Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Fortunately when he had reached this stage he remembered that he had his tinder box and matches in his pocket, and he fumbled for them with his disengaged hand. With an effort, he got them out. But to strike a light and catch it in the huddled posture in which he knelt was not easy, and it was only after a score of attempts that the match caught the flame. Even so, the light it gave was faint, but it revealed the Squire’s face, and Clement saw, with a shudder, that the left eye and temple were terribly battered. But he saw, too, that the old man was conscious, for he uttered a groan, and peered with the uninjured eye at the face that bent over him. “Good lad!” he muttered, “good lad!” and he added broken words which conveyed to Clement’s mind that it was his man who had attacked him. Then — his face was so turned that it was within a few inches of Clement’s shoulder— “You’re bloody, lad,” he muttered. “He’s spoiled your coat, the d — d rascal!”

  With that he seemed to slip back into unconsciousness, and the light went out. It left Clement in a strait to know what he ought to do, or rather what he could do. Help he must get, and speedily, if he would save the Squire’s life, but his horse was gone, and to walk away for help, leaving the old man lying in the mud of the way seemed inhuman. He must at least carry him to the side of the road.

  The task was no light one, for the Squire was tall, though not stout; and before Clement stooped to it he cast a last look round. But silence still wrapped all, and he was gathering his strength to lift the dead weight, when a sound caught his ear, and he raised himself. A moment, and joy! — he caught the far-off beat of hoofs on the turf. Someone was coming, approaching him from the direction of Aldersbury. He shouted, shouted his loudest and waited. Yes, he was not mistaken. The soft plop-plop of hoofs grew louder, two forms loomed out of the darkness, a horse shied, a man swore.

  “Here!” Clement cried. “Here! Take care! There’s a man in the road.”

  “Where?” Then, “Confound you, you nearly had me down! Are you hurt?”

  “No, but”

  “I’ve got your horse. I met him a couple of miles this side of the town. What has — —”

  Clement broke in. “There’s bad work here!” he cried, his voice shaky. Now that help was at hand and the peril was over, he began to feel what he had gone through. “For God’s sake get down and help me. Your uncle’s man has robbed him and, I fear, murdered him.”

  “The Squire?”

  “Yes, yes. He’s lying here, half dead. We must get him to the side of the road at once.”

  Arthur slipped from his saddle, and holding the reins of the two horses, approached the group as nearly as the frightened beasts would let him. “Quiet, fools!” he cried angrily. And then, “Good heavens!” in a whisper, as he peered awe-stricken at the injured man. “Is he dead?”

  “No, but he’s terribly mauled. And we must get help. Help, man, and quickly, if it is to be of any use. Shall I go?”

  “No, no, I’ll go,” Arthur answered, recoiling. What he had seen had given him no desire to take Clement’s place. “Garthmyle is the nearer, and I shall not be long. I’ll tie up your horse — that’ll be best.”

  There was an old thorn-tree standing solitary in the waste not many yards away: a tree destined to be pointed out for years to come as marking the spot where the old Squire was robbed. Arthur tied Clement’s horse to this, then together they lifted the old man and carried him to the side of the road. The moment that this was done, Arthur sprang on his horse and started off. “Back soon,” he shouted.

  Clement had not seen his way to object, but it was with a heavy heart that he resigned himself to another period of painful waiting. He was cold, his face smarted, and at any moment the old man might die on his hands. Meantime he could do nothing but wait. Or yes, he could do something; chilled as he was, he took off his coat, and rolling it up, he slipped it under the insensible head.

  Little had he thought that morning that he would ever pity the Squire. But he did. The man who had driven away from him, hard, aggressive, indomitable, asking no man’s help and meeting all men’s eyes with the gaze of a master, now lay at his feet, crushed and broken; lay with his head on the coat of the man he had despised, dependent on him for the poor service that still might avail him. Clement felt the pathos of it, and the pity. And his heart was sore for Josina. How would she meet, how bear the shock that a short hour must inflict on her?

  He was thinking of her, when, long before he had dared to expect relief, he heard a sound that resolved itself into the rattle of wheels. Yes, there was a carriage coming along the road.

  Arthur had been fortunate. He had come upon the Squire’s horses, which had been brought to a stand with the near wheels of the curricle wedged in the ditch. He had found them greedily feeding, and he had let his own nag go, and had captured the runaways. He had drawn the carriage out of the ditch, and here he was.

  “Thank God!” Clement cried. “I think that he is still alive.”

  “And we’ve got to lift him in,” said Arthur, more practical. “He’s a big weight.”

  It was not an easy task. But they tied up the horses to the thorn-tree, and lifting the old man between them, they carried him with what care they might to the carriage, raised him, heavy and helpless as he was, to the step, and then, while one maintained him there, the other climbed in and lifted him to the front seat. Clement got up behind and supported his shoulders and head, while Arthur, first tying the saddle-horse behind the carriage, released the pair, and with the reins in his hands scrambled to his place.

  The thing was done and cleverly done, and they set off. But they dared not travel at more than a walk, and never had the three miles to Garthmyle seemed so long or so tedious.

  They were both anxious and both excited. But while in Clement’s mind pity, a sense of the tragedy before him, and thought for Josina contended with an honest pride in what he had done, the other, as they drove along, was already calculating chances and busy with contingencies. The Squire’s death — if the Squire died — would work a great change, an immense change. Things which had yesterday been too doubtful and too distant to deserve much thought would be within reach, would be his for the asking. And he was the more inclined to consider this because Betty — dear little creature as she was — had shown a spirit that day that was not to his liking. Whereas Josina, mild and docile — it might be that after all she would suit him better. And Garth — Garth with its wide acres and its rich rent-roll would be hers; Garth that would give any man a position to be envied. Its charms, while uncertain and dependent on the whim and caprice of an arbitrary old man, had not fixed him, for to attain to them he must give up other things, equally to his mind. But now the case was or might be altered. He must wait and watch events, and keep an open mind. If the Squire died ——

  A word or two passed between the couple, but for the most part they were silent. Once and again the Squire moaned, and so proved that he still lived. At last, where the road to Garth branched off, at the entrance to the village, they saw a light in front, and old Fewtrell carrying a lanthorn met them. The Squire’s absence had alarmed the house, and he had come thus far in quest of news.

  “Oh, Lord, ha’ mercy! Lord, ha’ mercy!” the old fellow quavered as he lifted his lanthorn and the light disclosed the group in the carriage, and his master’s huddled form and ghastly visage. “Miss Jos said ’twas so! Said as summat had happened him! Beside herself, she be! She’ve been down at the gate this half-hour waiting on him!”

  “Don’t let her see him,” Clement cried. “Go, man, and send her back.”

  But, “That’s no good,” Arthur objected with more sense but less feeling. “She must see him. This is women’s work, we can do nothing. Let Fewtrell take your place and do you go for the doctor. You know where he lives, and you’ll go twice as quick as he will, and there’s no more that you can do. Take your horse.”

  Clement was unwilling to go, unwilling to have no farther part in the matter. But he could not refuse. Things were as they were
; in spite of all that he had done and suffered, he had no place there, no standing in the house, no right beside his mistress or call to think for her. He was a stranger, an outsider, and when he had fetched the doctor, there would, as Arthur had said, be nothing more that he could do.

  Nothing more, though as he rode over the bridge and trotted through the village his heart was bursting with pity for her whom he could not comfort, could not see; from whose side in her troubles and her self-arraignment — for he knew that she would reproach herself — he must be banished. It was hard.

  CHAPTER XV

  The Squire was late.

  A hundred years ago night fell more seriously. It closed in on a countryside less peopled, on houses and hamlets more distant, and divided by greater risks of flood and field. The dark hours were longer and haunted by graver apprehensions. Every journey had to be made on horses or behind them, roads were rough and miry, fords were plenty, bridges scarce. Sturdy rogues abounded, and to double every peril it was still the habit of most men to drink deep. Few returned sober from market, fewer from fair or merry-making.

  For many, therefore, the coming of night meant the coming of fear. Children, watching the great moths fluttering against the low ceiling, or round the rush-light that cast such gloomy shadows, thought that their elders would never come upstairs to bed. Lone women, quaking in remote dwellings, remembered the gibbet where the treacherous inn-keeper still moulded, and fancied every creak the coming of a man in a crape mask. Thousands suffered nightly because the goodman lingered abroad, or the son was absent, and in many a window the light was set at dusk to guide the master by the pool. On market evenings women stole trembling down the lane that the sound of wheels might the sooner dispel their fears.

  At Garth it was youth not age that first caught the alarm. For Josina’s conscience troubled her, and before even Miss Peacock, most fidgety of old maids, had seen cause to fear, the girl was standing in the darkness before the door, listening and uneasy. The Squire was seldom late; it could not be that Clement had met him and there had been a — but no, Clement was not the man to raise his hand against his elder — the thought was dismissed as soon as formed. Yet why did not the Squire come? Lights began to shine through the casements, she saw the candles brought into the dining-room, the darkness thickened about her, only the trunks of the nearer beeches gave back a gleam. And she felt that if anything had happened to him she could never forgive herself. Shivering, less with cold than with apprehension, she peered down the drive. He had been later than this before, but then her conscience had been quiet, she had not deceived him, she had had nothing with which to reproach herself on his account.

  Presently, “Josina, what are you doing there?” Miss Peacock cried. She had come to the open door and discovered the girl. She began to scold. “Come in this minute, child! What are you starving the house for, standing there?”

  But Josina did not budge. “He is very late,” she said.

  “Late? What nonsense! And what if he is late? What good can you do, standing out there? I declare one might suppose your father was one of those skimble-skambles that can’t pass a tavern door, to hear you talk! And Thomas with him! Come in at once when I tell you! As if I should not be the first to cry out if anything were wrong. Late indeed — why, goodness gracious, I declare it’s nearly eight. What can have become of him, child? And Calamy and those good-for-nothing girls warming their knees at the fire, and no more caring if their master is in the river than — Josina, do you hear? Do you know that your father is still out? Calamy!” ringing a hand-bell that stood on the table in the hall, “Calamy! Are you all asleep? Don’t you know that your master is not in, and it is nearly eight?”

  Calamy was the butler. A tall, lanthorn-jawed man, he would have looked lugubrious in the King’s scarlet which he had once worn; in his professional black, or in his shirt sleeves, cleaning plate, he was melancholy itself. And his modes and manners were at least as mournful as his aspect — no man so sure as “Old Calamity” to see the dark side of things or to put it before others. It was whispered that he had been a Dissenter, and why the Squire, who hated a ranter as he hated the devil, had ever engaged him, much less kept him, was a puzzle to Garthmyle. That he had been his son’s servant and had been with the boy when he died, might have seemed a sufficient reason, had the Squire been other than he was. But no one supposed that such a thing weighed with the old man — he was of too hard a grain. Yet at Garth, Calamy had lived for a score of years, and been suffered with a patience which might have stood to the credit of more reasonable men.

  “Nearly eight!” Miss Peacock flung at him, and repeated her statement.

  “We’ve put the dinner back, ma’am.”

  “Put the dinner back! And that’s all you think of, when at any minute your master — oh, dear, dear, what can have happened to him?”

  “Well, it’s a dark night, ma’am, to be sure.”

  “Gracious goodness, can’t I see that? If Thomas weren’t with him — —”

  The butler shook his head. “Under notice, ma’am,” he said. “I think the worst of Thomas. On a dark night, with Thomas — —”

  Miss Peacock gasped.

  “I should say my prayers, ma’am,” the butler murmured softly.

  Miss Peacock stared, aghast. “Under notice?” she cried. “Well, of all the— ‘deed, and I wish you were all under notice, if that is the best you’ve got to say.”

  “Hadn’t you better,” said Josina from the darkness outside, “send Fewtrell to meet him with a lanthorn?”

  “And get my nose bitten off when your father comes home! La, bless me, I don’t know what to do! And no one else to do a thing!”

  “Send him, Calamy,” said Josina.

  Calamy retired. Miss Peacock looked out, a shawl about her head. “Jos! Where are you?” she cried. “Come in at once, girl. Do you think I am going to be left alone, and the door open? Jos! Jos!”

  But Josina was gone, groping her way down the drive. When Fewtrell followed with his lanthorn he came on her sitting on the bridge, and he got a rare start, thinking it was a ghost. “Lord A’mighty!” he cried as the light fell on her pale face. “Aren’t you afraid to sit there by yourself, miss?”

  But Josina was not afraid, and after a word or two he shambled away, the lanthorn swinging in his hand. The girl watched the light go bobbing along as far the highway fifty yards on, saw it travel to the left along the road, lost it for some moments, then marked it again, a faint blur of light, moving towards the village.

  Presently it vanished and she was left alone with her fears. She strained her ears to catch the first sound of wheels. The stream murmured beneath her, a sick sheep coughed, the breeze whispered in the hedges, the cry of an owl, thrice repeated, sank into silence. But that was all, and in the presence of the silent world about her, of the all-enveloping night, of the solemn stars shining as they had shone from eternity, the girl knew herself infinitely helpless, without remedy against the stroke of impending fate. She recognized that lighted rooms and glowing fires and the indoor life did but deceive; that they did but blind the mind to the immensity of things, to the real issues, to life and death and eternity. Anguished, she owned that a good conscience was the only refuge, and that she had it not. She had deceived her father, and it would be her fate to endure a lasting remorse. At last, her eyes opened, she fancied that she detected behind the mask a father’s face. But too late, for the bridge which he had crossed innumerable times, the drive, rough and rutted, yet the harbinger of home, which he had climbed from boyhood to age, the threshold which he had trodden so often as master — they would know him no more! At the thought she broke down and wept, feeling all its poignancy, all its pitifulness, and finding for the moment no support in Clement, no recompense in a love which deceit and secrecy had tainted.

  Doubtless she would not have taken things so hardly had she not been overwrought; and, as it was, the first sound that reached her from the Garthmyle road brought her to her feet. A lig
ht showed, moving from that direction, travelling slowly through the darkness. It vanished, and she held her breath. It came into view again, and she groped her way forward until she stood in the road. The light was close at hand now, though viewed from the front it moved so little that her worst forebodings were confirmed. But now, now that she saw her fears justified, the woman’s fortitude, that in enduring is so much greater than man’s, came to her aid, and it was with a calmness that surprised herself that she awaited the slow procession, discerned by the lanthorn-light her father’s huddled form, and in a trembling voice asked if he still lived.

  “Yes, yes!” Arthur cried, and hastened to reassure her. “He will do yet, but he is hurt. Go back, Jos, and get his bed ready, and hot water, and some linen. The doctor will be here in a minute.”

  His voice, firm and collected, struck the right note, and the girl answered to it bravely. She made no lamentation, shed no tears — there would be time for tears later — but gathering up her skirts she sped up the drive, and before the carriage had passed the bridge she had given the alarm in the house. There, in a moment, all was confusion. Miss Peacock, whatever fears she had expressed, was ill prepared for the fact, and it was Josina, who, steadied by that half-hour of self-examination, stilled the outcry of the maids, gave the needful orders, and seconded Calamy in carrying them out, had candles placed on the stairs, and with her own hand brought out a stout chair. When the carriage, the lanthorn gleaming sombrely on the shining trunks, drew slowly out of the darkness, she was there with lights and brandy. For her the worst was over. The scared faces of the women, their stifled cries and confused hovering, were but a background to her steady courage.

  Still, even she yielded the first place to Arthur. Whatever pity or horror he had felt, he had had time to overcome, and to think both of the present and the future. And he rose to the occasion. He directed, arranged, and was himself the foremost worker. By the time Mr. Farmer, the village doctor, arrived, he had done much which had to be done. The Squire had been carried upstairs, and lay, breathing stertorously, on his great four-post bed with the dingy drab curtains and the two watch-pockets at the head; and everything which could be of use had been brought to hand.