At a Winter's Fire

by Bernard Edward Joseph Capes

  WILLIAM TYRWHITT'S "COPY"

  This is the story of William Tyrwhitt, who went to King's Cobb for restand change, and, with the latter, at least, was so far accommodatedas for a time to get beyond himself and into regions foreign to hisexperiences or his desires. And for this condition of his I hold myselfsomething responsible, inasmuch as it was my inquisitiveness was themeans of inducing him to an exploration, of which the result, with itsmeasure of weirdness, was for him alone. But, it seems, I was appointedan agent of the unexplainable without my knowledge, and it was simply mymisfortune to find my first unwitting commission in the selling of afriend.

  I was for a few days, about the end of a particular July, lodged in thatlittle old seaboard town of Dorset that is called King's Cobb. Thitherthere came to me one morning a letter from William Tyrwhitt, thepolemical journalist (a queer fish, like the cuttle, with an ink-bag forthe confusion of enemies), complaining that he was fagged and used up,and desiring me to say that nowhere could complete rest be obtained as inKing's Cobb.

  I wrote and assured him on this point. The town, I said, lay wrapped inthe hills as in blankets, its head only, winking a sleepy eye, projectingfrom the top of the broad steep gully in which it was stretched at ease.Thither few came to the droning coast; and such as did, looked up at theHigh Street baking in the sun, and, thinking of Jacob's ladder, composedthem to slumber upon the sand and left the climbing to the angels. Here,I said, the air and the sea were so still that one could hear the oysterssnoring in their beds; and the little frizzle of surf on the beach waslike to the sound to dreaming ears of bacon frying in the kitchens of theblest.

  William Tyrwhitt came, and I met him at the station, six or seven milesaway. He was all strained and springless, like a broken child's toy--"notlike that William who, with lance in rest, shot through the lists inFleet Street." A disputative galley-puller could have triumphed overhim morally; a child physically.

  The drive in the inn brake, by undulating roads and scented valleys,shamed his cheek to a little flush of self-assertion.

  "I will sleep under the vines," he said, "and the grapes shall drop intomy mouth."

  "Beware," I answered, "lest in King's Cobb your repose should beeverlasting. The air of that hamlet has matured like old port in the binof its hills, till to drink of it is to swoon."

  We alighted at the crown of the High Street, purposing to descend onfoot the remaining distance to the shore.

  "Behold," I exclaimed, "how the gulls float in the shimmer, like ashestossed aloft by the white draught of a fire! Behold these ancientbuildings nodding to the everlasting lullaby of the bay waters! Thecliffs are black with the heat apoplexy; the lobster is drawn scarlet tothe surface. You shall be like an addled egg put into an incubator."

  "So," he said, "I shall rest and not hatch. The very thought is likesweet oil on a burn."

  He stayed with me a week, and his body waxed wondrous round and rosy,while his eye acquired a foolish and vacant expression. So it was withme. We rolled together, by shore and by road of this sluggard place, likespent billiard balls; and if by chance we cannoned, we swerved sleepilyapart, until, perhaps, one would fall into a pocket of the sand, and theother bring up against a cushion of sea-wall.

  Yet, for all its enervating atmosphere, King's Cobb has its finetraditions of a sturdy independence, and a slashing history withal; andits aspect is as picturesque as that of an opera bouffe fishing-harbour.Then, too, its High Street, as well as its meandering rivulets of lowstreets, is rich in buildings, venerable and antique.

  We took an irresponsible, smiling pleasure in noting theseadvantages--particularly after lunch; and sometimes, where an oldhouse was empty, we would go over it, and stare at beams andchimneypieces and hear the haunted tale of its fortunes, with a fainthalf-memory in our breasts of that one-time bugbear we had known as"copy." But though more than once a flaccid instinct would move us tohave out our pencils, we would only end by bunging our foolish mouthswith them, as if they were cigarettes, and then vaguely wonderingat them for that, being pencils, they would not draw.

  By then we were so sinewless and demoralized that we could hear in thedistant strains of the European Concert nothing but an orchestra ofsweet sounds, and would have given ourselves away in any situation with apound of tea. Therefore, perhaps, it was well for us that, a peremptorysummons to town reaching me after seven days of comradeship with William,I must make shift to collect my faculties with my effects, and return tothe more bracing climate of Fleet Street.

  And here, you will note, begins the story of William Tyrwhitt, who wouldlinger yet a few days in that hanging garden of the south coast, and whowould pull himself together and collect matter for "copy."

  He found a very good subject that first evening of his solitude.

  I was to leave in the afternoon, and the morning we spent in aimlesslyrambling about the town. Towards mid-day, a slight shower drove us toshelter under the green verandah of a house, standing up from the lowerfall of the High Street, that we had often observed in our wanderings.This house--or rather houses, for it was a block of two--was very talland odd-looking, being all built of clean squares of a whitish granite;and the double porch in the middle base--led up to by side-going stepsbehind thin iron railings--roofed with green-painted zinc. In some of thewindows were jalousies, but the general aspect of the exterior was gauntand rigid; and the whole block bore a dismal, deserted look, as if it hadnot been lived in for years.

  Now we had taken refuge in the porch of that half that lay uppermost onthe slope; and here we noticed that, at a late date, the building wasseemingly in process of repair, painters' pots and brushes lying on awindow-sill, and a pair of steps showing within through the glass.

  "They have gone to dinner," said I. "Supposing we seize the opportunityto explore?"

  We pushed at the door; it yielded. We entered, shut ourselves in, andpaused to the sound of our own footsteps echoing and laughing fromcorners and high places. On the ground floor were two or three good-sizedrooms with modern grates, but cornices, chimney-pieces, embrasures finelyJacobean. There were innumerable under-stair and over-head cupboards,too, and pantries, and closets, and passages going off darkly into theunknown.

  We clomb the stairway--to the first floor--to the second. Here was allpure Jacobean; but the walls were crumbling, the paper peeling, thewindows dim and foul with dirt.

  I have never known a place with such echoes. They shook from a footsteplike nuts rattling out of a bag; a mouse behind the skirting led a wholecamp-following of them; to ask a question was, as in that other House, toawaken the derisive shouts of an Opposition. Yet, in the intervals ofsilence, there fell a deadliness of quiet that was quite appalling byforce of contrast.

  "Let us go down," I said. "I am feeling creepy."

  "Pooh!" said William Tyrwhitt; "I could take up my abode here with afeather bed."

  We descended, nevertheless. Arrived at the ground floor, "I am going tothe back," said William.

  I followed him--a little reluctantly, I confess. Gloom and shadow hadfallen upon the town, and this old deserted hulk of an abode was ghostlyto a degree. There was no film of dust on its every shelf or sill thatdid not seem to me to bear the impress of some phantom finger feeling itsway along. A glint of stealthy eyes would look from dark uncertaincorners; a thin evil vapour appear to rise through the cracks of theboards from the unvisited cellars in the basement.

  And here, too, we came suddenly upon an eccentricity of out-building thatwrought upon our souls with wonder. For, penetrating to the rear throughwhat might have been a cloak-closet or butler's pantry, we found asupplementary wing, or rather tail of rooms, loosely knocked together, toproceed from the back, forming a sort of skilling to the main building.These rooms led direct into one another, and, consisting of little morethan timber and plaster, were in a woeful state of dilapidation.Everywhere the laths grinned through torn gaps in the ceilings and walls;everywhere the latter were blotched and mildewed with damp, and thefloor-boards rotting in their tracks
. Fallen mortar, rusty tins, yellowteeth of glass, whitened soot--all the decay and rubbish of a generationof neglect littered the place and filled it with an acrid odour. From oneof the rooms we looked forth through a little discoloured window upon apatch of forlorn weedy garden, where the very cats glowered in adepression that no surfeit of mice could assuage.

  We went on, our nervous feet apologetic to the grit they crunched; and,when we were come to near the end of this dreary annexe, turned off tothe left into a short gloom of passage that led to a closed door.

  Pushing this open, we found a drop of some half-dozen steps, and, goinggingerly down these, stopped with a common exclamation of surprise on ourlips.

  Perhaps our wonder was justified, for we were in the stern cabin of anancient West Indiaman.

  Some twenty feet long by twelve wide--there it all was, from the decktransoms above, to the side lockers and great curved window, slopingoutwards to the floor and glazed with little panes in galleries, thatfilled the whole end of the room. Thereout we looked, over the degradedgarden, to the lower quarters of the town--as if, indeed, we were perchedhigh up on waves--and even to a segment of the broad bay that swept bythem.

  But the room itself! What phantasy of old sea-dog or master-mariner hadconceived it? What palsied spirit, condemned to rust in inactivity, hadfound solace in this burlesque of shipcraft? To renew the past in such afixture, to work oneself up to the old glow of flight and action, andthen, while one stamped and rocked maniacally, to feel the refusal of somuch as a timber to respond to one's fervour of animation! It was agrotesque picture.

  Now, this cherished chamber had shared the fate of the rest. The paintand gilding were all cracked and blistered away; much of the glass ofthe stern-frame was gone or hung loose in its sashes; the elaboratelycarved lockers mouldered on the walls.

  These were but dummies when we came to examine them--mere slabs attachedto the brickwork, and decaying with it.

  "There should be a case-bottle and rummers in one, at least," saidWilliam Tyrwhitt.

  "There are, sir, at your service," said a voice behind us.

  We started and turned.

  It had been such a little strained voice that it was with somethinglike astonishment I looked upon the speaker. Whence he had issued I couldnot guess; but there he stood behind us, nodding and smiling--a squab,thick-set old fellow with a great bald head, and, for all the hair on hisface, a tuft like a teasel sprouting from his under lip.

  He was in his shirt-sleeves, without coat or vest; and I noticed that hisdirty lawn was oddly plaited in front, and that about his ample paunchwas buckled a broad belt of leather. Greased hip-boots encased his lowerlimbs, and the heels of these were drawn together as he bowed.

  William Tyrwhitt--a master of nervous English--muttered "Great Scott!"under his breath.

  "Permit me," said the stranger--and he held out to us a tin pannikin(produced from Heaven knows where) that swam with fragrance.

  I shook my head. William Tyrwhitt, that fated man, did otherwise. Heaccepted the vessel and drained it.

  "It smacks of all Castille," he said, handing it back with a sigh ofecstasy. "Who the devil are you, sir?"

  The stranger gave a little crow.

  "Peregrine Iron, sir, at your service--Captain Penegrine Iron, of the_Raven_ sloop amongst others. You are very welcome to the run of my poorabode."

  "Yours?" I murmured in confusion. "We owe you a thousand apologies."

  "Not at all," he said, addressing all his courtesy to William. Me, sincemy rejection of his beaker, he took pains to ignore.

  "Not at all," he said. "Your intrusion was quite natural under thecircumstances. I take a pleasure in being your cicerone. This cabin (hewaved his hand pompously)--a fancy of mine, sir, a fancy of mine. Theactual material of the latest of my commands brought hither and adaptedto the exigencies of shore life. It enables me to live eternally in thepast--a most satisfying illusion. Come to-night and have a pipe and aglass with me."

  I thought William Tyrwhitt mad.

  "I will come, by all means," he said.

  The stranger bowed us out of the room.

  "That is right," he exclaimed. "You will find me here. Good-bye for thepresent."

  As we plunged like dazed men into the street, now grown sunny, I turnedon my friend.

  "William," I said, "did you happen to look back as we left the cabin?"

  "No."

  "I did."

  "Well?"

  "There was no stranger there at all. The place was empty."

  "Well?"

  "You will not go to-night?"

  "You bet I do."

  I shrugged my shoulders. We walked on a little way in silence. Suddenlymy companion turned on me, a most truculent expression on his face.

  "For an independent thinker," he said, "you are rather a pusillanimousjackass. A man of your convictions to shy at a shadow! Fie, sir, fie!What if the room _were_ empty? The place was full enough of traps topermit of Captain Iron's immediate withdrawal."

  Much may be expressed in a sniff. I sniffed.

  That afternoon I went back to town, and left the offensive William to hisfate.

  * * * * *

  It found him at once.

  The very day following that of my retreat, I was polishing phrases bygaslight in the dull sitting-room of my lodgings in the Lambeth Road,when he staggered in upon me. His face was like a sheep's, white andvacant; his hands had caught a trick of groping blindly along the backsof chairs.

  "You have obtained your 'copy'?" I said.

  I made him out to murmur "yes" in a shaking under-voice. He was sopatently nervous that I put him in a chair and poured him out awine-glassful of London brandy. This generally is a powerful emetic, butit had no more effect upon him than water. Then I was about to lower thegas, to save his eyes, but he stopped me with a thin shriek.

  "Light, light!" he whispered. "It cannot be too light for me!"

  "Now, William Tyrwhitt," I said, by-and-by, watchful of him, and markinga faint effusion of colour soak to his cheek, "you would not accept mywarning, and you were extremely rude to me. Therefore you have had anexperience--"

  "An awful one," he murmured.

  "An awful one, no doubt; and to obtain surcease of the haunting memory ofit, you must confide its processes to me. But, first, I must put it toyou, which is the more pusillanimous--to refuse to submit one's manlinessto the tyranny of the unlawful, or to rush into situations you have notthe nerve to adapt yourself to?"

  "I could not foresee, I could not foresee."

  "Neither could I. And that was my very reason for declining theinvitation. Now proceed."

  It was long before he could. But presently he essayed, and gathered voicewith the advance of his narrative, and even unconsciously threw it intosomething the form of "copy." And here it is as he murmured it, but witha gasp for every full-stop.

  "I confess I was so far moved by the tone of your protest as, after yourdeparture, to make some cautious inquiries about the house we hadvisited. I could discover nothing to satisfy my curiosity. It was knownto have been untenanted for a great number of years; but as to who wasthe landlord, whether Captain Iron or another, no one could inform me;and the agent for the property was of the adjacent town where you met me.I was not fortunate, indeed, in finding that any one even knew of theoddly appointed room; but considering that, owing to the time the househad remained vacant, the existence of this eccentricity could be atradition only with some casual few, my failure did not strike me asbeing at all bodeful. On the contrary, it only whetted my desire toinvestigate further in person, and penetrate to the heart of a verycaptivating little mystery. But probably, I thought, it is quite simpleof solution, and the fact of the repairers and the landlord being inevidence at one time, a natural coincidence.

  "I dined well, and sallied forth about nine o'clock. It was a nightpregnant with possibilities. The lower strata of air were calm, butoverhead the wind went down the sea with a noise of baggage-wagon
s, andthere was an ominous hurrying and gathering together of forces underthe bellying standards of the clouds.

  "As I went up the steps of the lonely building, the High Street seemed toturn all its staring eyes of lamps in my direction. 'What a drollfellow!' they appeared to be saying; 'and how will he look when hereissues?'

  "'There ain't nubbudy in that house,' croaked a small boy, who had pausedbelow, squinting up at me.

  "'How do you know?' said I. 'Move on, my little man.'

  "He went; and at once it occurred to me that, as no notice was taken ofmy repeated knockings, I might as well try the handle. I did, found thedoor unlatched, as it had been in the morning, pushed it open, entered,and swung it to behind me.

  "I found myself in the most profound darkness--that darkness, if I mayuse the paradox, of a peopled desolation that men of but little nerve orresolution find insupportable. To me, trained to a serenity of stoicism,it could make no demoralizing appeal. I had out my matchbox, opened it atleisure, and, while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to tick andrustle with secret movement, took a half-dozen vestas into my hand,struck one alight, and, by its dim radiance, made my way through thebuilding by the passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all Ishrank or perspired on my spectral journey, I swear I was notconscious of doing so.

  "I came to the door of the cabin. All was black and silent.

  "'Ah!' I thought, 'the rogue has played me false.'

  "Not to subscribe to an uncertainty, I pushed at the door, saw onlyswimming dead vacancy before me, and tripping at the instant on the sill,stumbled crashing into the room below and slid my length on the floor.

  "Now, I must tell you, it was here my heart gave its first somersault. Ihad fallen, as I say, into a black vault of emptiness; yet, as I rose,bruised and dazed, to my feet, there was the cabin all alight from agreat lanthorn that swung from the ceiling, and our friend of the morningseated at a table, with a case-bottle of rum and glasses before him.

  "I stared incredulous. Yes, there could be no doubt it was he, and prettyflushed with drink, too, by his appearance.

  "'Incandescent light in a West Indiaman!' I muttered; for not otherwisecould I account for the sudden illumination. 'What the deuce!'

  "'Belay that!' he growled. He seemed to observe me for the first time.

  "'A handsome manner of boarding a craft you've got, sir,' said he,glooming at me.

  "I was hastening to apologize, but he stopped me coarsely.

  "'Oh, curse the long jaw of him! Fill your cheek with that, you Barbaryape, and wag your tail if you can, but burn your tongue.'

  "He pointed to the case-bottle with a forefinger that was like a dirtyparsnip. What induced me to swallow the insult, and even some of thepungent liquor of his rude offering? The itch for 'copy' was, no doubt,at the bottom of it.

  "I sat down opposite my host, filled and drained a bumper. The fire ranto my brain, so that the whole room seemed to pitch and courtesy.

  "'This is an odd fancy of yours,' I said.

  "'What is?' said he.

  "'This,' I answered, waving my hand around--'this freak of turning a backroom into a cabin.'

  "He stared at me, and then burst into a malevolent laugh.

  "'Back room, by thunder!' said he. 'Why, of course--just a step into thegarden where the roses and the buttercupses be agrowing.'

  "Now I pricked my ears.

  "'Has the night turned foul?' I muttered. 'What a noise the rain makesbeating on the window!'

  "'It's like to be a foul one for you, at least,' said he. 'But, as forthe rain, it's blazing moonlight.'

  "I turned to the broad casement in astonishment. My God! what did I see?Oh, my friend, my friend! will you believe me? By the melancholy glowthat spread therethrough I saw that the whole room was rising and sinkingin rhythmical motion; that the lights of King's Cobb had disappeared, andthat in their place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water, thepursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the glass with innocuousfingers.

  "I started to my feet, mad in an instant.

  "'Look, look!' I shrieked. 'They follow us--they struggle to get at you,you bloody murderer!'

  "They came rising on the crests of the billows; they hurried fast in ourwake, tumbling and swaying, their stretched, drowned faces now lifted tothe moonlight, now over-washed in the long trenches of water. They wererolled against the galleries of glass, on which their hair slapped likeribbons of seaweed--a score of ghastly white corpses, with strained blackeyes and pointed stiff elbows crookt up in vain for air.

  "I was mad, but I knew it all now. This was no house, but the good,ill-fated vessel _Rayo,_ once bound for Jamaica, but on the voyage falleninto the hands of the bloody buccaneer, Paul Hardman, and her crew madeto walk the plank, and most of her passengers. I knew that the darkscoundrel had boarded and mastered her, and--having first fired and sunkhis own sloop--had steered her straight for the Cuban coast, makingdisposition of what remained of the passengers on the way, and I knewthat my great-grandfather had been one of these doomed survivors, andthat he had been shot and murdered under orders of the ruffian that nowsat before me. All this, as retailed by one who sailed for a season underHardman to save his skin, is matter of old private history; and of commonreport was it that the monster buccaneer, after years of successfultrading in the ship he had stolen, went into secret and prosperousretirement under an assumed name, and was never heard of more on the highseas. But, it seemed, it was for the great-grandson of one of his victimsto play yet a sympathetic part in the grey old tragedy.

  "How did this come to me in a moment--or, rather, what was that dreambuzzing in my brain of 'proof' and 'copy' and all the tame stagnationof a long delirium of order? I had nothing in common with the latter. Insome telepathic way--influenced by these past-dated surroundings--droppedinto the very den of this Procrustes of the seas, I was there to re-enactthe fearful scene that had found its climax in the brain of my ancestor.

  "I rushed to the window, thence back to within a yard of the gloweringbuccaneer, before whom I stood, with tost arms, wild and menacing.

  "'They follow you!' I screamed. 'Passive, relentless, and deadly, theyfollow in your wake and will not be denied. The strong, the helpless,the coarse and the beautiful--all you have killed and mutilated in yourwanton devilry--they are on your heels like a pack of spectre-hounds, andsooner or later they will have you in their cold arms and hale you downto the secret places of terror. Look at Beston, who leads, with a fearfulsmile on his mouth! Look at that pale girl you tortured, whose hairwrithes and lengthens--a swarm of snakes nosing the hull for some openport-hole to enter by! Dog and devil, you are betrayed by your ownhideous cruelty!'

  "He rose and struck at me blindly; staggered, and found his filthy voicein a shriek of rage.

  "'Jorinder! make hell of the galley-fire! Heat some irons red and fetchout a bucket of pitch. We'll learn this dandy galloot his manners!'

  "Wrought to the snapping-point of desperation, I sprang at and closedwith him; and we went down on the floor together with a heavy crash.I was weaponless, but I would choke and strangle him with my hands. I hadhim under, my fingers crookt in his throat. His eyeballs slipped forward,like banana ends squeezed from their skins; he could not speak or cry,but he put up one feeble hand and flapped it aimlessly. At that, in themidst of my fury, I glanced above me, and saw a press of dim facescrowding a dusk hatch; and from them a shadowy arm came through, pointinga weapon; and all my soul reeled sick, and I only longed to be left timeto destroy the venomous horror beneath me before I passed.

  "It was not to be. Something, a physical sensation like the jerk of ahiccup, shook my frame; and immediately the waters of being seemed toburst their dam and flow out peaceably into a valley of rest."

  William Tyrwhitt paused, and "Well?" said I.

  "You see me here," he said. "I woke this morning, and found myself lyingon the floor of that shattered and battered closet, and a starved demonof a cat licking up something from the boards. When I drove her away,t
here was a patch there like ancient dried blood."

  "And how about your head?"

  "My head? Why, the bullet seemed stuck in it between the temples; andthere I am afraid it is still."

  "Just so. Now, William Tyrwhitt, you must take a Turkish, bath and somecooling salts, and then come and tell me all about it again."

  "Ah! you don't believe me, I see. I never supposed you would.Good-night!"

  But, when he was gone, I sat ruminating.

  "That Captain Iron," I thought, "walked over the great rent in the floorwithout falling through. Well, well!"