against that man for /bigamy/.” (Sensation.) “He’s left me to starve; me, his lawful wife. Look here,” and she tore open the pink satin tea- gown, “I haven’t enough clothes on me; the bailiffs took all my clothes; I have suffered his cruelty for years, and borne it, and I can bear it no longer. Justice, your worships; I only ask for justice.”
“Be silent, woman,” said Mr. de la Molle; “if you have a criminal charge to bring against anybody there is a proper way to make it. Be silent or leave this court.”
But she only screamed the more for /justice/, and loudly detailed fragments of her woes to the eagerly listening crowd.
Then policemen were ordered to remove her, and there followed a frightful scene. She shrieked and fought in such a fashion that it took four men to drag her to the door of the court, where she dropped exhausted against the wall in the corridor.
“Well,” said the observant George to himself, “she hev done the trick proper, and no mistake. Couldn’t have been better. That’s a master one, that is.” Then he turned his attention to the stricken man before him. Mr. Quest was sitting there, his face ashen, his eyes wide open, and his hands placed flat on the table before him. When silence had been restored he rose and turned to the bench apparently with the intention of addressing the court. But he said nothing, either because he could not find the words or because his courage failed him. There was a moment’s intense silence, for every one in the crowded court was watching him, and the sense of it seemed to take what resolution he had left out of him. At any rate, he left the table and hurried from the court. In the passage he found the Tiger, who, surrounded by a little crowd, her hat awry and her clothes half torn from her back, was huddled gasping against the wall.
She saw him and began to speak, but he stopped and faced her. He faced her, grinding his teeth, and with such an awful fire of fury in his eyes that she shrank from him in terror, flattening herself against the wall.
“What did I tell you?” he said in a choked voice, and then passed on. A few paces down the passage he met one of his own clerks, a sharp fellow enough.
“Here, Jones,” he said, “you see that woman there. She has made a charge against me. Watch her. See where she goes to, and find out what she is going to do. Then come and tell me at the office. If you lose sight of her, you lose your place too. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said the astonished clerk, and Mr. Quest was gone.
He made his way direct to the office. It was closed, for he had told his clerks he should not come back after court, and that they could go at half-past four. He had his key, however, and, entering, lit the gas. Then he went to his safe and sorted some papers, burning a good number of them. Two large documents, however, he put by his side to read. One was his will, the other was endorsed “Statement of the circumstances connected with Edith.”
First he looked through his will. It had been made some years ago, and was entirely in favour of his wife, or, rather, of his reputed wife, Belle.
“It may as well stand,” he said aloud; “if anything happens to me she’ll take about ten thousand under it, and that was what she brought me.” Taking the pen he went through the document carefully, and wherever the name of “Belle Quest” occurred he put a X, and inserted these words, “Gennett, commonly known as Belle Quest,” Gennett being Belle’s maiden name, and initialled the correction. Next he glanced at the Statement. It contained a full and fair account of his connection with the woman who had ruined his life. “I may as well leave it,” he thought; “some day it will show Belle that I was not quite so bad as I seemed.”
He replaced the statement in a brief envelope, sealed and directed it to Belle, and finally marked it, “Not to be opened till my death.–W. Quest.” Then he put the envelope away in the safe and took up the will for the same purpose. Next it on the table lay the deeds executed by Edward Cossey transferring the Honham mortgages to Mr. Quest in consideration of his abstaining from the commencement of a suit for divorce in which he proposed to join Edward Cossey as co-respondent. “Ah!” he thought to himself, “that game is up. Belle is not my legal wife, therefore I cannot commence a suit against her in which Cossey would figure as co-respondent, and so the consideration fails. I am sorry, for I should have liked him to lose his thirty thousand pounds as well as his wife, but it can’t be helped. It was a game of bluff, and now that the bladder has been pricked I haven’t a leg to stand on.”
Then, taking a pen, he wrote on a sheet of paper which he inserted in the will, “Dear B.,–You must return the Honham mortgages to Mr. Edward Cossey. As you are not my legal wife the consideration upon which he transferred them fails, and you cannot hold them in equity, nor I suppose would you wish to do so.–W. Q.”
Having put all the papers away, he shut the safe at the moment that the clerk whom he had deputed to watch his wife knocked at the door and entered.
“Well?” said his master.
“Well, sir, I watched the woman. She stopped in the passage for a minute, and then George, Squire de la Molle’s man, came out and spoke to her. I got quite close so as to hear, and he said, ‘You’d better get out of this.’
“‘Where to?’ she answered. ‘I’m afraid.’
“‘Back to London,’ he said, and gave her a sovereign, and she got up without a word and slunk off to the station followed by a mob of people. She is in the refreshment room now, but George sent word to say that they ought not to serve her with any drink.”
“What time does the next train go–7.15, does it not?” said Mr. Quest.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, go back to the station and keep an eye upon that woman, and when the time comes get me a first-class return ticket to London. I shall go up myself and give her in charge there. Here is some money,” and he gave him a five-pound note, “and look here, Jones, you need not trouble about the change.”
“Thank you, sir, I’m sure,” said Jones, to whom, his salary being a guinea a week, on which he supported a wife and family, a gift of four pounds was sudden wealth.
“Don’t thank me, but do as I tell you. I will be down at the station at 7.10. Meet me outside and give me the ticket. That will do.”
When Jones had gone Mr. Quest sat down to think.
So George had loosed this woman on him, and that was the meaning of his mysterious warnings. How did he find her? That did not matter, he had found her, and in revenge for the action taken against the de la Molle family had brought her here to denounce him. It was cleverly managed, too. Mr. Quest reflected to himself that he should never have given the man credit for the brains. Well, that was what came of underrating people.
And so this was the end of all his hopes, ambitions, shifts and struggles! The story would be in every paper in England before another twenty-four hours were over, headed, “/Remarkable occurrence at Boisingham Quarter Sessions.–Alleged bigamy of a solicitor./” No doubt, too, the Treasury would take it up and institute a prosecution. This was the end of his strivings after respectability and the wealth that brings it. He had overreached himself. He had plotted and schemed, and hardened his heart against the de la Molle family, and fate had made use of his success to destroy him. In another few months he had expected to be able to leave this place a wealthy and respected man–and now? He laid his hand upon the table and reviewed his past life–tracing it from year to year, and seeing how the shadow of this accursed woman had haunted him, bringing disgrace and terror and mental agony with it–making his life a misery. And now what was to be done? He was ruined. Let him fly to the utmost parts of the earth, let him burrow in the recesses of the cities of the earth, and his shame would find him out. He was an impostor, a bigamist; one who had seduced an innocent woman into a mock marriage and then taken her fortune to buy the silence of his lawful wife. More, he had threatened to bring an action for divorce against a woman to whom he knew he was not really married and made it a lever to extort large sums of money or their value.
What is there that a man in his position can do?
He can do two things–he can revenge himself upon the author of his ruin, and he be bold enough, he can put an end to his existence and his sorrows at a blow.
Mr. Quest rose and walked to the door. Halting there, he turned and looked round the office in that peculiar fashion wherewith the eyes take their adieu. Then with a sigh he went.
Reaching his own house he hesitated whether or not to enter. Had the news reached Belle? If so, how was he to face her? Her hands were not clean, indeed, but at any rate she had no mock marriage in her record, and her dislike of him had been unconcealed throughout. She had never wished to marry him, and never for one single day regarded him otherwise than with aversion.
After reflection he turned and went round by the back way into the garden. The curtains of the French windows were drawn, but it was a wet and windy night, and the draught occasionally lifted the edge of one of them. He crept like a thief up to his own window and looked in. The drawing-room was lighted, and in a low chair by the fire sat Belle. She was as usual dressed in black, and to Mr. Quest, who loved her, and who knew that he was about to bid farewell to the sight of her, she looked more beautiful now than ever she had before. A book lay open on her knee, and he noticed, not without surprise, that it was a Bible. But she was not reading it; her dimpled chin rested on her hand, her violent eyes were fixed on vacancy, and even from where he was he thought that he could see the tears in them.
She had heard nothing; he was sure of that from the expression of her face; she was thinking of her own sorrows, not of his shame.
Yes, he would go in.
CHAPTER XXXVI
HOW THE GAME ENDED
Mr. Quest entered the house by a side door, and having taken off his hat and coat went into the drawing-room. He had still half an hour to spare before starting to catch the train.
“Well,” said Belle, looking up. “Why are you looking so pale?”
“I have had a trying day,” he answered. “What have you been doing?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Reading the Bible, I see.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, colouring a little, for she had thrown a newspaper over the book when she heard him coming in. “Yes, I have been reading the Bible. Don’t you know that when everything else in life has failed them women generally take to religion?”
“Or drink,” he put in, with a touch of his old bitterness. “Have you seen Mr. Cossey lately?”
“No. Why do you ask that? I thought we had agreed to drop that subject.”
As a matter of fact it had not been alluded to since Edward left the house.
“You know that Miss de la Molle will not marry him after all?”
“Yes, I know. She will not marry him because you forced him to give up the mortgages.”
“You ought to be much obliged to me. Are you not pleased?”
“No. I no longer care about anything. I am tired of passion, and sin and failure. I care for nothing any more.”
“It seems that we have both reached the same goal, but by different roads.”
“You?” she answered, looking up; “at any rate you are not tired of money, or you would not do what you have done to get it.”
“I never cared for money itself,” he said. “I only wanted money that I might be rich and, therefore, respected.”
“And you think any means justifiable so long as you get it?”
“I thought so. I do not think so now.”
“I don’t understand you to-night, William. It is time for me to go to dress for dinner.”
“Don’t go just yet. I’m leaving in a minute.”
“Leaving? Where for?”
“London; I have to go up to-night about some business.”
“Indeed; when are you coming back?”
“I don’t quite know–to-morrow, perhaps. I wonder, Belle,” he went on, his voice shaking a little, “if you will always think as badly of me as you do now.”
“I?” she said, opening her eyes widely; “who am I that I should judge you? However bad you may be, I am worse.”
“Perhaps there are excuses to be made for both of us,” he said; “perhaps, after all, there is no such thing as free will, and we are nothing but pawns moved by a higher power. Who knows? But I will not keep you any longer. Good-bye–Belle!”
“Yes.”
“May I kiss you before I go?”
She looked at him in astonishment. Her first impulse was to refuse. He had not kissed her for years. But something in the man’s face touched her. It was always a refined and melancholy face, but to-night it wore a look which to her seemed almost unearthly.
“Yes, William, if you wish,” she said; “but I wonder that you care to.”
“Let the dead bury their dead,” he answered, and stooping he put his arm round her delicate waist and drawing her to him kissed her tenderly but without passion on her forehead. “There, good-night,” he said; “I wish that I had been a better husband to you. Good-night,” and he was gone.
When he reached his room he flung himself for a few moments face downwards upon the bed, and from the convulsive motion of his back an observer might almost have believed that he was sobbing. When he rose, there was no trace of tears or tenderness upon his features. On the contrary, they were stern and set, like the features of one bent upon some terrible endeavour. Going to a drawer, he unlocked it and took from it a Colt’s revolver of the small pattern. It was loaded, but he extracted the cartridges and replaced them with fresh ones from a tin box. Then he went downstairs, put on a large ulster with a high collar, and a soft felt hat, the brim of which he turned down over his face, placed the pistol in the pocket of his ulster, and started.
It was a dreadful night, the wind was blowing a heavy gale, and between the gusts the rain came down in sheets of driving spray. Nobody was about the streets–the weather was far too bad; and Mr. Quest reached the station without meeting a living soul. Outside the circle of light from a lamp over the doorway he paused, and looked about for the clerk Jones. Presently, he saw him walking backwards and forwards under the shelter of a lean-to, and going up, touched him on the shoulder.
The man started back.
“Have you got the ticket, Jones?” he asked.
“Lord, sir,” said Jones, “I didn’t know you in that get-up. Yes, here it is.”
“Is the woman there still?”
“Yes, sir; she’s taken a ticket, third-class, to town. She has been going on like a wild thing because they would not give her any liquor at the refreshment bar, till at last she frightened them into letting her have six of brandy. Then she began and told the girl all sorts of tales about you, sir–said she was going back to London because she was afraid that if she stopped here you would murder her–and that you were her lawful husband, and she would have a warrant out against you, and I don’t know what all. I sat by and heard her with my own ears.”
“Did she–did she indeed?” said Mr. Quest, with an attempt at a laugh. “Well, she’s a common thief and worse, that’s what she is, and by this time to-morrow I hope to see her safe in gaol. Ah! here comes the train. Good-night, Jones. I can manage for myself now.”
“What’s his game?” said Jones to himself as he watched his master slip on to the platform by a gate instead of going through the booking office. “Well, I’ve had four quid out of it, any way, and it’s no affair of mine.” And Jones went home to tea.
Meanwhile Mr. Quest was standing on the wet and desolate platform quite away from the lamps, watching the white lights of the approaching train rushing on through the storm and night. Presently it drew up. No passengers got out.
“Now, mam, look sharp if you’re going,” cried the porter, and the woman Edith came out of the refreshment room.
“There’s the third, forrard there,” said the porter, running to the van to see about the packing of the mails.
On she came, passing quite close to Mr. Quest, so close that he could hear her swearing at the incivility of the porter. There was a third- class compartment just opposite, and this she entered. It was one of those carriages that are still often to be seen on provincial lines in which the partitions do not go up to the roof, and, if possible, more vilely lighted than usual. Indeed the light which should have illuminated the after-half of it had either never been lit or had gone out. There was not a soul in the whole length of the compartment.
As soon as his wife was in, Mr. Quest watched his opportunity. Slipping up to the dark carriage, he opened and shut the door as quietly as possible and took his seat in the gloom.
The engine whistled, there was a cry of “right forrard,” and they were off.
Presently he saw the woman stand up in her division of the compartment and peep over into the gloom.
“Not a blessed soul,” he heard her mutter, “and yet I feel as though that devil Billy was creeping about after me. Ugh! it must be the horrors. I can see the look he gave me now.”
A few minutes later the train stopped at a station, but nobody got in, and presently it moved on again. “Any passengers for Effry?” shouted the porter, and there had been no response. If they did not stop at Effry there would be no halt for forty minutes. Now was his time. He waited a little till they had got up the speed. The line here ran through miles and miles of fen country, more or less drained by dykes and rivers, but still wild and desolate enough. Over this great flat the storm was sweeping furiously–even drowning in its turmoil the noise of the travelling train.
Very quietly he rose and climbed over the low partition which separated his compartment from that in which the woman was. She was seated in the corner, her head leaning back, so that the feeble light from the lamp fell on it, and her eyes were closed. She was asleep.
He slid himself along the seat till he was opposite to her, then paused to look at the fierce wicked face on which drink and paint and years of evil-thinking and living had left their marks, and looking shuddered. There was his bad genius, there was the creature who had driven him from evil to evil and finally destroyed him. Had it not been for her he might have been a good and respected man, and not what he was now, a fraudulent ruined outcast. All his life seemed to flash before his inner eye in those few seconds of contemplation, all the long weary years of struggle, crime, and deceit. And this was the end of it, and /there/ was the cause of it. Well, she should not escape him; he would be revenged upon her at last. There was nothing but death before /him/, she should die too.
He set his teeth, drew the loaded pistol from his pocket, cocked it and lifted it to her breast.
What was the matter with the thing? He had never known the pull of a pistol to be so heavy before.
No, it was not /that/. He could not do it. He could not shoot a sleeping woman, devil though she was; he could not kill her in her sleep. His nature rose up against it.
He placed the pistol on his knee, and as he did so she opened her eyes. He saw the look of wonder gather in them and grow to a stare of agonised terror. Her face became rigid like a dead person’s and her lips opened to scream, but no cry came. She could only point to the pistol.
“Make a sound and you are dead,” he said fiercely. “Not that it matters though,” he added, as he remembered that the scream must be loud which could be heard in that raging gale.
“What are you going to do?” she gasped at last. “What are you going to do with that pistol? And where do you come from?”
“I come out of the night,” he answered, raising the weapon, “out of the night into which you are going.”
“You are not going to kill me?” she moaned, turning up her ghastly face. “I can’t die. I’m afraid to die. It will hurt, and I’ve been wicked. Oh, you are not going to kill me, are you?”
“Yes, I am going to kill you,” he answered. “I told you months ago that I would kill you if you molested me. You have ruined me now, there is nothing but death left for /me/, and /you/ shall die too, you fiend.”
“Oh no! no! no! anything but that. I was drunk when I did it; that man brought me there, and they had taken all my things, and I was starving,” and she glanced wildly round the empty carriage to see if help could be found, but there was none. She was alone with her fate.
She slipped down upon the floor of the carriage and clasped his knees. Writhing in her terror upon the ground, in hoarse accents she prayed for mercy.
“You used to kiss me,” she said; “you cannot kill a woman you used to kiss years ago. Oh, spare me, spare me!”
He set his lips and placed the muzzle of the pistol against her head. She shivered at the contact, and her teeth began to chatter.
He could not do it. He must let her go, and leave her to fate. After all, she could hurt him no more, for before another sun had set he would be beyond her reach.
His pistol hand fell against his side, and he looked down with loathing not unmixed with pity at the abject human snake who was writing at his feet.
She caught his eye, and her faculties, sharpened by the imminent peril, read relentment there. For the moment, at any rate, he was softened. If she could master him now while he was off his guard–he was not a very strong man! But the pistol—-
Slowly, still groaning out supplications, she rose to her feet.
“Yes,” he said, “be quiet while I think if I can spare you,” and he half turned his head away from her. For a moment nothing was heard but the rush of the gale and the roll of the wheels running over and under bridges.
This was her opportunity. All her natural ferocity arose within her, intensified a hundred times by the instinct of self-protection. With a sudden blow she struck the pistol from his hand; it fell upon the floor of the carriage. And then with a scream she sprang like a wild cat straight at his throat. So sudden was the attack that the long lean hands were gripping his windpipe before he knew it had been made. Back she bore him, though he seized her round the waist. She was the heavier of the two, and back they went, /crash/ against the carriage door.
It gave! Oh, God, the worn catch gave! Out together, out with a yell of despair into the night and the raging gale; down together through sixty feet of space into the black river beneath. Down together, deep into the watery depths–into the abyss of Death.
The train rushed on, the wild winds blew, and the night was as the night had been. But there in the black water, though there was never a star to see them, there, locked together in death as they had been locked together in life, the fierce glare of hate and terror yet staring from their glazed eyes, two bodies rolled over and over as they sped silently towards the sea.
CHAPTER XXXVII
SISTER AGNES
Ten days had passed. The tragedy had echoed through all the land. Numberless articles and paragraphs had been written in numberless papers, and numberless theories had been built upon them. But the echoes were already beginning to die away. Both actors in the dim event were dead, and there was no pending trial to keep the public interest alive.
The two corpses, still linked in that fierce dying grip, had been picked up on a mudbank. An inquest had been held, at which an open verdict was returned, and they were buried. Other events had occurred, the papers were filled with the reports of new tragedies, and the affair of the country lawyer who committed bigamy and together with his lawful wife came to a tragic and mysterious end began to be forgotten.
In Boisingham and its neighbourhood much sympathy was shown with Belle, whom people still called Mrs. Quest, though she had no title to that name. But she received it coldly and kept herself secluded.
As soon as her supposed husband’s death was beyond a doubt Belle had opened his safe (for he had left the keys on his dressing-table), and found therein his will and other papers, including the mortgage deeds, to which, as Mr. Quest’s memorandum advised her, she had no claim. Nor, indeed, had her right to them been good in law, would she have retained them, seeing that they were a price wrung from her late lover under threat of an action that could not be brought.
So she made them into a parcel and sent them to Edward Cossey, together with a formal note of explanation, greatly wondering in her heart what course he would take with reference to them. She was not left long in doubt. The receipt of the deeds was acknowledged, and three days afterwards she heard that a notice calling in the borrowed money had been served upon Mr. de la Molle on behalf of Edward Cossey.
So he had evidently made up his mind not to forego this new advantage which chance threw in his way. Pressure and pressure alone could enable him to attain his end, and he was applying it unmercifully. Well, she had done with him now, it did not matter to her; but she could not help faintly wondering at the extraordinary tenacity and hardness of purpose which his action showed. Then she turned her mind to the consideration of another matter, in connection with which her plans were approaching maturity.
It was some days after this, exactly a fortnight from the date of Mr. Quest’s death, that Edward Cossey was sitting one afternoon brooding over the fire in his rooms. He had much business awaiting his attention in London, but he would not go to London. He could not tear himself away from Boisingham, and such of the matters as could be attended to there were left without attention. He was still as determined as ever to marry Ida, more determined if possible, for from constant brooding on the matter he had arrived at a condition approaching monomania. He had been quick to see the advantage resulting to him from Mr. Quest’s tragic death and the return of the deeds, and though he knew that Ida would hate him the more for doing it, he instructed his lawyers to call in the money and make use of every possible legal means to harass and put pressure upon Mr. de la Molle. At the same time he had written privately to the Squire, calling his attention to the fact that matters were now once more as they had been at the beginning, but that he was as before willing to carry out the arrangements which he had already specified, provided that Ida could be persuaded to consent to marry him. To this Mr. de la Molle had answered courteously enough, notwithstanding his grief and irritation at the course his would-be son-in-law had taken about the mortgages on the death of Mr. Quest, and the suspicion (it was nothing more) that he now had as to the original cause of their transfer to the lawyer. He said what he had said before, that he could not force his daughter into a marriage with him, but that if she chose to agree to it he should offer no objection. And there the matter stood. Once or twice Edward had met Ida walking or driving. She bowed to him coldly and that was all. Indeed he had only one crumb of comfort in his daily bread of disappointment, and the hope deferred which, where a lady is concerned, makes the heart more than normally sick, and it was that he knew his hated rival, Colonel Quaritch, had been forbidden the Castle, and that intercourse between him and Ida was practically at an end.
But he was a dogged and persevering man; he knew the power of money and the shifts to which people can be driven who are made desperate by the want of it. He knew, too, that it is no rare thing for women who are attached to one man to sell themselves to another of their own free will, realising that love may pass, but wealth (if the settlements are properly drawn) does not. Therefore he still hoped that with so many circumstances bringing an ever-increasing pressure upon her, Ida’s spirit would in time be broken, her resistance would collapse, and he would have his will. Nor, as the sequel will show, was that hope a baseless one.
As for his infatuation there was literally no limit to it. It broke out in all sorts of ways, and for miles round was a matter of public notoriety and gossip. Over the mantelpiece in his sitting-room was a fresh example of it. By one means and another he had obtained several photographs of Ida, notably one of her in a court dress which she had worn two or three years before, when her brother James had insisted upon her being presented. These photographs he caused to be enlarged and then, at the cost of 500 pounds, commissioned a well-known artist to paint from them a full-length life-size portrait of Ida in her court dress. This order had been executed, and the portrait, which although the colouring was not entirely satisfactory was still an effective likeness and a fine piece of work, now hung in a splendid frame over his mantelpiece.
There, on the afternoon in question, he sat before the fire, his eyes fixed upon the portrait, of which the outline was beginning to grow dim in the waning December light, when the servant girl came in and announced that a lady wished to speak to him. He asked what her name was, and the girl said that she did not know, because she had her veil down and was wrapped up in a big cloak.
In due course the lady was shown up. He had relapsed into his reverie, for nothing seemed to interest him much now unless it had to do with Ida–and he knew that the lady could not be Ida, because the girl said that she was short. As it happened, he sat with his right ear, in which he was deaf, towards the door, so that between his infirmity and his dreams he never heard Belle–for it was she–enter the room.
For a minute or more she stood looking at him as he sat with his eyes fixed upon the picture, and while she looked an expression of pity stole across her sweet pale face.
“I wonder what curse there is laid upon us that we should be always doomed to seek what we cannot find?” she said aloud.
He heard her now, and looking up saw her standing in the glow and flicker of the firelight, which played upon her white face and black- draped form. He started violently; as he did so she loosed the heavy cloak and hood that she wore and it fell behind her. But where was the lovely rounded form, and where the clustering golden curls? Gone, and in their place a coarse robe of blue serge, on which hung a crucifix, and the white hood of the nun.
He sprang from his chair with an exclamation, not knowing if he dreamed or if he really saw the woman who stood there like a ghost in the firelight.
“Forgive me, Edward,” she said presently, in her sweet low voice. “I daresay that this all looks theatrical enough–but I have put on this dress for two reasons: firstly, because I must leave this town in an hour’s time and wish to do so unknown; and secondly, to show that you need not fear that I have come to be troublesome. Will you light the candles?”
He did so mechanically, and then pulled down the blinds. Meanwhile Belle had seated herself near the table, her face buried in her hands.
“What is the meaning of all this, Belle?” he said.
“‘Sister Agnes,’ you must call me now,” she said, taking her hands from her face. “The meaning of it is that I have left the world and entered a sisterhood which works among the poor in London, and I have come to bid you farewell, a last farewell.”
He stared at her in amazement. He did not find it easy to connect the idea of this beautiful, human, loving creature with the cold sanctuary of a sisterhood. He did not know that natures like this, whose very intensity is often the cause of their destruction, are most capable of these strange developments. The man or woman who can really love and endure–and they are rare–can also, when their passion has utterly broken them, turn to climb the stony paths that lead to love’s antipodes.
“Edward,” she went on, speaking very slowly, “you know in what relation we have stood to each other, and what that relationship means to woman. You know this–I have loved you with all my heart, and all my strength, and all my soul—-” Here she trembled and broke down.
“You know, too,” she continued presently, “what has been the end of all this, the shameful end. I am not come to blame you. I do not blame you, for the fault was mine, and if I have anything to forgive I forgive it freely. Whatever memories may still live in my heart I swear I put away all bitterness, and that my most earnest wish is that you may be happy, as happiness is to you. The sin was mine; that is it would have been mine were we free agents, which perhaps we are not. I should have loved my husband, or rather the man whom I thought my husband, for with all his faults he was of a different clay to you, Edward.”
He looked up, but said nothing.
“I know,” she went on, pointing to the picture over the mantelpiece, “that your mind is still set upon her, and I am nothing, and less than nothing, to you. When I am gone you will scarcely give me a thought. I cannot tell you if you will succeed in your end, and I think the methods you are adopting wicked and shameful. But whether you succeed or not, your fate also will be what my fate is–to love a person who is not only indifferent to you but who positively dislikes you, and reserves all her secret heart for another man, and I know no greater penalty than is to be found in that daily misery.”
“You are very consoling,” he said sulkily.
“I only tell you the truth,” she answered. “What sort of life do you suppose mine has been when I am so utterly broken, so entirely robbed of hope, that I have determined to leave the world and hide myself and my shame in a sisterhood? And now, Edward,” she went on, after a pause, “I have something to tell you, for I will not go away, if indeed you allow me to go away at all after you have heard it, until I have confessed.” And she leant forward and looked him full in the face, whispering–“/I shot you on purpose, Edward!/”
“What!” he said, springing from his chair; “you tried to murder me?”
“Yes, yes; but don’t think too hardly of me. I am only flesh and blood, and you drove me wild with jealousy–you taunted me with having been your mistress and said that I was not fit to associate with the lady whom you were going to marry. It made me mad, and the opportunity offered–the gun was there, and I shot you. God forgive me, I think that I have suffered more than you did. Oh! when day after day I saw you lying there and did not know if you would live or die, I thought that I should have gone mad with remorse and agony!”
He listened so far, and then suddenly walked across the room towards the bell. She placed herself between him and it.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“Going to do? I am going to send for a policeman and give you into custody for attempted murder, that is all.”
She caught his arm and looked him in the face. In another second she had loosed it.
“Of course,” she said, “you have a right to do that. Ring and send for the policeman, only remember that nothing is known now, but the whole truth will come out at the trial.”
This checked him, and he stood thinking.
“Well,” she said, “why don’t you ring?”
“I do not ring,” he answered, “because on the whole I think I had better let you go. I do not wish to be mixed up with you any more. You have done me mischief enough; you have finished by attempting to murder me. Go; I think that a convent is the best place for you; you are too bad and too dangerous to be left at large.”
“/Oh!/” she said, like one in pain. “/Oh!/ and you are the man for whom I have come to this! Oh, God! it is a cruel world.” And she pressed her hands to her heart and stumbled rather than walked to the door.
Reaching it she turned, and her hands still pressing the coarse blue gown against her heart, she leaned against the door.
“Edward,” she said, in a strained whisper, for her breath came thick, “Edward–I am going for ever–have you /no/ kind word–to say to me?”
He looked at her, a scowl upon his handsome face. Then by way of answer he turned upon his heel.
And so, still holding her hands against her poor broken heart, she went out of the house, out of Boisingham and of touch and knowledge of the world. In after years these two were fated to meet once again, and under circumstances sufficiently tragic; but the story of that meeting does not lie within the scope of this history. To the world Belle is dead, but there is another world of sickness, and sordid unchanging misery and shame, where the lovely face of Sister Agnes moves to and fro like a ray of heaven’s own light. There those who would know her must go to seek her.
Poor Belle! Poor shamed, deserted woman! She was an evil-doer, and the fatality of love and the unbalanced vigour of her mind, which might, had she been more happily placed, have led her to all things that are pure, and true, and of good report, combined to drag her into shame and wretchedness. But the evil that she did was paid back to her in full measure, pressed down and running over. Few of us need to wait for a place of punishment to get the due of our follies and our sins. /Here/ we expiate them. They are with us day and night, about our path and about our bed, scourging us with the whips of memory, mocking us with empty longing and the hopelessness of despair. Who can escape the consequence of sin, or even of the misfortune which led to sin? Certainly Belle did not, nor Mr. Quest, nor even that fierce-hearted harpy who hunted him to his grave.
And so good-bye to Belle. May she find peace in its season!
CHAPTER XXXVIII
COLONEL QUARITCH EXPRESSES HIS VIEWS
Meanwhile things had been going very ill at the Castle. Edward Cossey’s lawyers were carrying out their client’s instructions to the letter with a perseverance and ingenuity worthy of a County Court solicitor. Day by day they found a new point upon which to harass the wretched Squire. Some share of the first expenses connected with the mortgages had, they said, been improperly thrown upon their client, and they again and again demanded, in language which was almost insolent, the immediate payment of the amount. Then there was three months’ interest overdue, and this also they pressed and clamoured for, till the old gentleman was nearly driven out of his senses, and as a consequence drove everybody about the place out of theirs.
At last this state of affairs began to tell upon his constitution, which, strong as he was, could not at his age withstand such constant worry. He grew to look years older, his shoulders acquired a stoop, and his memory began to fail him, especially on matters connected with the mortgages and farm accounts. Ida, too, became pale and ill; she caught a heavy cold, which she could not throw off, and her face acquired a permanently pained and yet listless look.
One day, it was on the 15th of December, things reached a climax. When Ida came down to breakfast she found her father busy poring over some more letters from the lawyers.
“What is it now, father?” she said.
“What is it now?” he answered irritably. “What, it’s another claim for two hundred, that’s what it is. I keep telling them to write to my lawyers, but they won’t, at least they write to me too. There, I can’t make head or tail of it. Look here,” and he showed her two sides of a big sheet of paper covered with statements of accounts. “Anyhow, I have not got two hundred, that’s clear. I don’t even know where we are going to find the money to pay the three months’ interest. I’m worn out, Ida, I’m worn out! There is only one thing left for me to do, and that is to die, and that’s the long and short of it. I get so confused with these figures. I’m an old man now, and all these troubles are too much for me.”
“You must not talk like that, father,” she answered, not knowing what to say, for affairs were indeed desperate.
“Yes, yes, it’s all very well to talk so, but facts are stubborn. Our family is ruined, and we must accept it.”
“Cannot the money be got anyhow? Is there /nothing/ to be done?” she said in despair.
“What is the good of asking me that? There is only one thing that can save us, and you know what it is as well as I do. But you are your own mistress. I have no right to put pressure on you. I don’t wish to put pressure on you. You must please yourself. Meanwhile I think we had better leave this place at once, and go and live in a cottage somewhere, if we can get enough to support us; if not we must starve, I suppose. I cannot keep up appearances any longer.”
Ida rose, and with a strange sad light of resolution shining in her eyes, came to where her father was sitting, and putting her hands upon his shoulders, looked him in the face.
“Father,” she said, “do you wish me to marry that man?”
“Wish you to marry him? What do you mean?” he said, not without irritation, and avoiding her gaze. “It is no affair of mine. I don’t like the man, if that’s what you mean. He is acting like–well, like the cur that he is, in putting on the screw as he is doing; but, of course, that is the way out of it, and the only way, and there you are.”
“Father,” she said again, “will you give me ten days, that is, until Christmas Day? If nothing happens between this and then I will marry Mr. Edward Cossey.”
A sudden light of hope shone in his eyes. She saw it, though he tried to hide it by turning his head away.
“Oh, yes,” he answered, “as you wish; settle it one way or the other on Christmas Day, and then we can go out with the new year. You see your brother James is dead, I have no one left to advise me now, and I suppose that I am getting old. At any rate, things seem to be too much for me. Settle it as you like; settle it as you like,” and he got up, leaving his breakfast half swallowed, and went off to moon aimlessly about the park.
So she made up her mind at last. This was the end of her struggling. She could not let her old father be turned out of house and home to starve, for practically they would starve. She knew her hateful lover well enough to be aware that he would show no mercy. It was a question of the woman or the money, and she was the woman. Either she must let him take her or they must be destroyed; there was no middle course. And in these circumstances there was no room for hesitation. Once more her duty became clear to her. She must give up her life, she must give up her love, she must give up herself. Well, so be it. She was weary of the long endeavour against fortune, now she would yield and let the tide of utter misery sweep over her like a sea–to bear her away till at last it brought her to that oblivion in which perchance all things come right or are as though they had never been.
She had scarcely spoken to her lover, Harold Quaritch, for some weeks. She had as she understood it entered into a kind of unspoken agreement with her father not to do so, and that agreement Harold had realised and respected. Since their last letters to each other they had met once or twice casually or at church, interchanged a few indifferent words, though their eyes spoke another story, touched each other’s hands and parted. That was absolutely all. But now that Ida had come to this momentous decision she felt he had a right to learn it, and so once more she wrote to him. She might have gone to see him or told him to meet her, but she would not. For one thing she did not dare to trust herself on such an errand in his dear company, for another she was too proud, thinking if her father came to hear of it he might consider that it had a clandestine and underhand appearance.
And so she wrote. With all she said we need not concern ourselves. The letter was loving, even passionate, more passionate perhaps than one would have expected from a woman of Ida’s calm and stately sort. But a mountain may have a heart of fire although it is clad in snows, and so it sometimes is with women who seem cold and unemotional as marble. Besides, it was her last chance–she could write him no more letters and she had much to say.
“And so I have decided, Harold,” she said after telling him of all her doubts and troubles. “I must do it, there is no help for it, as I think you will see. I have asked for ten days’ respite. I really hardly know why, except that it is a respite. And now what is there left to say to you except good-bye? I love you, Harold, I make no secret of it, and I shall never love any other. Remember all your life that I love you and have not forgotten you, and never can forget. For people placed as we are there is but one hope–the grave. In the grave earthly considerations fail and earthly contracts end, and there I trust and believe we shall find each other–or at the least forgetfulness. My heart is so sore I know not what to say to you, for it is difficult to put all I feel in words. I am overwhelmed, my spirit is broken, and I wish to heaven that I were dead. Sometimes I almost cease to believe in a God who can allow His creatures to be so tormented and give us love only that it may be daily dishonoured in our sight; but who am I that I should complain, and after all what are our troubles compared to some we know of? Well, it will come to an end at last, and meanwhile pity me and think of me.
“Pity me and think of me; yes, but never see me more. As soon as this engagement is publicly announced, go away, the further the better. Yes, go to New Zealand, as you suggested once, and in pity of our human weakness never let me see your face again. Perhaps you may write to me sometimes–if Mr. Cossey will allow it. Go there and occupy yourself, it will divert your mind–you are still too young a man to lay yourself upon the shelf–mix yourself up with the politics of the place, take to writing; anything, so long as you can absorb yourself. I sent you a photograph of myself (I have nothing better) and a ring which I have worn night and day since I was a child. I think that it will fit your little finger and I hope you will always wear it in memory of me. It was my mother’s. And now it is late and I am tired, and what is there more that a woman can say to the man she loves–and whom she must leave for ever? Only one word–Good-bye. Ida.”
When Harold got this letter it fairly broke him down. His hopes had been revived when he thought that all was lost, and now again they were utterly dashed and broken. He could see no way out of it, none at all. He could not quarrel with Ida’s decision, shocking as it was, for the simple reason that he knew in his heart she was acting rightly and even nobly. But, oh, the thought of it made him mad. It is probable that to a man of imagination and deep feeling hell itself can invent no more hideous torture than he must undergo in the position in which Harold Quaritch found himself. To truly love some good woman or some woman whom he thinks good–for it comes to the same thing–to love her more than life, to hold her dearer even than his honour, to be, like Harold, beloved in turn; and then to know that this woman, this one thing for which he would count the world well lost, this light that makes his days beautiful, has been taken from him by the bitterness of Fate (not by Death, for that he could bear), taken from him, and given –for money or money’s worth–to some other man! It is, perhaps, better that a man should die than that he should pass through such an experience as that which threatened Harold Quaritch now: for though the man die not, yet will it kill all that is best in him; and whatever triumphs may await him, whatever women may be ready in the future to pin their favours to his breast, life will never be for him what it might have been, because his lost love took its glory with her.
No wonder, then, that he despaired. No wonder, too, that there rose up in his breast a great anger and indignation against the man who had brought this last extremity of misery upon them. He was just, and could make allowances for his rival’s infatuation–which, indeed, Ida being concerned, it was not difficult for him to understand. But he was also, and above all things, a gentleman; and the spectacle of a woman being inexorably driven into a distasteful marriage by money pressure, put on by the man who wished to gain her, revolted him beyond measure, and, though he was slow to wrath, moved him to fiery indignation. So much did it move him that he took a resolution; Mr. Cossey should know his mind about the matter, and that at once. Ringing the bell, he ordered his dog-cart, and drove to Edward Cossey’s rooms with the full intention of giving that gentleman a very unpleasant quarter-of-an-hour.
Mr. Cossey was in. Fearing lest he should refuse to see him, the Colonel followed the servant up the stairs, and entered almost as she announced his name. There was a grim and even a formidable look upon his plain but manly face, and something of menace, too, in his formal and soldierly bearing; nor did his aspect soften when his eyes fell upon the full-length picture of Ida over the mantelpiece.
Edward Cossey rose with astonishment and irritation, not unmixed with nervousness, depicted on his face. The last person whom he wished to see and expected a visit from was Colonel Quaritch, whom in his heart he held in considerable awe. Besides, he had of late received such a series of unpleasant calls that it is not wonderful that he began to dread these interviews.
“Good-day,” he said coldly. “Will you be seated?”
The Colonel bowed his head slightly, but he did not sit down.
“To what am I indebted for the pleasure?” began Edward Cossey with much politeness.
“Last time I was here, Mr. Cossey,” said the Colonel in his deep voice, speaking very deliberately, “I came to give an explanation; now I come to ask one.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. To come to the point, Miss de la Molle and I are attached to each other, and there has been between us an understanding that this attachment might end in marriage.”
“Oh! has there?” said the younger man with a sneer.
“Yes,” answered the Colonel, keeping down his rising temper as well as he could. “But now I am told, upon what appears to be good authority, that you have actually condescended to bring, directly and indirectly, pressure of a monetary sort to bear upon Miss de la Molle and her father in order to force her into a distasteful marriage with yourself.”
“And what the devil business of yours is it, sir,” asked Cossey, “what I have or have not done? Making every allowance for the disappointment of an unsuccessful suitor, for I presume that you appear in that character,” and again he sneered, “I ask, what business is it of yours?”
“It is every business of mine, Mr. Cossey, because if Miss de la Molle is forced into this marriage, I shall lose my wife.”
“Then you will certainly lose her. Do you suppose that I am going to consider you? Indeed,” he went on, being now in a towering passion, “I should have thought that considering the difference of age and fortune between us, you might find other reasons than you suggest to account for my being preferred, if I should be so preferred. Ladies are apt to choose the better man, you know.”
“I don’t quite know what you mean by the ‘better man,’ Mr. Cossey,” said the Colonel quietly. “Comparisons are odious, and I will make none, though I admit that you have the advantage of me in money and in years. However, that is not the point; the point is that I have had the fortune to be preferred to /you/ by the lady in question, and /not/ you to me. I happen to know that the idea of her marriage with you is as distasteful to Miss de la Molle as it is to me. This I know from her own lips. She will only marry you, if she does so at all, under the pressure of direst necessity, and to save her father from the ruin you are deliberately bringing upon him.”
“Well, Colonel Quaritch,” he answered, “have you quite done lecturing me? If you have, let me tell you, as you seem anxious to know my mind, that if by any legal means I can marry Ida de la Molle I certainly intend to marry her. And let me tell you another thing, that when once I am married it will be the last that you shall see of her, if I can prevent it.”
“Thank you for your admissions,” said Harold, still more quietly. “So it seems that it is all true; it seems that you are using your wealth to harass this unfortunate gentleman and his daughter until you drive them into consenting to this marriage. That being so, I wish to tell you privately what I shall probably take some opportunity of telling you in public, namely, that a man who does these things is a cur, and worse than a cur, he is a /blackguard/, and /you/ are such a man, Mr. Cossey.”
Edward Cossey’s face turned perfectly livid with fury, and he drew himself up as though to spring at his adversary’s throat.
The Colonel held up his hand. “Don’t try that on with me,” he said. “In the first place it is vulgar, and in the second you have only just recovered from an accident and are no match for me, though I am over forty years old. Listen, our fathers had a way of settling their troubles; I don’t approve of that sort of thing as a rule, but in some cases it is salutary. If you think yourself aggrieved it does not take long to cross the water, Mr. Cossey.”
Edward Cossey looked puzzled. “Do you mean to suggest that I should fight a duel with you?” he said.
“To challenge a man to fight a duel,” answered the Colonel with deliberation, “is an indictable offence, therefore I make no such challenge. I have made a suggestion, and if that suggestion falls in with your views as,” and he bowed, “I hope it may, we might perhaps meet accidentally abroad in a few days’ time, when we could talk this matter over further.”
“I’ll see you hanged first,” answered Cossey. “What have I to gain by fighting you except a very good chance of being shot? I have had enough of being shot as it is, and we will play this game out upon the old lines, until I win it.”
“As you like,” said Harold. “I have made a suggestion to you which you do not see fit to accept. As to the end of the game, it is not finished yet, and therefore it is impossible to say who will win it. Perhaps you will be checkmated after all. In the meanwhile allow me again to assure you that I consider you both a cur and a blackguard, and to wish you good-morning.” And he bowed himself out, leaving Edward Cossey in a curious condition of concentrated rage.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE COLONEL GOES TO SLEEP
The state of mind is difficult to picture which could induce a peaceable christian-natured individual, who had moreover in the course of his career been mixed up with enough bloodshed to have acquired a thorough horror of it, to offer to fight a duel. Yet this state had been reached by Harold Quaritch.
Edward Cossey wisely enough declined to entertain the idea, but the Colonel had been perfectly in earnest about it. Odd as it may appear in the latter end of this nineteenth century, nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to put his life against that of his unworthy rival. Of course, it was foolish and wrong, but human nature is the same in all ages, and in the last extremity we fall back by instinct on those methods which men have from the beginning adopted to save themselves from intolerable wrong and dishonour, or, be it admitted, to bring the same upon others.
But Cossey utterly declined to fight. As he said, he had had enough of being shot, and so there was an end of it. Indeed, in after days the Colonel frequently looked back upon this episode in his career with shame not unmingled with amusement, reflecting when he did so on the strange potency of that passion which can bring men to seriously entertain the idea of such extravagances.
Well, there was nothing more to be done. He might, it is true, have seen Ida, and working upon her love and natural inclinations have tried to persuade her to cut the knot by marrying him off-hand. Perhaps he would have succeeded, for in these affairs women are apt to find the arguments advanced by their lovers weighty and well worthy of consideration. But he was not the man to adopt such a course. He did the only thing he could do–answered her letter by saying that what must be must be. He had learnt that on the day subsequent to his interview with his rival the Squire had written to Edward Cossey informing him that a decided answer would be given to him on Christmas Day, and that thereon all vexatious proceedings on the part of that gentleman’s lawyers had been stayed for the time. He could now no longer doubt what the answer would be. There was only one way out of the trouble, the way which Ida had made up her mind to adopt.
So he set to work to make his preparations for leaving Honham and this country for good and all. He wrote to land agents and put Molehill upon their books to be sold or let on lease, and also to various influential friends to obtain introductions to the leading men in New Zealand. But these matters did not take up all his time, and the rest of it hung heavily on his hands. He mooned about the place until he was tired. He tried to occupy himself in his garden, but it was weary work sowing crops for strange hands to reap, and so he gave it up.
Somehow the time wore on until at last it was Christmas Eve; the eve, too, of the fatal day of Ida’s decision. He dined alone that night as usual, and shortly after dinner some waits came to the house and began to sing their cheerful carols outside. The carols did not chime in at all well with his condition of mind, and he sent five shillings out to the singers with a request that they would go away as he had a headache.
Accordingly they went; and shortly after their departure the great gale for which that night is still famous began to rise. Then he fell to pacing up and down the quaint old oak-panelled parlour, thinking until his brain ached. The hour was at hand, the evil was upon him and her whom he loved. Was there no way out of it, no possible way? Alas! there was but one way and that a golden one; but where was the money to come from? He had it not, and as land stood it was impossible to raise it. Ah, if only that great treasure which old Sir James de la Molle had hid away and died rather than reveal, could be brought to light, now in the hour of his house’s sorest need! But the treasure was very mythical, and if it had ever really existed it was not now to be found. He went to his dispatch box and took from it the copy he had made of the entry in the Bible which had been in Sir James’s pocket when he was murdered in the courtyard. The whole story was a very strange one. Why did the brave old man wish that his Bible should be sent to his son, and why did he write that somewhat peculiar message in it?
Suppose Ida was right and that it contained a cypher or cryptograph which would give a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure? If so it was obvious that it would be one of the simplest nature. A man confined by himself in a dungeon and under sentence of immediate death would not have been likely to pause to invent anything complicated. It would, indeed, be curious that he should have invented anything at all under such circumstances, and when he could have so little hope that the riddle would be solved. But, on the other hand, his position was desperate; he was quite surrounded by foes; there was no chance of his being able to convey the secret in any other way, and he /might/ have done so.
Harold placed the piece of paper upon the mantelpiece, and sitting down in an arm-chair opposite began to contemplate it earnestly, as indeed he had often done before. In case its exact wording should not be remembered, it is repeated here. It ran: “/Do not grieve for me, Edward, my son, that I am thus suddenly and wickedly done to death by rebel murderers, for nought happeneth but according to God’s will. And now farewell, Edward, till we shall meet in heaven. My moneys have I hid, and on account thereof I die unto this world, knowing that not one piece shall Cromwell touch. To whom God shall appoint shall all my treasure be, for nought can I communicate./”
Harold stared and stared at this inscription. He read it forwards, backwards, crossways, and in every other way, but absolutely without result. At last, wearied out with misery of mind and the pursuit of a futile occupation, he dropped off sound asleep in his chair. This happened about a quarter to eleven o’clock. The next thing he knew was that he suddenly woke up; woke up completely, passing as quickly from a condition of deep sleep to one of wakefulness as though he had never shut his eyes. He used to say afterwards that he felt as though somebody had come and aroused him; it was not like a natural waking. Indeed, so unaccustomed was the sensation, that for a moment the idea flashed through his brain that he had died in his sleep, and was now awakening to a new state of existence.
This soon passed, however. Evidently he must have slept some time, for the lamp was out and the fire dying. He got up and hunted about in the dark for some matches, which at last he found. He struck a light, standing exactly opposite to the bit of paper with the copy of Sir James de la Molle’s dying message on it. This message was neatly copied long-ways upon a half-sheet of large writing paper, such as the Squire generally used. It’s first line ran as it was copied:
“/Do not grieve for me, Edward, my son, that I am thus suddenly and wickedly done./”
Now, as the match burnt up, by some curious chance, connected probably with the darkness and the sudden striking of light upon his eyeballs, it came to pass that Harold, happening to glance thereon, was only able to read four letters of this first line of writing. All the rest seemed to him but as a blue connecting those four letters. They were:
D……………E……………a……………d
being respectively the initials of the first, the sixth, the eleventh, and the sixteenth words of the line given above.
The match burnt out, and he began to hunt about for another.
“D-E-A-D,” he said aloud, repeating the letters almost automatically. “Why it spells ‘/Dead/.’ That is rather curious.”
Something about this accidental spelling awakened his interest very sharply–it was an odd coincidence. He lit some candles, and hurriedly examined the line. The first thing which struck him was that the four letters which went to make up the word “dead” were about equi-distant in the line of writing. Could it be? He hurriedly counted the words in the line. There were sixteen of them. That is after the first, one of the letters occurred at the commencement of every fifth word.
This was certainly curious. Trembling with nervousness he took a pencil and wrote down the initial letter of every fifth word in the message, thus:
Do not grieve for me, Edward my son, that I am thus suddenly and D E a
wickedly done to death by rebel murderers, for naught happeneth d m
but according to God’s will. And now farewell, Edward, till we a n
shall meet in heaven. My moneys have I hid, and on account thereof s m o
I die unto this world, knowing that not one piece shall Cromwell u n
touch. To whom God shall appoint shall all my treasure be, for t a b
nought can I communicate.
c
When he had done he wrote these initials in a line:
DEadmansmountabc
He stared at them for a little–then he saw.
/Great heaven! he had hit upon the reading of the riddle./
The answer was:
“/Dead Man’s Mount,”
followed by the mysterious letters A.B.C.
Breathless with excitement, he checked the letters again to see if by any chance he had made an error. No, it was perfectly correct.
“Dead Man’s Mount.” That was and had been for centuries the name of the curious tumulus or mound in his own back garden. It was this mount that learned antiquarians had discussed the origin of so fiercely, and which his aunt, the late Mrs. Massey, had roofed at the cost of two hundred and fifty pounds, in order to prove that the hollow in the top had once been the agreeable country seat of an ancient British family.
Could it then be but a coincidence that after the first word the initial of every fifth word in the message should spell out the name of this remarkable place, or was it so arranged? He sat down to think it over, trembling like a frightened child. Obviously, it was /not/ accident; obviously, the prisoner of more than two centuries ago had, in his helplessness, invented this simple cryptograph in the hope that his son or, if not his son, some one of his descendants would discover it, and thereby become master of the hidden wealth. What place would be more likely for the old knight to have chosen to secrete the gold than one that even in those days had the uncanny reputation of being haunted? Who would ever think of looking for modern treasure in the burying place of the ancient dead? In those days, too, Molehill, or Dead Man’s Mount, belonged to the de la Molle family, who had re-acquired it on the break up of the Abbey. It was only at the Restoration, when the Dofferleigh branch came into possession under the will of the second and last baronet, Edward de la Molle, who died in exile, that they failed to recover this portion of the property. And if this was so, and Sir James, the murdered man, had buried his treasure in the mount, what did the mysterious letters A.B.C. mean? Were they, perhaps, directions as to the line to be taken to discover it? Harold could not imagine, nor, as a matter of fact, did he or anybody else ever find out either then or thereafter.
Ida, indeed, used afterwards to laughingly declare that old Sir James meant to indicate that he considered the whole thing as plain as A.B.C., but this was an explanation which did not commend itself to Harold’s practical mind.
CHAPTER XL
BUT NOT TO BED
Harold glanced at the clock; it was nearly one in the morning, time to go to bed if he was going. But he did not feel inclined to go to bed. If he did, with this great discovery on his mind he should not sleep. There was another thing; it was Christmas Eve, or rather Christmas Day, the day of Ida’s answer. If any succour was to be given at all, it must be given at once, before the fortress had capitulated. Once let the engagement be renewed, and even if the money should subsequently be forthcoming, the difficulties would be doubled. But he was building his hopes upon sand, and he knew it. Even supposing that he held in his hand the key to the hiding place of the long-lost treasure, who knew whether it would still be there, or whether rumour had not enormously added to its proportions? He was allowing his imagination to carry him away.
Still he could not sleep, and he had a mind to see if anything could be made of it. Going to the gun-room he put on a pair of shooting- boots, an old coat, and an ulster. Next he provided himself with a dark lantern and the key of the summer-house at the top of Dead Man’s Mount, and silently unlocking the back door started out into the garden. The night was very rough, for the great gale was now rising fast, and bitterly cold, so cold that he hesitated for a moment before making up his mind to go on. However, he did go on, and in another two minutes was climbing the steep sides of the tumulus. There was a wan moon in the cold sky–the wind whistled most drearily through the naked boughs of the great oaks, which groaned in answer like things in pain. Harold was not a nervous or impressionable man, but the place had a spectral look about it, and he could not help thinking of the evil reputation it had borne for all those ages. There was scarcely a man in Honham, or in Boisingham either, who could have been persuaded to stay half an hour by himself on Dead Man’s Mount after the sun was well down. Harold had at different times asked one or two of them what they saw to be afraid of, and they had answered that it was not what they saw so much as what they felt. He had laughed at the time, but now he admitted to himself that he was anything but comfortable, though if he had been obliged to put his feelings into words he could probably not have described them better than by saying that he had a general impression of somebody being behind him.
However, he was not going to be frightened by this nonsense, so consigning all superstitions to their father the Devil, he marched on boldly and unlocked the summer-house door. Now, though this curious edifice had been designed for a summer-house, and for that purpose lined throughout with encaustic tiles, nobody as a matter of fact had ever dreamed of using it to sit in. To begin with, it roofed over a great depression some thirty feet or more in diameter, for the top of the mount was hollowed out like one of those wooden cups in which jugglers catch balls. But notwithstanding all the encaustic tiles in the world, damp will gather in a hollow like this, and the damp alone was an objection. The real fact was, however, that the spot had an evil reputation, and even those who were sufficiently well educated to know the folly of this sort of thing would not willingly have gone there for purposes of enjoyment. So it had suffered the general fate of disused places, having fallen more or less out of repair and become a receptacle for garden tools, broken cucumber frames and lumber of various sorts.
Harold pushed the door open and entered, shutting it behind him. It was, if anything, more disagreeable in the empty silence of the wide place than it had been outside, for the space roofed over was considerable, and the question at once arose in his mind, what was he to do now that he had got there? If the treasure was there at all, probably it was deep down in the bowels of the great mound. Well, as he was on the spot, he thought that he might as well try to dig, though probably nothing would come of it. In the corner were a pickaxe and some spades and shovels. Harold got them, advanced to the centre of the space and, half laughing at his own folly, set to work. First, having lit another lantern which was kept there, he removed with the sharp end of the pickaxe a large patch of the encaustic tiles exactly in the centre of the depression. Then having loosened the soil beneath with the pick he took off his ulster and fell to digging with a will. The soil proved to be very sandy and easy to work. Indeed, from its appearance, he soon came to the conclusion that it was not virgin earth, but worked soil which had been thrown there.
Presently his spade struck against something hard; he picked it up and held it to the lantern. It proved to be an ancient spear-head, and near it were some bones, though whether or no they were human he could not at the time determine. This was very interesting, but it was scarcely what he wanted, so he dug on manfully until he found himself chest deep in a kind of grave. He had been digging for an hour now, and was getting very tired. Cold as it was the perspiration poured from him. As he paused for breath he heard the church clock strike two, and very solemnly it sounded down the wild ways of the wind-torn winter night. He dug on a little more, and then seriously thought of giving up what he was somewhat ashamed of having undertaken. How was he to account for this great hole to his gardener on the following morning? Then and there he made up his mind that he would not account for it. The gardener, in common with the rest of the village, believed that the place was haunted. Let him set down the hole to the “spooks” and their spiritual activity.
Still he dug on at the grave for a little longer. It was by now becoming a matter of exceeding labour to throw the shovelfuls of soil clear of the hole. Then he determined to stop, and with this view scrambled, not without difficulty, out of the amateur tomb. Once out, his eyes fell on a stout iron crowbar which was standing among the other tools, such an implement as is used to make holes in the earth wherein to set hurdles and stakes. It occurred to him that it would not be a bad idea to drive this crowbar into the bottom of the grave which he had dug, in order to ascertain if there was anything within its reach. So he once more descended into the hole and began to work with the iron crow, driving it down with all his strength. When he had got it almost as deep as it would go, that is about two feet, it struck something–something hard–there was no doubt of it. He worked away in great excitement, widening the hole as much as he could.
Yes, it was masonry, or if it was not masonry it was something uncommonly like it. He drew the crow out of the hole, and, seizing the shovel, commenced to dig again with renewed vigour. As he could no longer conveniently throw the earth from the hole he took a “skep” or leaf basket, which lay handy, and, placing it beside him, put as much of the sandy soil as he could carry into it, and then lifting shot it on the edge of the pit. For three-quarters of an hour he laboured thus most manfully, till at last he came down on the stonework. He cleared a patch of it and examined it attentively, by the light of the dark lantern. It appeared to be rubble work built in the form of an arch. He struck it with the iron crow and it gave back a hollow sound. There was a cavity of some sort underneath.
His excitement and curiosity redoubled. By great efforts he widened the spot of stonework already laid bare. Luckily the soil, or rather sand, was so friable that there was very little exertion required to loosen it. This done he took the iron crow, and inserting it beneath a loose flat stone levered it up. Here was a beginning, and having got rid of the large flat stone he struck down again and again with all his strength, driving the sharp point of the heavy crow into the rubble work beneath. It began to give, he could hear bits of it falling into the cavity below. There! it went with a crash, more than a square foot of it.
He leant over the hole at his feet, devoutly hoping that the ground on which he was standing would not give way also, and tried to look down. Next second he threw his head back coughing and gasping. The foul air rushing up from the cavity or chamber, or whatever it was, had half poisoned him. Then not without difficulty he climbed out of the grave and sat down on the pile of sand he had thrown up. Clearly he must allow the air in the place to sweeten a little. Clearly also he must have assistance if he was to descend into the great hole. He could not undertake this by himself.
He sat upon the edge of the pit wondering who there was that he might trust. Not his own gardener. To begin with he would never come near the place at night, and besides such people talk. The Squire? No, he could not rouse him at this hour, and also, for obvious reasons, they had not met lately. Ah, he had it. George was the man! To begin with he could be relied upon to hold his tongue. The episode of the production of the real Mrs. Quest had taught him that George was a person of no common powers. He could think and he could act also.
Harold threw on his coat, extinguished the large stable lantern, and passing out, locked the door of the summer-house and started down the mount at a trot. The wind had risen steadily during his hours of work, and was now blowing a furious gale. It was about a quarter to four in the morning and the stars shone brightly in the hard clean-blown sky. By their light and that of the waning moon he struggled on in the teeth of the raging tempest. As he passed under one of the oaks he heard a mighty crack overhead, and guessing what it was ran like a hare. He was none too soon. A circular gust of more than usual fierceness had twisted the top right out of the great tree, and down it came upon the turf with a rending crashing sound that made his blood turn cold. After this escape he avoided the neighbourhood of the groaning trees.
George lived in a neat little farmhouse about a quarter of a mile away. There was a shot cut to it across the fields, and this he took, breathlessly fighting his way against the gale, which roared and howled in its splendid might as it swept across the ocean from its birthplace in the distances of air. Even the stiff hawthorn fences bowed before its breath, and the tall poplars on the skyline bent like a rod beneath the first rush of a salmon.
Excited as he was, the immensity and grandeur of the sight and sounds struck upon him with a strange force. Never before had he felt so far apart from man and so near to that dread Spirit round Whose feet thousands of rolling worlds rush on, at Whose word they are, endure, and are not.
He struggled forward until at last he reached the house. It was quite silent, but in one of the windows a light was burning. No doubt its occupants found it impossible to sleep in that wild gale. The next thing to consider was how to make himself heard. To knock at the door would be useless in that turmoil. There was only one thing to be done –throw stones at the window. He found a good-sized pebble, and standing underneath, threw it with such goodwill that it went right through the glass. It lit, as he afterwards heard, full upon the sleeping Mrs. George’s nose, and nearly frightened that good woman, whose nerves were already shaken by the gale, into a fit. Next minute a red nightcap appeared at the window.
“George!” roared the Colonel, in a lull of the gale.
“Who’s there?” came the faint answer.
“I–Colonel Quaritch. Come down. I want to speak to you.”
The head was withdrawn and a couple of minutes afterwards Harold saw the front door begin to open slowly. He waited till there was space enough, and then slipped in, and together they forced it to.
“Stop a bit, sir,” said George; “I’ll light the lamp;” and he did.
Next minute he stepped back in amazement.
“Why, what on arth hev you bin after, Colonel?” he said, contemplating Harold’s filth-begrimed face, and hands, and clothes. “Is anything wrong up at the Castle, or is the cottage blown down?”
“No, no,” said Harold; “listen. You’ve heard tell of the treasure that old Sir James de la Molle buried in the time of the Roundheads?”
“Yes, yes. I’ve heard tell of that. Hev the gale blown it up?”
“No, but by heaven I believe that I am in a fair way to find it.”
George took another step back, remembering the tales that Mrs. Jobson had told, and not being by any means sure but that the Colonel was in a dangerous condition of lunacy.
“Give me a glass of something to drink, water or milk, and I’ll tell you. I’ve been digging all night, and my throat’s like a limeskin.”
“Digging, why where?”
“Where? In Dead Man’s Mount!”
“In Dead Man’s Mount?” said George. “Well, blow me, if that ain’t a funny place to dig at on a night like this,” and, too amazed to say anything more, he went off to get the milk.
Harold drank three glasses of milk, and then sat down to tell as much of his moving tale as he thought desirable.
CHAPTER XLI
HOW THE NIGHT WENT
George sat opposite to him, his hands on his knees, the red nightcap on his head, and a comical expression of astonishment upon his melancholy countenance.
“Well,” he said, when Harold had done, “blow me if that ain’t a master one. And yet there’s folks who say that there ain’t no such thing as Providence–not that there’s anything prowided yet–p’raps there ain’t nawthing there after all.”
“I don’t know if there is or not, but I’m going back to see, and I want you to come with me.”
“Now?” said George rather uneasily. “Why, Colonel, that bain’t a very nice spot to go digging about in on a night like this. I niver heard no good of that there place–not as I holds by sich talk myself,” he added apologetically.
“Well,” said the Colonel, “you can do as you like, but I’m going back at once, and going down the hole, too; the gas must be out of it by now. There are reasons,” he added, “why, if this money is to be found at all, it should be found this morning. To-day is Christmas Day, you know.”
“Yes, yes, Colonel; I knows what you mean. Bless you, I know all about it; the old Squire must talk to somebody; if he don’t he’d bust, so he talks to me. That Cossey’s coming for his answer from Miss Ida this morning. Poor young lady, I saw her yesterday, and she looks like a ghost, she du. Ah, he’s a mean one, that Cossey. Laryer Quest warn’t in it with him after all. Well, I cooked his goose for him, and I’d give summut to have a hand in cooking that banker chap’s too. You wait a minute, Colonel, and I’ll come along, gale and ghostesses and all. I only hope it mayn’t be after a fool’s arrand, that’s all,” and he retired to put on his boots. Presently he appeared again, his red nightcap still on his head, for he was afraid that the wind would blow a hat off, and carrying an unlighted lantern in his hand.
“Now, Colonel, I’m ready, sir, if you be;” and they started.
The gale was, if anything, fiercer than ever. Indeed, there had been no such wind in those parts for years, or rather centuries, as the condition of the timber by ten o’clock that morning amply testified.
“This here timpest must be like that as the Squire tells us on in the time of King Charles, as blew the top of the church tower off on a Christmas night,” shouted George. But Harold made no answer, and they fought their way onward without speaking any more, for their voices were almost inaudible. Once the Colonel stopped and pointed to the sky-line. Of all the row of tall poplars which he had seen bending like whips before the wind as he came along but one remained standing now, and as he pointed that vanished also.
Reaching the summer house in safety, they entered, and the Colonel shut and locked the door behind them. The frail building was literally rocking in the fury of the storm.
“I hope the roof will hold,” shouted George, but Harold took no heed. He was thinking of other things. They lit the lanterns, of which they now had three, and the Colonel slid down into the great grave he had so industriously dug, motioning to George to follow. This that worthy did, not without trepidation. Then they both knelt and stared down through the hole in the masonry, but the light of the lanterns was not strong enough to enable them to make out anything with clearness.
“Well,” said George, falling back upon his favourite expression in his amazement, as he drew his nightcapped head from the hole, “if that ain’t a master one, I niver saw a masterer, that’s all.
“What be you a-going to du now, Colonel? Hev you a ladder here?”
“No,” answered Harold, “I never thought of that, but I’ve a good rope: I’ll get it.”
Scrambling out of the hole, he presently returned with a long coil of stout rope. It belonged to some men who had been recently employed in cutting boughs off such of the oaks that needed attention.
They undid the rope and let the end down to see how deep the pit was. When they felt that the end lay upon the floor they pulled it up. The depth from the hole to the bottom of the pit appeared to be about sixteen feet or a trifle more.
Harold took the iron crow, and having made the rope fast to it fixed the bar across the mouth of the aperture. Then he doubled the rope, tied some knots in it, and let it fall into the pit, preparatory to climbing down it.
But George was too quick for him. Forgetting his doubts as to the wisdom of groping about Dead Man’s Mount at night, in the ardour of his burning curiosity he took the dark lantern, and holding it with his teeth passed his body through the hole in the masonry, and cautiously slid down the rope.
“Are you all right?” asked Harold in a voice tremulous with excitement, for was not his life’s fortune trembling on the turn?
“Yes,” answered George doubtfully. Harold looking down could see that he was holding the lantern above his head and staring at something very hard.
Next moment a howl of terror echoed up from the pit, the lantern was dropped upon the ground and the rope began to be agitated with the utmost violence.
In another two seconds George’s red nightcap appeared followed by a face that was literally livid with terror.
“Let me up for Goad’s sake,” he gasped, “or he’ll hev me by the leg!”
“He! who?” asked the Colonel, not without a thrill of superstitious fear, as he dragged the panting man through the hole.
But George would give no answer until he was out of the grave. Indeed had it not been for the Colonel’s eager entreaties, backed to some extent by actual force, he would by this time have been out of the summer-house also, and half-way down the mount.
“What is it?” roared the Colonel in the pit to George, who shivering with terror was standing on its edge.
“It’s a blessed ghost, that’s what it is, Colonel,” answered George, keeping his eyes fixed upon the hole as though he momentarily expected to see the object of his fears emerge.
“Nonsense,” said Harold doubtfully. “What rubbish you talk. What sort of a ghost?”
“A white un,” said George, “all bones like.”
“All bones?” answered the Colonel, “why it must be a skeleton.”
“I don’t say that he ain’t,” was the answer, “but if he be, he’s nigh on seven foot high, and sitting airing of hissel in a stone bath.”
“Oh, rubbish,” said the Colonel. “How can a skeleton sit and air himself? He would tumble to bits.”
“I don’t know, but there he be, and they don’t call this here place ‘Dead Man’s Mount’ for nawthing.”
“Well,” said the Colonel argumentatively, “a skeleton is a perfectly harmless thing.”
“Yes, if he’s dead maybe, sir, but this one’s alive, I saw him nod his head at me.”
“Look here, George,” answered Harold, feeling that if this went on much longer he should lose his nerve altogether. “I’m not going to be scared. Great heavens, what a gust! I’m going down to see for myself.”
“Very good, Colonel,” answered George, “and I’ll wait here till you come up again–that is if you iver du.”
Thrice did Harold look at the hole in the masonry and thrice did he shrink back.
“Come,” he shouted angrily, “don’t be a fool; get down here and hand me the lantern.”
George obeyed with evident trepidation. Then Harold scrambled through the opening and with many an inward tremor, for there is scarcely a man on the earth who is really free from supernatural fears, descended hand over hand. But in so doing he managed to let the lantern fall and it went out. Now as any one will admit this was exceedingly trying. It is not pleasant to be left alone in the dark and underground in the company of an unknown “spook.” He had some matches, but what between fear and cold it was some time before he could get a light. Down in this deep place the rush of the great gale reached his ears like a faint and melancholy sighing, and he heard other tapping noises, too, or he thought he did, noises of a creepy and unpleasant nature. Would the matches never light? The chill and death-like damp of the place struck to his marrow and the cold sweat poured from his brow. Ah! at last! He kept his eyes steadily fixed upon the lantern till he had lit it and the flame was burning brightly. Then with an effort he turned and looked round him.
And this is what he saw.
There, three or four paces from him, in the centre of the chamber of Death sat or rather lay a figure of Death. It reclined in a stone chest or coffin, like a man in a hip bath which is too small for him. The bony arms hung down on either side, the bony limbs projected towards him, the great white skull hung forward over the massive breast bone. It moved, too, of itself, and as it moved, the jaw-bone tapped against the breast and the teeth clacked gently together.
Terror seized him while he looked, and, as George had done, he turned to fly. How could that thing move its head? The head ought to fall off.
Seizing the rope, he jerked it violently in the first effort of mounting.
“Hev he got yew, Colonel?” sung out George above; and the sound of a human voice brought him back to his sense.
“No,” he answered as boldly as he could, and then setting his teeth, turned and tottered straight at the Horror in the chest.
He was there now, and holding the lantern against the thing, examined it. It was a skeleton of enormous size, and the skull was fixed with rusty wire to one of the vertebrae.
At this evidence of the handiwork of man his fears almost vanished. Even in that company he could not help remembering that it is scarcely to be supposed that spiritual skeletons carry about wire with which to tie on their skulls.
With a sigh of relief he held up the lantern and looked round. He was standing in a good-sized vault or chamber, built of rubble stone. Some of this rubble had fallen in to his left; but otherwise, though the workmanship showed that it must be of extreme antiquity, the stone lining was still strong and good. He looked upon the floor, and then for the first time saw that the nodding skeleton before him was not the only one. All round lay remnants of the dead. There they were, stretched out in the form of a circle, of which the stone kist was the centre.[*] One place in the circle was vacant; evidently it had once been occupied by the giant frame which now sat within the kist. Next he looked at the kist itself. It had all the appearance of one of those rude stone chests in which the very ancient inhabitants of this island buried the ashes of their cremated dead. But, if this was so, whence came the un-cremated skeletons?
[*] At Bungay, in Suffolk, there stood a mound or tumulus, on which was a windmill. Some years ago the windmill was pulled down, and the owner of the ground wishing to build a house upon its site, set to work to cart away the mound. His astonishment may be conceived when he found in the earth a great number of skeletons arranged in circles. These skeletons were of large size, and a gentleman who saw them informed me that he measured one. It was that of a man who must have been nearly seven feet high. The bones were, unhappily, carted away and thrown into a dyke. But no house has been built upon the resting-place of those unknown warriors. –Author.
Perhaps a subsequent race or tribe had found the chamber ready prepared, and used it to bury some among them who had fallen in battle. It was impossible to say more, especially as with one exception there was nothing buried with the skeletons which would assist to identify their race or age. That exception was a dog. A dog had been placed by one of the bodies. Evidently from the position of the bones of its master’s arms he had been left to his last sleep with his hand resting on the hound’s head.
Bending down, Harold examined the seated skeleton more closely. It was, he discovered, accurately jointed together with strong wire. Clearly this was the work of hands which were born into the world long after the flesh on those mighty bones had crumbled into dust.
But where was the treasure? He saw none. His heart sank as the idea struck him that he had made an interesting archaeological discovery, and that was all. Before undertaking a closer search he went under the hole and halloaed to George to come down as there was nothing but some bones to frighten him.
This the worthy George was at length with much difficulty persuaded to do.
When at last he stood beside him in the vault, Harold explained to him what the place was and how ridiculous were his fears, without however succeeding in allaying them to any considerable extent.
And really when one considers the position it is not wonderful that George was scared. For they were shut up in the bowels of a place which had for centuries owned the reputation of being haunted, faced by a nodding skeleton of almost superhuman size, and surrounded by various other skeletons all “very fine and large,” while the most violent tempest that had visited the country for years sighed away outside.
“Well,” he said, his teeth chattering, “if this ain’t the masterest one that iver I did see.” But here he stopped, language was not equal to the expression of his feelings.
Meanwhile Harold, with a heart full of anxiety, was turning the lantern this way and that in the hope of discovering some traces of Sir James’s treasure, but naught could he see. There to the left the masonry had fallen in. He went to it and pulled aside some of the stones. There was a cavity behind, apparently a passage, leading no doubt to the secret entrance to the vault, but he could see nothing in it. Once more he searched. There was nothing. Unless the treasure was buried somewhere, or hidden away in the passage, it was non-existent.
And yet what was the meaning of that jointed skeleton sitting in the stone bath? It must have been put there for some purpose, probably to frighten would-be plunderers away. Could he be sitting on the money? He rushed to the chest and looked through the bony legs. No, his pelvis rested on the stone bottom of the kist.
“Well, George, it seems we’re done,” said Harold, with a ghastly attempt at a laugh. “There’s no treasure here.”
“Maybe it’s underneath that there stone corn bin,” suggested George, whose teeth were still chattering. “It should be here or hereabouts, surely.”
This was an idea. Helping himself to the shoulder-blade of some deceased hero, Harold, using it as a trowel, began to scoop away the soft sand upon which the stone chest stood. He scooped and scooped manfully, but he could not come to the bottom of the kist.
He stepped back and looked at it. It must be one of two things–either the hollow at the top was but a shallow cutting in a great block of stone, or the kist had a false bottom.
He sprang at it. Seizing the giant skeleton by the spine, he jerked it out of the kist and dropped it on one side in a bristling bony heap. Just as he did so there came so furious a gust of wind that, buried as they were in the earth, they literally felt the mound rock beneath it. Instantly it was followed by a frightful crash overhead.
George collapsed in terror, and for a moment Harold could not for the life of him think what had happened. He ran to the hole and looked up. Straight above him he could see the sky, in which the first cold lights of dawn were quivering. Mrs. Massey’s summer-house had been blown bodily away, and the “ancient British Dwelling Place” was once more open to the sky, as it had been for centuries.
“The summer-house has gone, George,” he said. “Thank goodness that we were not in it, or we should have gone too.”
“Oh, Lord, sir,” groaned the unhappy George, “this is an awful business. It’s like a judgment.”
“It might have been if we had been up above instead of safe down here,” he answered. “Come, bring that other lantern.”
George roused himself, and together they bent over the now empty kist, examining it closely.
The stone bottom was not of quite the same colour as the walls of the chest, and there was a crack across it. Harold felt in his pocket and drew out his knife, which had at the back of it one of those strong iron hooks that are used to extract stones from the hoofs of horses. This hook he worked into the crack and managed before it broke to pull up a fragment of stone. Then, looking round, he found a long sharp flint among the rubbish where the wall had fallen in. This he inserted in the hole and they both levered away at it.
Half of the cracked stone came up a few inches, far enough to allow them to get their fingers underneath it. So it /was/ a false bottom.
“Catch hold,” gasped the Colonel, “and pull for your life.”
George did as he was bid, and setting their knees against the hollowed stone, they tugged till their muscles cracked.
“It’s a-moving,” said George. “Now thin, Colonel.”
Next second they both found themselves on the flat of their backs. The stone had given with a run.
Up sprang Harold like a kitten. The broken stone was standing edgeways in the kist. There was something soft beneath it.
“The light, George,” he said hoarsely.
Beneath the stone were some layers of rotten linen.
Was it a shroud, or what?
They pulled the linen out by handfuls. One! two! three!
/Oh, great heaven!/
There, under the linen, were row on row of shining gold coins set edgeways.
For a moment everything swam before Harold’s eyes, and his heart stopped beating. As for George, he muttered something inaudible about its being a “master one,” and collapsed.
With trembling fingers Harold managed to pick out two pieces of gold which had been disturbed by the upheaval of the stone, and held them to the light. He was a skilled numismatist, and had no difficulty in recognising them. One was a beautiful three-pound piece of Charles I., and the other a Spur Rial of James I.
That proved it. There was no doubt that this was the treasure hidden by Sir James de la Molle. He it must have been also who had conceived the idea of putting a false bottom to the kist and setting up the skeleton to frighten marauders from the treasure, if by any chance they should enter.
For a minute or two the men stood staring at each other over the great treasure which they had unearthed in that dread place, shaking with the reaction of their first excitement, and scarcely able to speak.
“How deep du it go?” said George at length.
Harold took his knife and loosed some of the top coins, which were very tightly packed, till he could move his hand in them freely. Then he pulled out handful after handful of every sort of gold coin. There were Rose Nobles of Edward IV.; Sovereigns and Angels of Henry VII. and VIII.; Sovereigns, Half-Sovereigns and gold Crowns of Edward VI.; Sovereigns, Rials, and Angels of Mary; Sovereigns, Double Crowns and Crowns of Elizabeth; Thirty-shilling pieces, Spur Rials, Angels, Unites and Laurels of James I.; Three-pound pieces, Broads, and Half Broads of Charles I.; some in greater quantity and some in less; all were represented. Handful after handful did he pull out, and yet the bottom was not reached. At last he came to it. The layer of gold pieces was about twenty inches broad by three feet six long.
“We must get this into the house, George, before any one is about,” gasped the Colonel.
“Yes, sir, yes, for sure we must; but how be we a-going to carry it?”
Harold thought for a minute, and then acted thus. Bidding George stay in the vault with the treasure, which he was with difficulty persuaded to do, he climbed the improvised rope ladder, and got in safety through the hole. In his excitement he had forgotten about the summer- house having been carried away by the gale, which was still blowing, though not with so much fury as before. The wind-swept desolation that met his view as he emerged into the dawning light broke upon him with a shock. The summer-house was clean gone, nothing but a few uprights remained of it; and fifty yards away he thought he could make out the crumpled shape of the roof. Nor was that all. Quite a quarter of the great oaks which were the glory of the place were down, or splintered and ruined.
But what did he care for the summer-house or the oaks now? Forgetting his exhaustion, he ran down the slope and reached the house, which he entered as softly as he could by the side door. Nobody was about yet, or would be for another hour. It was Christmas Day, and not a pleasant morning to get up on, so the servants would be sure to lie a-bed. On his way to his bed-room he peeped into the dining-room, where he had fallen asleep on the previous evening. When he had woke up, it may be remembered, he lit a candle. This candle was now flaring itself to death, for he had forgotten to extinguish it, and by its side lay the