’s naething like haggis
+to mak a mon dry!” and he had ever since preserved in his mind a
+faithful image of the picturesque and warlike appearance which he
+presented. Indeed, if the true inwardness of Mr. Markam’s mind on the
+subject of his selection of Aberdeenshire as a summer resort were
+known, it would be found that in the foreground of the holiday locality
+which his fancy painted stalked the many hued figure of the MacSlogan
+of that Ilk. However, be this as it may, a very kind fortune—certainly
+so far as external beauty was concerned—led him to the choice of
+Crooken Bay. It is a lovely spot, between Aberdeen and Peterhead, just
+under the rock-bound headland whence the long, dangerous reefs known as
+The Spurs run out into the North Sea. Between this and the “Mains of
+Crooken”—a village sheltered by the northern cliffs—lies the deep bay,
+backed with a multitude of bent-grown dunes where the rabbits are to be
+found in thousands. Thus at either end of the bay is a rocky
+promontory, and when the dawn or the sunset falls on the rocks of red
+syenite the effect is very lovely. The bay itself is floored with level
+sand and the tide runs far out, leaving a smooth waste of hard sand on
+which are dotted here and there the stake nets and bag nets of the
+salmon fishers. At one end of the bay there is a little group or
+cluster of rocks whose heads are raised something above high water,
+except when in rough weather the waves come over them green. At low
+tide they are exposed down to sand level; and here is perhaps the only
+little bit of dangerous sand on this part of the eastern coast. Between
+the rocks, which are apart about some fifty feet, is a small quicksand,
+which, like the Goodwins, is dangerous only with the incoming tide. It
+extends outwards till it is lost in the sea, and inwards till it fades
+away in the hard sand of the upper beach. On the slope of the hill
+which rises beyond the dunes, midway between the Spurs and the Port of
+Crooken, is the Red House. It rises from the midst of a clump of
+fir-trees which protect it on three sides, leaving the whole sea front
+open. A trim old-fashioned garden stretches down to the roadway, on
+crossing which a grassy path, which can be used for light vehicles,
+threads a way to the shore, winding amongst the sand hills.
+
+When the Markam family arrived at the Red House after their thirty-six
+hours of pitching on the Aberdeen steamer _Ban Righ_ from Blackwall,
+with the subsequent train to Yellon and drive of a dozen miles, they
+all agreed that they had never seen a more delightful spot. The general
+satisfaction was more marked as at that very time none of the family
+were, for several reasons, inclined to find favourable anything or any
+place over the Scottish border. Though the family was a large one, the
+prosperity of the business allowed them all sorts of personal luxuries,
+amongst which was a wide latitude in the way of dress. The frequency of
+the Markam girls’ new frocks was a source of envy to their bosom
+friends and of joy to themselves.
+
+Arthur Fernlee Markam had not taken his family into his confidence
+regarding his new costume. He was not quite certain that he should be
+free from ridicule, or at least from sarcasm, and as he was sensitive
+on the subject, he thought it better to be actually in the suitable
+environment before he allowed the full splendour to burst upon them. He
+had taken some pains, to insure the completeness of the Highland
+costume. For the purpose he had paid many visits to “The Scotch
+All-Wool Tartan Clothing Mart” which had been lately established in
+Copthall-court by the Messrs. MacCallum More and Roderick MacDhu. He
+had anxious consultations with the head of the firm—MacCallum as he
+called himself, resenting any such additions as “Mr.” or “Esquire.” The
+known stock of buckles, buttons, straps, brooches and ornaments of all
+kinds were examined in critical detail; and at last an eagle’s feather
+of sufficiently magnificent proportions was discovered, and the
+equipment was complete. It was only when he saw the finished costume,
+with the vivid hues of the tartan seemingly modified into comparative
+sobriety by the multitude of silver fittings, the cairngorm brooches,
+the philibeg, dirk and sporran that he was fully and absolutely
+satisfied with his choice. At first he had thought of the Royal Stuart
+dress tartan, but abandoned it on the MacCallum pointing out that if he
+should happen to be in the neighbourhood of Balmoral it might lead to
+complications. The MacCallum, who, by the way, spoke with a remarkable
+cockney accent, suggested other plaids in turn; but now that the other
+question of accuracy had been raised, Mr. Markam foresaw difficulties
+if he should by chance find himself in the locality of the clan whose
+colours he had usurped. The MacCallum at last undertook to have, at
+Markam’s expense, a special pattern woven which would not be exactly
+the same as any existing tartan, though partaking of the
+characteristics of many. It was based on the Royal Stuart, but
+contained suggestions as to simplicity of pattern from the Macalister
+and Ogilvie clans, and as to neutrality of colour from the clans of
+Buchanan, Macbeth, Chief of Macintosh and Macleod. When the specimen
+had been shown to Markam he had feared somewhat lest it should strike
+the eye of his domestic circle as gaudy; but as Roderick MacDhu fell
+into perfect ecstasies over its beauty he did not make any objection to
+the completion of the piece. He thought, and wisely, that if a genuine
+Scotchman like MacDhu liked it, it must be right—especially as the
+junior partner was a man very much of his own build and appearance.
+When the MacCallum was receiving his cheque—which, by the way, was a
+pretty stiff one—he remarked:
+
+“I’ve taken the liberty of having some more of the stuff woven in case
+you or any of your friends should want it.” Markam was gratified, and
+told him that he should be only too happy if the beautiful stuff which
+they had originated between them should become a favourite, as he had
+no doubt it would in time. He might make and sell as much as he would.
+
+Markam tried the dress on in his office one evening after the clerks
+had all gone home. He was pleased, though a little frightened, at the
+result. The MacCallum had done his work thoroughly, and there was
+nothing omitted that could add to the martial dignity of the wearer.
+
+“I shall not, of course, take the claymore and the pistols with me on
+ordinary occasions,” said Markam to himself as he began to undress. He
+determined that he would wear the dress for the first time on landing
+in Scotland, and accordingly on the morning when the _Ban Righ_ was
+hanging off the Girdle Ness lighthouse, waiting for the tide to enter
+the port of Aberdeen, he emerged from his cabin in all the gaudy
+splendour of his new costume. The first comment he heard was from one
+of his own sons, who did not recognise him at first.
+
+“Here’s a guy! Great Scott! It’s the governor!” And the boy fled
+forthwith and tried to bury his laughter under a cushion in the saloon.
+Markam was a good sailor and had not suffered from the pitching of the
+boat, so that his naturally rubicund face was even more rosy by the
+conscious blush which suffused his cheeks when he had found himself at
+once the cynosure of all eyes. He could have wished that he had not
+been so bold for he knew from the cold that there was a big bare spot
+under one side of his jauntily worn Glengarry cap. However, he faced
+the group of strangers boldly. He was not, outwardly, upset even when
+some of the comments reached his ears.
+
+“He’s off his bloomin’ chump,” said a cockney in a suit of exaggerated
+plaid.
+
+“There’s flies on him,” said a tall thin Yankee, pale with
+sea-sickness, who was on his way to take up his residence for a time as
+close as he could get to the gates of Balmoral.
+
+“Happy thought! Let us fill our mulls; now’s the chance!” said a young
+Oxford man on his way home to Inverness. But presently Mr. Markam heard
+the voice of his eldest daughter.
+
+“Where is he? Where is he?” and she came tearing along the deck with
+her hat blowing behind her. Her face showed signs of agitation, for her
+mother had just been telling her of her father’s condition; but when
+she saw him she instantly burst into laughter so violent that it ended
+in a fit of hysterics. Something of the same kind happened to each of
+the other children. When they had all had their turn Mr. Markam went to
+his cabin and sent his wife’s maid to tell each member of the family
+that he wanted to see them at once. They all made their appearance,
+suppressing their feelings as well as they could. He said to them very
+quietly:
+
+“My dears, don’t I provide you all with ample allowances?”
+
+“Yes, father!” they all answered gravely, “no one could be more
+generous!”
+
+“Don’t I let you dress as you please?”
+
+“Yes, father!”—this a little sheepishly.
+
+“Then, my dears, don’t you think it would be nicer and kinder of you
+not to try and make me feel uncomfortable, even if I do assume a dress
+which is ridiculous in your eyes, though quite common enough in the
+country where we are about to sojourn?” There was no answer except that
+which appeared in their hanging heads. He was a good father and they
+all knew it. He was quite satisfied and went on:
+
+“There, now, run away and enjoy yourselves! We shan’t have another word
+about it.” Then he went on deck again and stood bravely the fire of
+ridicule which he recognised around him, though nothing more was said
+within his hearing.
+
+The astonishment and the amusement which his get-up occasioned on the
+_Ban Righ_ was, however, nothing to that which it created in Aberdeen.
+The boys and loafers, and women with babies, who waited at the landing
+shed, followed _en masse_ as the Markam party took their way to the
+railway station; even the porters with their old-fashioned knots and
+their new-fashioned barrows, who await the traveller at the foot of the
+gang-plank, followed in wondering delight. Fortunately the Peterhead
+train was just about to start, so that the martyrdom was not
+unnecessarily prolonged. In the carriage the glorious Highland costume
+was unseen, and as there were but few persons at the station at Yellon,
+all went well there. When, however, the carriage drew near the Mains of
+Crooken and the fisher folk had run to their doors to see who it was
+that was passing, the excitement exceeded all bounds. The children with
+one impulse waved their bonnets and ran shouting behind the carriage;
+the men forsook their nets and their baiting and followed; the women
+clutched their babies, and followed also. The horses were tired after
+their long journey to Yellon and back, and the hill was steep, so that
+there was ample time for the crowd to gather and even to pass on ahead.
+
+Mrs. Markam and the elder girls would have liked to make some protest
+or to do something to relieve their feelings of chagrin at the ridicule
+which they saw on all faces, but there was a look of fixed
+determination on the face of the seeming Highlander which awed them a
+little, and they were silent. It might have been that the eagle’s
+feather, even when arising above the bald head, the cairngorm brooch
+even on the fat shoulder, and the claymore, dirk and pistols, even when
+belted round the extensive paunch and protruding from the stocking on
+the sturdy calf, fulfilled their existence as symbols of martial and
+terrifying import! When the party arrived at the gate of the Red House
+there awaited them a crowd of Crooken inhabitants, hatless and
+respectfully silent; the remainder of the population was painfully
+toiling up the hill. The silence was broken by only one sound, that of
+a man with a deep voice.
+
+“Man! but he’s forgotten the pipes!”
+
+The servants had arrived some days before, and all things were in
+readiness. In the glow consequent on a good lunch after a hard journey
+all the disagreeables of travel and all the chagrin consequent on the
+adoption of the obnoxious costume were forgotten.
+
+That afternoon Markam, still clad in full array, walked through the
+Mains of Crooken. He was all alone, for, strange to say, his wife and
+both daughters had sick headaches, and were, as he was told, lying down
+to rest after the fatigue of the journey. His eldest son, who claimed
+to be a young man, had gone out by himself to explore the surroundings
+of the place, and one of the boys could not be found. The other boy, on
+being told that his father had sent for him to come for a walk, had
+managed—by accident, of course—to fall into the water butt, and had to
+be dried and rigged out afresh. His clothes not having been as yet
+unpacked this was of course impossible without delay.
+
+Mr. Markam was not quite satisfied with his walk. He could not meet any
+of his neighbours. It was not that there were not enough people about,
+for every house and cottage seemed to be full; but the people when in
+the open were either in their doorways some distance behind him, or on
+the roadway a long distance in front. As he passed he could see the
+tops of heads and the whites of eyes in the windows or round the
+corners of doors. The only interview which he had was anything but a
+pleasant one. This was with an odd sort of old man who was hardly ever
+heard to speak except to join in the “Amens” in the meeting-house. His
+sole occupation seemed to be to wait at the window of the post-office
+from eight o’clock in the morning till the arrival of the mail at one,
+when he carried the letter-bag to a neighbouring baronial castle. The
+remainder of his day was spent on a seat in a draughty part of the
+port, where the offal of the fish, the refuse of the bait, and the
+house rubbish was thrown, and where the ducks were accustomed to hold
+high revel.
+
+When Saft Tammie beheld him coming he raised his eyes, which were
+generally fixed on the nothing which lay on the roadway opposite his
+seat, and, seeming dazzled as if by a burst of sunshine, rubbed them
+and shaded them with his hand. Then he started up and raised his hand
+aloft in a denunciatory manner as he spoke:—
+
+“‘Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. All is vanity.’ Mon, be
+warned in time! ‘Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither
+do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
+these.’ Mon! Mon! Thy vanity is as the quicksand which swallows up all
+which comes within its spell. Beware vanity! Beware the quicksand,
+which yawneth for thee, and which will swallow thee up! See thyself!
+Learn thine own vanity! Meet thyself face to face, and then in that
+moment thou shalt learn the fatal force of thy vanity. Learn it, know
+it, and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee!” Then without another
+word he went back to his seat and sat there immovable and
+expressionless as before.
+
+Markam could not but feel a little upset by this tirade. Only that it
+was spoken by a seeming madman, he would have put it down to some
+eccentric exhibition of Scottish humour or impudence; but the gravity
+of the message—for it seemed nothing else—made such a reading
+impossible. He was, however, determined not to give in to ridicule, and
+although he had not yet seen anything in Scotland to remind him even of
+a kilt, he determined to wear his Highland dress. When he returned
+home, in less than half-an-hour, he found that every member of the
+family was, despite the headaches, out taking a walk. He took the
+opportunity afforded by their absence of locking himself in his
+dressing-room, took off the Highland dress, and, putting on a suit of
+flannels, lit a cigar and had a snooze. He was awakened by the noise of
+the family coming in, and at once donning his dress made his appearance
+in the drawing-room for tea.
+
+He did not go out again that afternoon; but after dinner he put on his
+dress again—he had, of course dressed for dinner as usual—and went by
+himself for a walk on the sea-shore. He had by this time come to the
+conclusion that he would get by degrees accustomed to the Highland
+dress before making it his ordinary wear. The moon was up and he easily
+followed the path through the sand-hills, and shortly struck the shore.
+The tide was out and the beach firm as a rock, so he strolled
+southwards to nearly the end of the bay. Here he was attracted by two
+isolated rocks some little way out from the edge of the dunes, so he
+strolled towards them. When he reached the nearest one he climbed it,
+and, sitting there elevated some fifteen or twenty feet over the waste
+of sand, enjoyed the lovely, peaceful prospect. The moon was rising
+behind the headland of Pennyfold, and its light was just touching the
+top of the furthermost rock of the Spurs some three-quarters of a mile
+out; the rest of the rocks were in dark shadow. As the moon rose over
+the headland, the rocks of the Spurs and then the beach by degrees
+became flooded with light.
+
+For a good while Mr. Markam sat and looked at the rising moon and the
+growing area of light which followed its rise. Then he turned and faced
+eastwards and sat with his chin in his hand looking seawards, and
+revelling in the peace and beauty and freedom of the scene. The roar of
+London—the darkness and the strife and weariness of London life—seemed
+to have passed quite away, and he lived at the moment a freer and
+higher life. He looked at the glistening water as it stole its way over
+the flat waste of sand, coming closer and closer insensibly—the tide
+had turned. Presently he heard a distant shouting along the beach very
+far off.
+
+“The fishermen calling to each other,” he said to himself and looked
+around. As he did so he got a horrible shock, for though just then a
+cloud sailed across the moon he saw, in spite of the sudden darkness
+around him, his own image. For an instant, on the top of the opposite
+rock he could see the bald back of the head and the Glengarry cap with
+the immense eagle’s feather. As he staggered back his foot slipped, and
+he began to slide down towards the sand between the two rocks. He took
+no concern as to falling, for the sand was really only a few feet below
+him, and his mind was occupied with the figure or simulacrum of
+himself, which had already disappeared. As the easiest way of reaching
+_terra firma_ he prepared to jump the remainder of the distance. All
+this had taken but a second, but the brain works quickly, and even as
+he gathered himself for the spring he saw the sand below him lying so
+marbly level shake and shiver in an odd way. A sudden fear overcame
+him; his knees failed, and instead of jumping he slid miserably down
+the rock, scratching his bare legs as he went. His feet touched the
+sand—went through it like water—and he was down below his knees before
+he realised that he was in a quicksand. Wildly he grasped at the rock
+to keep himself from sinking further, and fortunately there was a
+jutting spur or edge which he was able to grasp instinctively. To this
+he clung in grim desperation. He tried to shout, but his breath would
+not come, till after a great effort his voice rang out. Again he
+shouted, and it seemed as if the sound of his own voice gave him new
+courage, for he was able to hold on to the rock for a longer time than
+he thought possible—though he held on only in blind desperation. He
+was, however, beginning to find his grasp weakening, when, joy of joys!
+his shout was answered by a rough voice from just above him.
+
+“God be thankit, I’m nae too late!” and a fisherman with great
+thigh-boots came hurriedly climbing over the rock. In an instant he
+recognised the gravity of the danger, and with a cheering “Haud fast,
+mon! I’m comin’!” scrambled down till he found a firm foothold. Then
+with one strong hand holding the rock above, he leaned down, and
+catching Markam’s wrist, called out to him, “Haud to me, mon! Haud to
+me wi’ ither hond!”
+
+Then he lent his great strength, and with a steady, sturdy pull,
+dragged him out of the hungry quicksand and placed him safe upon the
+rock. Hardly giving him time to draw breath, he pulled and pushed
+him—never letting him go for an instant—over the rock into the firm
+sand beyond it, and finally deposited him, still shaking from the
+magnitude of his danger, high upon the beach. Then he began to speak:
+
+“Mon! but I was just in time. If I had no laucht at yon foolish lads
+and begun to rin at the first you’d a bin sinkin’ doon to the bowels o’
+the airth be the noo! Wully Beagrie thocht you was a ghaist, and Tom
+MacPhail swore ye was only like a goblin on a puddick-steel! ‘Na!’ said
+I. ‘Yon’s but the daft Englishman—the loony that had escapit frae the
+waxwarks.’ I was thinkin’ that bein’ strange and silly—if not a
+whole-made feel—ye’d no ken the ways o’ the quicksan’! I shouted till
+warn ye, and then ran to drag ye aff, if need be. But God be thankit,
+be ye fule or only half-daft wi’ yer vanity, that I was no that late!”
+and he reverently lifted his cap as he spoke.
+
+Mr. Markam was deeply touched and thankful for his escape from a
+horrible death; but the sting of the charge of vanity thus made once
+more against him came through his humility. He was about to reply
+angrily, when suddenly a great awe fell upon him as he remembered the
+warning words of the half-crazy letter-carrier: “Meet thyself face to
+face, and repent ere the quicksand shall swallow thee!”
+
+Here, too, he remembered the image of himself that he had seen and the
+sudden danger from the deadly quicksand that had followed. He was
+silent a full minute, and then said:
+
+“My good fellow, I owe you my life!”
+
+The answer came with reverence from the hardy fisherman, “Na! Na! Ye
+owe that to God; but, as for me, I’m only too glad till be the humble
+instrument o’ His mercy.”
+
+“But you will let me thank you,” said Mr. Markam, taking both the great
+hands of his deliverer in his and holding them tight. “My heart is too
+full as yet, and my nerves are too much shaken to let me say much; but,
+believe me, I am very, very grateful!” It was quite evident that the
+poor old fellow was deeply touched, for the tears were running down his
+cheeks.
+
+The fisherman said, with a rough but true courtesy:
+
+“Ay, sir! thank me and ye will—if it’ll do yer poor heart good. An’ I’m
+thinking that if it were me I’d be thankful too. But, sir, as for me I
+need no thanks. I am glad, so I am!”
+
+That Arthur Fernlee Markam was really thankful and grateful was shown
+practically later on. Within a week’s time there sailed into Port
+Crooken the finest fishing smack that had ever been seen in the harbour
+of Peterhead. She was fully found with sails and gear of all kinds, and
+with nets of the best. Her master and men went away by the coach, after
+having left with the salmon-fisher’s wife the papers which made her
+over to him.
+
+As Mr. Markam and the salmon-fisher walked together along the shore the
+former asked his companion not to mention the fact that he had been in
+such imminent danger, for that it would only distress his dear wife and
+children. He said that he would warn them all of the quicksand, and for
+that purpose he, then and there, asked questions about it till he felt
+that his information on the subject was complete. Before they parted he
+asked his companion if he had happened to see a second figure, dressed
+like himself on the other rock as he had approached to succour him.
+
+“Na! Na!” came the answer, “there is nae sic another fule in these
+parts. Nor has there been since the time o’ Jamie Fleeman—him that was
+fule to the Laird o’ Udny. Why, mon! sic a heathenish dress as ye have
+on till ye has nae been seen in these pairts within the memory o’ mon.
+An’ I’m thinkin’ that sic a dress never was for sittin’ on the cauld
+rock, as ye done beyont. Mon! but do ye no fear the rheumatism or the
+lumbagy wi’ floppin’ doon on to the cauld stanes wi’ yer bare flesh? I
+was thinking that it was daft ye waur when I see ye the mornin’ doon be
+the port, but it’s fule or eediot ye maun be for the like o’ thot!” Mr.
+Markam did not care to argue the point, and as they were now close to
+his own home he asked the salmon-fisher to have a glass of whisky—which
+he did—and they parted for the night. He took good care to warn all his
+family of the quicksand, telling them that he had himself been in some
+danger from it.
+
+All that night he never slept. He heard the hours strike one after the
+other; but try how he would he could not get to sleep. Over and over
+again he went through the horrible episode of the quicksand, from the
+time that Saft Tammie had broken his habitual silence to preach to him
+of the sin of vanity and to warn him. The question kept ever arising in
+his mind: “Am I then so vain as to be in the ranks of the foolish?” and
+the answer ever came in the words of the crazy prophet: “‘Vanity of
+vanities! All is vanity.’ Meet thyself face to face, and repent ere the
+quicksand shall swallow thee!” Somehow a feeling of doom began to shape
+itself in his mind that he would yet perish in that same quicksand, for
+there he had already met himself face to face.
+
+In the grey of the morning he dozed off, but it was evident that he
+continued the subject in his dreams, for he was fully awakened by his
+wife, who said:
+
+“Do sleep quietly! That blessed Highland suit has got on your brain.
+Don’t talk in your sleep, if you can help it!” He was somehow conscious
+of a glad feeling, as if some terrible weight had been lifted from him,
+but he did not know any cause of it. He asked his wife what he had said
+in his sleep, and she answered:
+
+“You said it often enough, goodness knows, for one to remember it—‘Not
+face to face! I saw the eagle plume over the bald head! There is hope
+yet! Not face to face!’ Go to sleep! Do!” And then he did go to sleep,
+for he seemed to realise that the prophecy of the crazy man had not yet
+been fulfilled. He had not met himself face to face—as yet at all
+events.
+
+He was awakened early by a maid who came to tell him that there was a
+fisherman at the door who wanted to see him. He dressed himself as
+quickly as he could—for he was not yet expert with the Highland
+dress—and hurried down, not wishing to keep the salmon-fisher waiting.
+He was surprised and not altogether pleased to find that his visitor
+was none other than Saft Tammie, who at once opened fire on him:
+
+“I maun gang awa’ t’ the post; but I thocht that I would waste an hour
+on ye, and ca’ roond just to see if ye waur still that fou wi’ vanity
+as on the nicht gane by. An I see that ye’ve no learned the lesson.
+Well! the time is comin’, sure eneucht! However I have all the time i’
+the marnins to my ain sel’, so I’ll aye look roond jist till see how ye
+gang yer ain gait to the quicksan’, and then to the de’il! I’m aff till
+ma wark the noo!” And he went straightway, leaving Mr. Markam
+considerably vexed, for the maids within earshot were vainly trying to
+conceal their giggles. He had fairly made up his mind to wear on that
+day ordinary clothes, but the visit of Saft Tammie reversed his
+decision. He would show them all that he was not a coward, and he would
+go on as he had begun—come what might. When he came to breakfast in
+full martial panoply the children, one and all, held down their heads
+and the backs of their necks became very red indeed. As, however, none
+of them laughed—except Titus, the youngest boy, who was seized with a
+fit of hysterical choking and was promptly banished from the room—he
+could not reprove them, but began to break his egg with a sternly
+determined air. It was unfortunate that as his wife was handing him a
+cup of tea one of the buttons of his sleeve caught in the lace of her
+morning wrapper, with the result that the hot tea was spilt over his
+bare knees. Not unnaturally, he made use of a swear word, whereupon his
+wife, somewhat nettled, spoke out:
+
+“Well, Arthur, if you will make such an idiot of yourself with that
+ridiculous costume what else can you expect? You are not accustomed to
+it—and you never will be!” In answer he began an indignant speech with:
+“Madam!” but he got no further, for now that the subject was broached,
+Mrs. Markam intended to have her say out. It was not a pleasant say,
+and, truth to tell, it was not said in a pleasant manner. A wife’s
+manner seldom is pleasant when she undertakes to tell what she
+considers “truths” to her husband. The result was that Arthur Fernlee
+Markam undertook, then and there, that during his stay in Scotland he
+would wear no other costume than the one she abused. Woman-like his
+wife had the last word—given in this case with tears:
+
+“Very well, Arthur! Of course you will do as you choose. Make me as
+ridiculous as you can, and spoil the poor girls’ chances in life. Young
+men don’t seem to care, as a general rule, for an idiot father-in-law!
+But I must warn you that your vanity will some day get a rude shock—if
+indeed you are not before then in an asylum or dead!”
+
+It was manifest after a few days that Mr. Markam would have to take the
+major part of his outdoor exercise by himself. The girls now and again
+took a walk with him, chiefly in the early morning or late at night, or
+on a wet day when there would be no one about; they professed to be
+willing to go out at all times, but somehow something always seemed to
+occur to prevent it. The boys could never be found at all on such
+occasions, and as to Mrs. Markam she sternly refused to go out with him
+on any consideration so long as he should continue to make a fool of
+himself. On the Sunday he dressed himself in his habitual broadcloth,
+for he rightly felt that church was not a place for angry feelings; but
+on Monday morning he resumed his Highland garb. By this time he would
+have given a good deal if he had never thought of the dress, but his
+British obstinacy was strong, and he would not give in. Saft Tammie
+called at his house every morning, and, not being able to see him nor
+to have any message taken to him, used to call back in the afternoon
+when the letter-bag had been delivered and watched for his going out.
+On such occasions he never failed to warn him against his vanity in the
+same words which he had used at the first. Before many days were over
+Mr. Markam had come to look upon him as little short of a scourge.
+
+By the time the week was out the enforced partial solitude, the
+constant chagrin, and the never-ending brooding which was thus
+engendered, began to make Mr. Markam quite ill. He was too proud to
+take any of his family into his confidence since they had in his view
+treated him very badly. Then he did not sleep well at night, and when
+he did sleep he had constantly bad dreams. Merely to assure himself
+that his pluck was not failing him he made it a practice to visit the
+quicksand at least once every day; he hardly ever failed to go there
+the last thing at night. It was perhaps this habit that wrought the
+quicksand with its terrible experience so perpetually into his dreams.
+More and more vivid these became, till on waking at times he could
+hardly realise that he had not been actually in the flesh to visit the
+fatal spot. He sometimes thought that he might have been walking in his
+sleep.
+
+One night his dream was so vivid that when he awoke he could not
+believe that it had only been a dream. He shut his eyes again and
+again, but each time the vision, if it was a vision, or the reality, if
+it was a reality, would rise before him. The moon was shining full and
+yellow over the quicksand as he approached it; he could see the expanse
+of light shaken and disturbed and full of black shadows as the liquid
+sand quivered and trembled and wrinkled and eddied as was its wont
+between its pauses of marble calm. As he drew close to it another
+figure came towards it from the opposite side with equal footsteps. He
+saw that it was his own figure, his very self, and in silent terror,
+compelled by what force he knew not, he advanced—charmed as the bird is
+by the snake, mesmerised or hypnotised—to meet this other self. As he
+felt the yielding sand closing over him he awoke in the agony of death,
+trembling with fear, and, strange to say, with the silly man’s prophecy
+seeming to sound in his ears: “‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!’ See
+thyself and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee!”
+
+So convinced was he that this was no dream that he arose, early as it
+was, and dressing himself without disturbing his wife took his way to
+the shore. His heart fell when he came across a series of footsteps on
+the sands, which he at once recognised as his own. There was the same
+wide heel, the same square toe; he had no doubt now that he had
+actually been there, and half horrified, and half in a state of dreamy
+stupor, he followed the footsteps, and found them lost in the edge of
+the yielding quicksand. This gave him a terrible shock, for there were
+no return steps marked on the sand, and he felt that there was some
+dread mystery which he could not penetrate, and the penetration of
+which would, he feared, undo him.
+
+In this state of affairs he took two wrong courses. Firstly he kept his
+trouble to himself, and, as none of his family had any clue to it,
+every innocent word or expression which they used supplied fuel to the
+consuming fire of his imagination. Secondly he began to read books
+professing to bear upon the mysteries of dreaming and of mental
+phenomena generally, with the result that every wild imagination of
+every crank or half-crazy philosopher became a living germ of unrest in
+the fertilising soil of his disordered brain. Thus negatively and
+positively all things began to work to a common end. Not the least of
+his disturbing causes was Saft Tammie, who had now become at certain
+times of the day a fixture at his gate. After a while, being interested
+in the previous state of this individual, he made inquiries regarding
+his past with the following result.
+
+Saft Tammie was popularly believed to be the son of a laird in one of
+the counties round the Firth of Forth. He had been partially educated
+for the ministry, but for some cause which no one ever knew threw up
+his prospects suddenly, and, going to Peterhead in its days of whaling
+prosperity, had there taken service on a whaler. Here off and on he had
+remained for some years, getting gradually more and more silent in his
+habits, till finally his shipmates protested against so taciturn a
+mate, and he had found service amongst the fishing smacks of the
+northern fleet. He had worked for many years at the fishing with always
+the reputation of being “a wee bit daft,” till at length he had
+gradually settled down at Crooken, where the laird, doubtless knowing
+something of his family history, had given him a job which practically
+made him a pensioner. The minister who gave the information finished
+thus:—
+
+“It is a very strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of
+gift. Whether it be that ‘second sight’ which we Scotch people are so
+prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know
+not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but
+the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some
+saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold it. He gets
+uneasy or excited—wakes up, in fact—when death is in the air!”
+
+This did not in any way tend to lessen Mr. Markam’s concern, but on the
+contrary seemed to impress the prophecy more deeply on his mind. Of all
+the books which he had read on his new subject of study none interested
+him so much as a German one _Die Döppleganger_, by Dr. Heinrich von
+Aschenberg, formerly of Bonn. Here he learned for the first time of
+cases where men had led a double existence—each nature being quite
+apart from the other—the body being always a reality with one spirit,
+and a simulacrum with the other. Needless to say that Mr. Markam
+realised this theory as exactly suiting his own case. The glimpse which
+he had of his own back the night of his escape from the quicksand—his
+own footmarks disappearing into the quicksand with no return steps
+visible—the prophecy of Saft Tammie about his meeting himself and
+perishing in the quicksand—all lent aid to the conviction that he was
+in his own person an instance of the döppleganger. Being then conscious
+of a double life he took steps to prove its existence to his own
+satisfaction. To this end on one night before going to bed he wrote his
+name in chalk on the soles of his shoes. That night he dreamed of the
+quicksand, and of his visiting it—dreamed so vividly that on walking in
+the grey of the dawn he could not believe that he had not been there.
+Arising, without disturbing his wife, he sought his shoes.
+
+The chalk signatures were undisturbed! He dressed himself and stole out
+softly. This time the tide was in, so he crossed the dunes and struck
+the shore on the further side of the quicksand. There, oh, horror of
+horrors! he saw his own footprints dying into the abyss!
+
+He went home a desperately sad man. It seemed incredible that he, an
+elderly commercial man, who had passed a long and uneventful life in
+the pursuit of business in the midst of roaring, practical London,
+should thus find himself enmeshed in mystery and horror, and that he
+should discover that he had two existences. He could not speak of his
+trouble even to his own wife, for well he knew that she would at once
+require the fullest particulars of that other life—the one which she
+did not know; and that she would at the start not only imagine but
+charge him with all manner of infidelities on the head of it. And so
+his brooding grew deeper and deeper still. One evening—the tide then
+going out and the moon being at the full—he was sitting waiting for
+dinner when the maid announced that Saft Tammie was making a
+disturbance outside because he would not be let in to see him. He was
+very indignant, but did not like the maid to think that he had any fear
+on the subject, and so told her to bring him in. Tammie entered,
+walking more briskly than ever with his head up and a look of vigorous
+decision in the eyes that were so generally cast down. As soon as he
+entered he said:
+
+“I have come to see ye once again—once again; and there ye sit, still
+just like a cockatoo on a pairch. Weel, mon, I forgie ye! Mind ye that,
+I forgie ye!” And without a word more he turned and walked out of the
+house, leaving the master in speechless indignation.
+
+After dinner he determined to pay another visit to the quicksand—he
+would not allow even to himself that he was afraid to go. And so, about
+nine o’clock, in full array, he marched to the beach, and passing over
+the sands sat on the skirt of the nearer rock. The full moon was behind
+him and its light lit up the bay so that its fringe of foam, the dark
+outline of the headland, and the stakes of the salmon-nets were all
+emphasised. In the brilliant yellow glow the lights in the windows of
+Port Crooken and in those of the distant castle of the laird trembled
+like stars through the sky. For a long time he sat and drank in the
+beauty of the scene, and his soul seemed to feel a peace that it had
+not known for many days. All the pettiness and annoyance and silly
+fears of the past weeks seemed blotted out, and a new holy calm took
+the vacant place. In this sweet and solemn mood he reviewed his late
+action calmly, and felt ashamed of himself for his vanity and for the
+obstinacy which had followed it. And then and there he made up his mind
+that the present would be the last time he would wear the costume which
+had estranged him from those whom he loved, and which had caused him so
+many hours and days of chagrin, vexation, and pain.
+
+But almost as soon as he arrived at this conclusion another voice
+seemed to speak within him and mockingly to ask him if he should ever
+get the chance to wear the suit again—that it was too late—he had
+chosen his course and must now abide the issue.
+
+“It is not too late,” came the quick answer of his better self; and
+full of the thought, he rose up to go home and divest himself of the
+now hateful costume right away. He paused for one look at the beautiful
+scene. The light lay pale and mellow, softening every outline of rock
+and tree and house-top, and deepening the shadows into velvety-black,
+and lighting, as with a pale flame, the incoming tide, that now crept
+fringe-like across the flat waste of sand. Then he left the rock and
+stepped out for the shore.
+
+But as he did so a frightful spasm of horror shook him, and for an
+instant the blood rushing to his head shut out all the light of the
+full moon. Once more he saw that fatal image of himself moving beyond
+the quicksand from the opposite rock to the shore. The shock was all
+the greater for the contrast with the spell of peace which he had just
+enjoyed; and, almost paralysed in every sense, he stood and watched the
+fatal vision and the wrinkly, crawling quicksand that seemed to writhe
+and yearn for something that lay between. There could be no mistake
+this time, for though the moon behind threw the face into shadow he
+could see there the same shaven cheeks as his own, and the small stubby
+moustache of a few weeks’ growth. The light shone on the brilliant
+tartan, and on the eagle’s plume. Even the bald space at one side of
+the Glengarry cap glistened, as did the cairngorm brooch on the
+shoulder and the tops of the silver buttons. As he looked he felt his
+feet slightly sinking, for he was still near the edge of the belt of
+quicksand, and he stepped back. As he did so the other figure stepped
+forward, so that the space between them was preserved.
+
+So the two stood facing each other, as though in some weird
+fascination; and in the rushing of the blood through his brain Markam
+seemed to hear the words of the prophecy: “See thyself face to face,
+and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee.” He did stand face to face
+with himself, he had repented—and now he was sinking in the quicksand!
+The warning and prophecy were coming true.
+
+Above him the seagulls screamed, circling round the fringe of the
+incoming tide, and the sound being entirely mortal recalled him to
+himself. On the instant he stepped back a few quick steps, for as yet
+only his feet were merged in the soft sand. As he did so the other
+figure stepped forward, and coming within the deadly grip of the
+quicksand began to sink. It seemed to Markam that he was looking at
+himself going down to his doom, and on the instant the anguish of his
+soul found vent in a terrible cry. There was at the same instant a
+terrible cry from the other figure, and as Markam threw up his hands
+the figure did the same. With horror-struck eyes he saw him sink deeper
+into the quicksand; and then, impelled by what power he knew not, he
+advanced again towards the sand to meet his fate. But as his more
+forward foot began to sink he heard again the cries of the seagulls
+which seemed to restore his benumbed faculties. With a mighty effort he
+drew his foot out of the sand which seemed to clutch it, leaving his
+shoe behind, and then in sheer terror he turned and ran from the place,
+never stopping till his breath and strength failed him, and he sank
+half swooning on the grassy path through the sandhills.
+
+
+Arthur Markam made up his mind not to tell his family of his terrible
+adventure—until at least such time as he should be complete master of
+himself. Now that the fatal double—his other self—had been engulfed in
+the quicksand he felt something like his old peace of mind.
+
+That night he slept soundly and did not dream at all; and in the
+morning was quite his old self. It really seemed as though his newer
+and worser self had disappeared for ever; and strangely enough Saft
+Tammie was absent from his post that morning and never appeared there
+again, but sat in his old place watching nothing, as of old, with
+lack-lustre eye. In accordance with his resolution he did not wear his
+Highland suit again, but one evening tied it up in a bundle, claymore,
+dirk and philibeg and all, and bringing it secretly with him threw it
+into the quicksand. With a feeling of intense pleasure he saw it sucked
+below the sand, which closed above it into marble smoothness. Then he
+went home and announced cheerily to his family assembled for evening
+prayers:
+
+“Well! my dears, you will be glad to hear that I have abandoned my idea
+of wearing the Highland dress. I see now what a vain old fool I was and
+how ridiculous I made myself! You shall never see it again!”
+
+“Where is it, father?” asked one of the girls, wishing to say something
+so that such a self-sacrificing announcement as her father’s should not
+be passed in absolute silence. His answer was so sweetly given that the
+girl rose from her seat and came and kissed him. It was:
+
+“In the quicksand, my dear! and I hope that my worser self is buried
+there along with it—for ever.”
+
+
+The remainder of the summer was passed at Crooken with delight by all
+the family, and on his return to town Mr. Markam had almost forgotten
+the whole of the incident of the quicksand, and all touching on it,
+when one day he got a letter from the MacCallum More which caused him
+much thought, though he said nothing of it to his family, and left it,
+for certain reasons, unanswered. It ran as follows:—
+
+“The MacCallum More and Roderick MacDhu.
+“The Scotch All-Wool Tartan Clothing Mart.
+Copthall Court, E.C.,
+30th September, 1892.
+
+“Dear Sir,—I trust you will pardon the liberty which I take in writing
+to you, but I am desirous of making an inquiry, and I am informed that
+you have been sojourning during the summer in Aberdeenshire (Scotland,
+N.B.). My partner, Mr. Roderick MacDhu—as he appears for business
+reasons on our bill-heads and in our advertisements, his real name
+being Emmanuel Moses Marks of London—went early last month to Scotland
+(N.B.) for a tour, but as I have only once heard from him, shortly
+after his departure, I am anxious lest any misfortune may have befallen
+him. As I have been unable to obtain any news of him on making all
+inquiries in my power, I venture to appeal to you. His letter was
+written in deep dejection of spirit, and mentioned that he feared a
+judgment had come upon him for wishing to appear as a Scotchman on
+Scottish soil, as he had one moonlight night shortly after his arrival
+seen his “wraith”. He evidently alluded to the fact that before his
+departure he had procured for himself a Highland costume similar to
+that which we had the honour to supply to you, with which, as perhaps
+you will remember, he was much struck. He may, however, never have worn
+it, as he was, to my own knowledge, diffident about putting it on, and
+even went so far as to tell me that he would at first only venture to
+wear it late at night or very early in the morning, and then only in
+remote places, until such time as he should get accustomed to it.
+Unfortunately he did not advise me of his route so that I am in
+complete ignorance of his whereabouts; and I venture to ask if you may
+have seen or heard of a Highland costume similar to your own having
+been seen anywhere in the neighbourhood in which I am told you have
+recently purchased the estate which you temporarily occupied. I shall
+not expect an answer to this letter unless you can give me some
+information regarding my friend and partner, so pray do not trouble to
+reply unless there be cause. I am encouraged to think that he may have
+been in your neighbourhood as, though his letter is not dated, the
+envelope is marked with the postmark of ‘Yellon’ which I find is in
+Aberdeenshire, and not far from the Mains of Crooken.
+
+“I have the honour to be, dear sir,
+“Yours very respectfully,
+“Joshua Sheeny Cohen Benjamin
+“(The MacCallum More.)”
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dracula's Guest, by Bram Stoker
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10150 ***