The Night Land & Other Romances

by William Hope Hodgson; Jeremy Lassen

  Yet I was sorry for this- ill-feeling on his part; for the Squire had six daughters, and one of them—Miss Ruth Rosset, as I had already learned she was named—had taken my eye strangely at church the previous Sunday, so that since then a dozen times I had caught myself thinking upon her.

  On this day it seemed that I was to have my full share of the disagreeables; for presently, as I went down the cliff path, there met me full in the way the Squire’s six daughters, to whom I had been, formally presented after the service by Parson Wenlock. To these I gave salute, and stood off the path for them to pass. But, indeed, they went by me with their skirts withdrawn and their faces forward, as if I had been but a matter of dirt upon the path-side. And I had thought, foolishly enough, that Hiss Ruth had looked not unfriendly at me on the past Sunday; and now this.

  And by such an incident alone you shall see the bitter enmity which I had earned already by the capture of the cargoes and by the arrests. Moreover, it may help you to perceive the curious sympathy which held the peoples of the neighbourhood together, and the inability of any, from the highest to the lowest, to conceive that smuggling was anything but right and desirable. Indeed, it was evident to me that the daughters of Squire Rosset had both knowledge and approval of their brother’s secret trading; and no doubt many a dainty foreign gewgaw came their way through their brother, so that they were the more likely to make a personal matter of any attempt to end the free traffic, as you shall think. Apart from this, as I had reason to suspect, smuggling brought a certain ready wealth into the household, which must have been welcome; for though Squire Rosset was plainly well-to-do, he was reported to keep a very close fist on his money-bags.

  In the meanwhile, however, I had many things to take my attention from this unneighbourliness of the Rossets (though in this I do not include the Squire, who was always very courteous and friendly); for within the next month I had made seven big hauls; with the result that at the next assizes there were sentenced ten men of Burget; and the smugglers of that district were beginning to realise that I meant truly to check the free traffic.

  There were, of course, several attempts to put me on one side. Twice I was fired at in the dark, and once three men came out of the bushes at me on one of the low cliff-paths. They had heavy sticks, and, I suppose, thought to have done with me in a minute. I broke the jaw of one with my fist, and one of the others I pitched bodily over the cliff, where he was found at daylight with both legs broken. The third man ran; but I meant that the smugglers should learn that this sort of thing was not going to be tried without certain pains attaching. And so I chased that man for three miles. When I caught him I beat him with his own stick until he cried like a child. Then I left him to get well and think. Apart from this little private adjustment of the matter, I did not press the case officially, though I knew the three men who had attacked me. This attitude on my part earned for me, I think, a certain, respect from my neighbours to salt their general hatred of me. Moreover, it went round the district that I had held off the three men alone, and this made me free of such matters for the future.

  And now back to my relations with the Rossets, for it will have become plain to you by now that my interests lay much that way. I had several times been invited by the old Squire to come up to dinner, but had always pleaded duty; for it was easy to know that his children would scarce welcome me so freely as I might like. However, one evening, when I was down in the village, the Squire stopped his carriage by me and asked whether I was going to plead duty again as an excuse for unsociability. So that before I well knew what I was doing I was beside him driving up to the manor, with no excuse for dress or dirt allowed. And, indeed, I must say here that old Squire Rosset showed always a curious and strong partiality for my company, which has often pleased and surprised me; for he was a man of considerable character, and, as. I liked to think, discernment, and most certainly not given to over-readiness in the making of friends, as was plain to me.

  At dinner the Squire’s six daughters were simply brutal, and I was glad the brother was absent. They acted as if I were not at the table, except for a frigid and over-formal attention to my needs. That the Squire was vaguely aware of this at first I am in doubt; but I do know that later their manner attracted both his attention, and his wrath. And here let me say that the Squire at no time showed any sympathy with the free-trade which was rampant all about—and even in his own household, had he but known. Indeed, it is possible that he more than half suspected, and that he was wishful to stand well with the law, in my person, and to make it plain that he was on the side of order, and nowise concerned with unorthodox doings. This, at least, has been sometimes my thought.

  For a long while the Squire tried to hold off the silence from the table by telling anecdotes of the countryside. Finally, as if it had suddenly occurred to him, he said in a jovial way:

  “I hear, Mr. Faucett, that you beat three of our local men the other night, single-handed.”

  I laughed.

  “They were not a very dangerous lot,” I said.

  “If it had been Tom, and just alone,” said Miss Ruth suddenly from down the table, “he’d have probably thrown you over the cliff. You mustn’t think all the men in this part are babies.”

  “Silence, child!” said the Squire. He turned to me, as I sat realising how much talk there must have been already about that bit of trouble.

  “You see,” he said, “they’re great partisans for their own countrymen. And they think there’s no one in the world so fine and strong as my son Tom.”

  I nodded and turned to the girl.

  “Such scoundrels ought to be thankful, Miss Ruth, for such a champion. They certainly need one.”

  I was aware that the old Squire looked at me with a sudden quick surprise; but I was still looking at the girl. I had intended to be a little brutal, for her cold insolence had angered me, even while her winsome-ness drew me strangely. Yet she made no answer to my remark, but looked down at her plate, as if I did not exist. All the other girls kept the same frozen silence, and I saw their father looking at them with a vague half-anger, and make as if to say something; but instead he took a drink of ale, and joined the general quiet, so that the whole table was uncomfortably silent.

  After dinner we moved into the drawing-room, where Miss Ruth played the harp and sang several ballads. It was while she was improvising gently to herself on the harp that her brother Tom came quickly into the room. It was evident that he did not know I was present, and, before he had been told, he said in a savage voice:

  “That d—d spy has murdered another of our men!”

  “What!” said Miss Ruth, very pale in the face; and all the other girls cried out in horror.

  “Tom!” called the Squire quickly, before he had time unknowingly to fix the insult on me.

  Tom turned and saw me. He made a muttered choking noise in his throat, and in the same moment the Squire had hastily introduced us. Tom looked at me, and bent his stiff neck to a curt nod, to which I responded with ordinary courtesy; though I had no doubt but that his remark referred to the hanging that day of one Martin Lowther, who had shot Tames Taunton, a man of my patrol, a month previously at a surprise of a cargo-running, and had been condemned on my evidence. Regarding this same Martin Lowther, he was an infernal blackguard; whilst Taunton had been a steady, splendid fellow, and but newly wed to a pretty girl; so that you must understand my heart held little pity, for Lowther, who, it seemed, had been always a low, loafing, tippling, tongue-wagging longshoreman, with a dirty and ugly record to his back. Yet, as you will perceive, I could only ignore Tom Rosset’s remark, and pretend, at least whilst under their roof, that I had no understanding of what it was that he had referred to.

  For a while young Rosset remained, and the conversation became general in the room; so that presently I felt that the tension had been eased, and that a more sociable spirit was prevailing. It was because of this feeling that, when Tom Rosset left the room a little later, I walked over to where Miss
Ruth was sitting idly by the window, and asked her whether she would pleasure me by singing a favourite old love-song. In a moment I saw that I had made a mistake in supposing that there was either grace or courtesy in the girl; for she said no word, but looked silently up at me with a kind of white scorn. Abruptly she got to her feet and went over to her harp. Then, sitting down, she sang the “Hanging of the Spy,” with such deliberate and deadly insult, considering my request and the circumstances, that I quietly took my leave without more ado. The old Squire let me go only with reluctance and in bewilderment. I learnt afterwards that when he found out just what had happened beneath his very nose, as we say, there was such a storm in the manor as was not forgotten for a long while. And, indeed, though I did not know at the time, this had something to do with a note of cleverly-worded explanation and apology which was brought next evening to my house by no less a person that Tom Rosset himself. He, to my amazement, made a jovial sort of apology for all, and explained that I must not take them too seriously, but make some allowance for their feelings of partisanship for their own villagers, who had been born and bred on their own land.

  All this, as you will understand, quite took the wind out of my sails, so that I could not be stiff with the man, but felt that he must be a decent fellow at bottom. And when he doubly urged me that I simply must come up that night to dinner and a comfortable evening, to show that I truly bore no ill-will for what he was pleased to term their “local prickles,” I agreed in the heartiest fashion, feeling truly that I had, perhaps, been a little foolish to take too much notice of the somewhat undisciplined attitude of a set of young people. And so, with a final word that the carriage would be down for me at seven, he went off.

  That night I found that young Rosset had not exaggerated, for I was welcomed courteously by all the girls, though, as might he expected, with a certain reserve which was developed to actual constraint in the case of Miss Ruth. However, during dinner, at which the old Squire paid me the nicest attention, the girl became more natural, and by the end we had arrived almost at a friendly attitude. Yet under her manner there seemed to be always a strange submission, or rather repression, as if she were not being quite truly herself. I know of no other words with which to explain this vague impression I had when speaking to her.

  When in the drawing-room after dinner Miss Ruth moved over to her harp, and played the prelude to the very song which I had asked her to sing to me on the preceding evening. Then she began to sing the song itself in a low voice, and the room was utterly quiet, save for the quaint melody of the song, and the deep, mellow notes of the harp. And then, as I sat listening with my feelings a little stirred, my gaze fell on the old Squire, and I knew suddenly a part of the reason for this friendliness on the part of the Rosset family, and the girl’s curious seeming of submission and repression of herself; for the old man, not aware that I saw him, was looking at the girl with a fierce, stern look in his eyes that showed me he must have been mightily angered and wakened to mastery by his family’s disgracing of all the laws of ordinary courtesy and hospitality. Indeed, it was obvious to me that he was truly master in his own house when he chose; and in this case he had chosen, and his family had been forced to obey. And all this I reasoned out, from a quick flash of intuition, as I sat listening to the song.

  At first, as you may think, I had a feeling that I wished for no such forced welcome as this, but after a little thought I saw that it would be foolishness to act upon this feeling and refrain from ever coming near the manor again; for I knew that I was already more than attracted to Miss Ruth; and I made up my mind then that I would make them all to realise that I was worthy of their friendship, and then, perhaps, I might teach the girl to love me. And, indeed, within a week I had reason to feel that I was succeeding; for the friendliness of the family began to have an unstrained note in it, so that I could see that the old Squire had relaxed his stern attitude to his family, and felt comfort able now to leave me in their hands.

  I was now a regular visitor; and, indeed, a place was set always for me at dinner, so that I might truly call myself a friend of the family. Also, perhaps because the others saw my preference, I noticed that presently it seemed to be taken for granted that Miss Ruth and I liked to be together, for often we would find that matters had resolved themselves this way. And truly she seemed not to dislike my company, though always in a quiet, half-shy, half-reserved way that stirred me with more than a vague hope that she had begun to care a little for me.

  Sometimes, when the six girls were returning from their daily bathe, I would meet them and walk back to lunch, at such times carrying Miss Ruth’s towel, which act of service pleased me in that strange but natural way which is familiar to most who have fallen in love with a maid, for I knew now that I was very much this way, yet quite unsure of the girl.

  Then one day Miss Ruth, as I met them, remarked that bathing made her tired, and that she thought it might be as well to drop it for a time and go for some good long walks. This emboldened me to offer myself as an escort; and to my great pleasure she was pleased to accept, so that I felt surely she must care, if but a little.

  From thence onward through a short, happy month I took Miss Ruth for a good walk during the time in which her sisters went for their morning bathe; meeting them on the homeward journey, and so with them to the manor, where I had lunch as one of the family. By this time I was thoroughly miserable unless I was with Miss Ruth; yet I could not bring myself to risk the utter misery of a refusal, so that day after day we walked quietly in country lanes, she seemingly shy but content to be with me, and I in a distress of doubt. Yet I felt sure that she must know that I loved her, for I showed it in a thousand ways, possibly clumsily and foolishly, though I felt so dumb.

  Then one day I came upon my tragedy. I met the sisters coming down as usual to their bathe, but Miss Ruth was not among them. They told me that she had stopped at the stile on the corner to rest, and that I should probably find her there; whereat I hurried on. As I drew near the bend of the lane which hid the stile from me I heard suddenly .Tom Rosset’s voice, raised almost to a shout in anger. He was saying something vehemently, and it sounded as if his sister were trying to reply. They evidently did not hear me as I came along on the soft grass bank bordering the lane; and even as I puzzled a moment how to let them know that I was near, I heard my name, and knew that Tom was accusing his sister bitterly of being in love with me. I paused eagerly listening to her answer, for it was what my heart had been aching yet dreading to hear for all the past weeks. Then, like a bitter, unbelievable slap in the face, her laughter came hard and scornful, and I heard her tell her brother that she had done no more than she had agreed to do, which was to hold me from the shore whilst the cargoes were run; that she loved me as little as he did, and that if he did not approve of her methods, he had better take me country walks himself, and so combine courtesy to the enemy—thereby obeying their father—and assistance to the smugglers all at the same time; and she hoped he would have as much or as little entertainment out of it as she had gained! And all this with a fresh and bitter accompaniment of scornful laughter, so that my heart was cold and sick and hard within me.

  “If I did,” said Tom Rosset brutally, “I’d wring his neck for him, and leave him in the wood—the spying, murdering scum that he is!”

  I walked round the corner of the lane, and came upon them. The girl cried out something, with a little frightened gasp, and I saw her face whiten.

  “So,” I said, looking at her with a grim contempt, “you can stoop to break a man’s heart for such paltry ends!”

  She made no attempt to answer, and indeed I waited for none, but came round swiftly on the brother.

  “At last, Mr. Rosset,” I said, “you will be able to show off that strength of which you are so proud—you treacherous beast!”

  And with that I met his quick rush with a hard body-punch that brought him up gasping. I heard the girl sobbing where, she stood by the hedge near the stile; then the man tried a
“hold” on me, which I slipped, and punched him off. A dozen tries he made to grip me, but I hit him cruelly hard, for he was too strong and heavy a man to deal gently with; moreover, I intended to punish, for I was as bitter as gall. And so, in a minute, I had him rocking on his feet, for I had near hit the life out of him. Then I went in quickly and threw him very hard, so that he lay stunned upon the ground. And Miss Ruth just standing near the stile, as pale as death, and bright-eyed, and shaking with strange, dry sobs.

  “Oh!” I said, looking at her, and speaking between my gasps, “he’s a brute, but he’s a man. But what are you?”

  Then I turned and went down the lane as quickly as I might.

  As soon as I had steadied sufficiently, and fought down the mad, hopeless pain at my heart enough to think, I hurried down to the station, to find out how it could be possible that there had been any running of smuggled goods in broad daylight, as was obvious must have been done from what I had overheard Miss Ruth say to her brother. Yet no man had the least suspicion that there had been any “running” of late, and unless I supposed that there had been a general slackness among my own men, I could not conceive how the thing could have been worked, whether my attention was withdrawn or not. Yet that goods had come into the district I was soon able to prove by the reports of the inland officers; so that for the next month I was continually round the cliffs, visiting my men both day and night to see that the patrols were not shirked. And glad enough I was for the constant work and watching, for a more sickening month of misery I never passed. I had not merely lost the girl I loved, but all the glamour of love and all my ideals; so that all the world seemed hopelessly grey and sordid.