The juvenile shepherd thought of what lay in the hollow yonder; and no fear of the crook-stem of his superior officer was potent enough to detain him longer on that hill alone. Any live company, even the most terrible, was better than the company of the dead; so, running with the speed of a hare in the direction pursued by the horseman, he overtook the revengeful Duke at the second descent (where the great western road crossed before you came to the old park entrance on that side—now closed up and the lodge cleared away, though at the time it was wondered why, being considered the most convenient gate of all).
Once within the sound of the horse’s footsteps, Bill Mills felt comparatively comfortable; for, though in awe of the Duke because of his position, he had no moral repugnance to his companionship on account of the grisly deed he had committed, considering that powerful nobleman to have a right to do what he chose on his own lands. The Duke rode steadily on beneath his ancestral trees, the hoofs of his horse sending up a smart sound now that he had reached the hard road of the drive, and soon drew near the front door of his house, surmounted by parapets with square-cut battlements that cast a notched shade upon the gravelled terrace. These outlines were quite familiar to little Bill Mills, though nothing within their boundary had ever been seen by him.
When the rider approached the mansion a small turret door was quickly opened and a woman came out. As soon as she saw the horseman’s outlines she ran forward into the moonlight to meet him.
‘Ah dear—and are you come?’ she said. ‘I heard Hero’s tread just when you rode over the hill, and I knew it in a moment. I would have come further if I had been aware—’
‘Glad to see me, eh?’
‘How can you ask that?’
‘Well; it is a lovely night for meetings.’
‘Yes, it is a lovely night.’
The Duke dismounted and stood by her side. ‘Why should you have been listening at this time of night, and yet not expecting me?’ he asked.
‘Why, indeed! There is a strange story attached to that, which I must tell you at once. But why did you come a night sooner than you said you would come? I am rather sorry—I really am!’ (shaking her head playfully) ‘for as a surprise to you I had ordered a bonfire to be built, which was to be lighted on your arrival tomorrow; and now it is wasted. You can see the outline of it just out there.’
The Duke looked across to a spot of rising glade, and saw the faggots in a heap. He then bent his eyes with a bland and puzzled air on the ground, ‘What is this strange story you have to tell me that kept you awake?’ he murmured.
‘It is this—and it is really rather serious. My cousin Fred Ogbourne—Captain Ogbourne as he is now—was in his boyhood a great admirer of mine, as I think I have told you, though I was six years his senior. In strict truth, he was absurdly fond of me.’
‘You have never told me of that before.’
‘Then it is your sister I told—yes, it was. Well, you know I have not seen him for many years, and naturally I had quite forgotten his admiration of me in old times. But guess my surprise when the day before yesterday, I received a mysterious note bearing no address, and found on opening it that it came from him. The contents frightened me out of my wits. He had returned from Canada to his father’s house, and conjured me by all he could think of to meet him at once. But I think I can repeat the exact words, though I will show it to you when we get indoors.
‘MY DEAR COUSIN HARRIET,’ the note said, ‘After this long absence you will be surprised at my sudden reappearance, and more by what I am going to ask. But if my life and future are of any concern to you at all, I beg that you will grant my request. What I require of you, is, dear Harriet, that you meet me about eleven tonight by the Druid stones on Marlbury Downs, about a mile or more from your house. I cannot say more, except to entreat you to come. I will explain all when you are there. The one thing is, I want to see you. Come alone. Believe me, I would not ask this if my happiness did not hang upon it—God knows how entirely! I am too agitated to say more—Yours.
FRED.’
‘That was all of it. Now, of course, I ought not to have gone, as it turned out, but that I did not think of then. I remembered his impetuous temper, and feared that something grievous was impending over his head, while he had not a friend in the world to help him, or any one except myself to whom he would care to make his trouble known. So I wrapped myself up and went to Marlbury Downs at the time he had named. Don’t you think I was courageous?’
‘Very.’
‘When I got there—but shall we not walk on; it is getting cold?’ The Duke, however, did not move. ‘When I got there he came, of course, as a full grown man and officer, and not as the lad that I had known him. When I saw him I was sorry I had come. I can hardly tell you how he behaved. What he wanted I don’t know even now; it seemed to be no more than the mere meeting with me. He held me by the hand and waist—O so tight—and would not let me go till I had promised to meet him again. His manner was so strange and passionate that I was afraid of him in such a lonely place, and I promised to come. Then I escaped—then I ran home—and that’s all. When the time drew on this evening for the appointment—which of course, I never intended to keep—I felt uneasy, lest when he found I meant to disappoint him he would come on to the house; and that’s why I could not sleep. But you are so silent!’
‘I have had a long journey.’
‘Then let us get into the house. Why did you come alone and unattended like this?’
‘It was my humour.’
After a moment’s silence, during which they moved on, she said, ‘I have thought of something which I hardly like to suggest to you. He said that if I failed to come tonight he would wait again tomorrow night. Now, shall we tomorrow night go to the hill together—just to see if he is there; and if he is, read him a lesson on his foolishness in nourishing this old passion, and sending for me so oddly, instead of coming to the house?’
‘Why should we see if he’s there?’ said her husband moodily.
‘Because I think we ought to do something in it. Poor Fred! He would listen to you if you reasoned with him, and set our positions in their true light before him. It would be no more than Christian kindness to a man who unquestionably is very miserable from some cause or other. His head seems quite turned.’
By this time they had reached the door, rung the bell, and waited. All the house seemed to be asleep; but soon a man came to them, the horse was taken away, and the Duke and Duchess went in.
THIRD NIGHT
There was no help for it. Bill Mills was obliged to stay on duty, in the old shepherd’s absence, this evening as before, or give up his post and living. He thought as bravely as he could of what lay behind the Devil’s Door, but with no great success, and was therefore in a measure relieved, even if awe-stricken, when he saw the forms of the Duke and Duchess strolling across the frosted greensward. The Duchess was a few yards in front of her husband and tripped on lightly.
‘I tell you he has not thought it worth while to come again!’ the Duke insisted, as he stood still, reluctant to walk further.
‘He is more likely to come and wait all night; and it would be harsh treatment to let him do it a second time.’
‘He is not here; so turn and come home.’
‘He seems not to be here, certainly; I wonder if anything has happened to him. If it has, I shall never forgive myself!’
The Duke, uneasily, ‘O, no. He has some other engagement.’
‘That is very unlikely.’
‘Or perhaps he has found the distance too far.’
‘Nor is that probable.’
‘Then he may have thought better of it.’
‘Yes, he may have thought better of it; if, indeed, he is not here all the time—somewhere in the hollow behind the Devil’s Door. Let us go and see; it will serve him right to surprise him.’
‘O, he’s not there.’
‘He may be lying very quiet because of you,’ she said archly.
‘O, no
—not because of me!’
‘Come, then, I declare, dearest, you lag like an unwilling schoolboy tonight, and there’s no responsiveness in you! You are jealous of that poor lad, and it is quite absurd of you.’
‘I’ll come! I’ll come! Say no more, Harriet!’
And they crossed over the green.
Wondering what they would do, the young shepherd left the hut, and doubled behind the belt of furze, intending to stand near the trilithon unperceived. But, in crossing the few yards of open ground he was for a moment exposed to view.
‘Ah, I see him at last!’ said the Duchess.
‘See him!’ said the Duke, ‘Where?’
‘By the Devil’s Door; don’t you notice a figure there? Ah, my poor lover-cousin, won’t you catch it now?’ and she laughed half-pityingly. ‘But what’s the matter?’ she asked, turning to her husband.
‘It is not he!’ said the Duke hoarsely. ‘It can’t be he!’
‘No, it is not he. It is too small for him. It is a boy.’
‘Ah, I thought so! Boy, come here.’
The youthful shepherd advanced with apprehension.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Keeping sheep, your Grace.’
‘Ah, you know me! Do you keep sheep here every night?’
‘Off and on, my Lord Duke.’
‘And what have you seen here tonight or last night?’ inquired the Duchess. ‘Any person waiting or walking about?’
The boy was silent.
‘He has seen nothing,’ interrupted her husband, his eyes so forbiddingly fixed on the boy that they seemed to shine like points of fire. ‘Come, let us go. The air is too keen to stand in long.’
When they were gone the boy retreated to the hut and sheep, less fearful now than at first—familiarity with the situation having gradually overpowered his thoughts of the buried man. But he was not to be left alone long. When an interval had elapsed of about sufficient length for walking to and from Shakeforest Towers, there appeared from that direction the heavy form of the Duke. He now came alone.
The nobleman, on his part, seemed to have eyes no less sharp than the boy’s for he instantly recognized the latter among the ewes, and came straight towards him.
‘Are you the shepherd lad I spoke to a short time ago?’
‘I be, my Lord Duke.’
‘Now listen to me. Her Grace asked you what you had seen this last night or two up here, and you made no reply. I now ask the same thing, and you need not be afraid to answer. Have you seen anything strange these nights you have been watching here?’
‘My Lord Duke, I be a poor heedless boy, and what I see I don’t bear in mind.’
‘I ask you again,’ said the Duke, coming nearer, ‘have you seen anything strange these nights you have been watching here?’
‘O, my Lord Duke! I be but the under-shepherd boy, and my father he was but your humble Grace’s hedger, and my mother only the cinder-woman in the back-yard! I fall asleep when left alone, and I see nothing at all!’
The Duke grasped the boy by the shoulder, and, directly impending over him, stared down into his face, ‘Did you see anything strange done here last night, I say?’
‘O, my Lord Duke, have mercy, and don’t stab me!’ cried the shepherd, falling on his knees.‘I have never seen you walking here, or riding here, or lying-in-wait for a man, or dragging a heavy load!’
‘H’m!’ said his interrogator, grimly, relaxing his hold. ‘It is well to know that you have never seen those things. Now, which would you rather—see me do those things now, or keep a secret all your life?’
‘Keep a secret, my Lord Duke!’
‘Sure you are able?’
‘O, your Grace, try me!’
‘Very well. And now, how do you like sheepkeeping?’
‘Not at all. ’Tis lonely work for them that think of spirits, and I’m badly used.’
‘I believe you. You are too young for it. I must do something to make you more comfortable. You shall change this smock-frock for a real cloth jacket, and your thick boots for polished shoes. And you shall be taught what you have never yet heard of, and be put to school, and have bats and balls for the holidays, and be made a man of. But you must never say you have been a shepherd boy, and watched on the hills at night, for shepherd boys are not liked in good company.’
‘Trust me, my Lord Duke.’
‘The very moment you forget yourself, and speak of your shepherd days—this year, next year, in school, out of school, or riding in your carriage twenty years hence—at that moment my help will be withdrawn, and smash down you come to shepherding forthwith. You have parents, I think you say?’
‘A widowed mother only, my Lord Duke.’
‘I’ll provide for her, and make a comfortable woman of her, until you speak of—what?’
‘Of my shepherd days, and what I saw here.’
‘Good. If you do speak of it?’
‘Smash down she comes to widowing forthwith!’
‘That’s well—very well. But it’s not enough. Come here.’ He took the boy across to the trilithon, and made him kneel down.
‘Now, this was once a holy place,’ resumed the Duke. ‘An altar stood here, erected to a venerable family of gods, who were known and talked of long before the God we know now. So that an oath sworn here is doubly an oath. Say this after me: “May all the host above—angels and archangels, and principalities and powers—punish me; may I be tormented wherever I am—in the house or in the garden, in the fields or in the roads, in church or in chapel, at home or abroad, on land or at sea; may I be afflicted in eating and in drinking, in growing up and in growing old, in living and dying, inwardly and outwardly, and for always, if I ever speak of my life as a shepherd-boy, or of what I have seen done on this Marlbury Down. So be it, and so let it be. Amen and amen.” Now kiss the stone.’
The trembling boy repeated the words, and kissed the stone, as desired.
The Duke led him off by the hand. That night the junior shepherd slept in Shakeforest Towers, and the next day he was sent away for tuition to a remote village. Thence he went to a preparatory establishment, and in due course to a public school.
FOURTH NIGHT
On a winter evening many years subsequent to the above-mentioned occurrences, the ci-devant shepherd sat in a well-furnished office in the north wing of Shakeforest Towers in the guise of an ordinary educated man of business. He appeared at this time as a person of thirty-eight or forty, though actually he was several years younger. A worn and restless glance of the eye now and then, when he lifted his head to search for some letter or paper which had been mislaid, seemed to denote that his was not a mind so thoroughly at ease as his surroundings might have led an observer to expect. His pallor, too, was remarkable for a countryman. He was professedly engaged in writing, but he shaped not a word. He had sat there only a few minutes, when, laying down his pen and pushing back his chair, he rested a hand uneasily on each of the chair-arms and looked on the floor.
Soon he arose and left the room. His course was along a passage which ended in a central octagonal hall; crossing this he knocked at a door. A faint, though deep, voice told him to come in. The room he entered was a library, and it was tenanted by a single person only—his patron the Duke.
During this long interval of years the Duke had lost all his heaviness of build. He was, indeed, almost a skeleton; his white hair was thin, and his hands were nearly transparent. ‘Oh—Mills?’ he murmured. ‘Sit down. What is it?’
‘Nothing new, your Grace. Nobody to speak of has written, and nobody has called.’
‘Ah—what then? You look concerned.’
‘Old times have come to life, owing to something waking them.’
‘Old times be cursed—which old times are they?’
‘That Christmas week twenty-two years ago, when the late Duchess’s cousin Frederick implored her to meet him on Marlbury Downs. I saw the meeting—it was just such a night as this—and I, as you know, saw more.
She met him once, but not the second time.’
‘Mills, shall I recall some words to you—the words of an oath taken on that hill by a shepherd-boy?’
‘It is unnecessary. He has strenuously kept that oath and promise. Since that night no sound of his shepherd life has crossed his lips—even to yourself. But do you wish to hear more, or do you not, your Grace?’
‘I wish to hear no more,’ said the Duke sullenly.
‘Very well; let it be so. But a time seems coming—may be quite near at hand—when, in spite of my lips, that episode will allow itself to go undivulged no longer.’
‘I wish to hear no more!’ repeated the Duke.
‘You need be under no fear of treachery from me,’ said the steward, somewhat bitterly. ‘I am a man to whom you have been kind—no patron could have been kinder. You have clothed and educated me; have installed me here; and I am not unmindful. But what of it—has your Grace gained much by my staunchness? I think not. There was great excitement about Captain Ogbourne’s disappearance, but I spoke not a word. And his body has never been found. For twenty-two years I have wondered what you did with him. Now I know. A circumstance that occurred this afternoon recalled the time to me most forcibly. To make it certain to myself that all was not a dream, I went up there with a spade; I searched, and saw enough to know that something decays there in a closed badger’s hole.’
‘Mills, do you think the Duchess guessed?’
‘She never did, I am sure, to the day of her death.’
‘Did you leave all as you found it on the hill?’
‘I did.’
‘What made you think of going up there this particular afternoon?’
‘What your Grace says you don’t wish to be told.’
The Duke was silent; and the stillness of the evening was so marked that there reached their ears from the outer air the sound of a tolling bell.
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