‘But,’ interrupted Margaret, ‘how—how could——’ Dr. Warden in his turn broke into her speech.
‘Stay,’ he said, ‘I must remind you of the old quotation More things in heaven and earth. Yes, it was one of the miners, or should I say one who had been such—but,’ and he half murmured the next words—‘rest his soul, he’s dead.’
‘Margaret,’ he went on, ‘the girl described him closely. He was pale—“delicate-like, for a rough sort of man, and he had a nice voice and very blue eyes,” etc. “To make it still surer, as he turned to go, something seemed to strike him, ‘Tell them,’ he added, ‘tell them as it was Brough, Laurence Brough, that fetched the doctor.’ “Then,” continued Eliza, “I was going to ask him to say it again, but he was gone—I don’t know how he managed to slip off so quickly—and I said the name over to myself, not to forget it.”That is, all she has to tell, and all she need ever know. It might upset her.’
Margaret had grown very, very white; but it was the whiteness of awe, not of fear.
‘Doctor,’ she said in a whisper, ‘ what do you think? Can such things be?’
His voice was very reverent as he replied, ‘Far be it from me to say they cannot.’
It was not till some days’ quiet had completely restored Robert Heald to his usual health that they told him the story. And after a moment or two’s deep silence he looked up and said gently, ‘I remember the last words I heard him speak, “If I could do something in return for you, I feel as if I’d die easier.”’
‘And how little we had done, or been able to do,’ added Margaret. ‘Such faithfulness of gratitude makes one ashamed—gratitude reaching not till, but beyond, death.’
Like the Last Minstrel,
I say the tale as ’twas said to me,
but as to its truth, I go further. The facts of the incident I have related are facts, not fiction.
A Ghost of the Pampas
(A story from The Wrong Envelope and Other Stories—Written by the Author’s Son Bevil R. Molesworth,
who died in 1899, aged 27, seven years before the book’s first publication. )
‘Then we’ll go down to The Chase together—meet at Paddington, eh? The 1.45 is my usual train—brings one in just about the right time of the day.’
‘All right, I’ll be there.’
‘Mind you don’t fail me,’ returned the first speaker, Charles Maud by name, as he drew out a small pocket diary of some novel and specially convenient make, in which he carefully inscribed the appointment. ‘Paddington, December 23rd, 1.45. Meet Darcy,’ he read aloud. ‘You’re such an uncivilised fellow nowadays, you see—accustomed to diggings where there are no times or tides—no, I’m making a mess of it. There are tides, I suppose, as you weren’t far from the coast; but time doesn’t count for much, I fancy.’
‘No, not for much,’ replied the other. But he spoke absently. ‘December 23rd, you said, Maud? December 23rd,’ and then he relapsed into silence and sat with his eyes fixed on the glowing recesses of the brightly-burning fire, in the snug smoking-room of the club, where the two old companions, schoolfellows and college friends in past days, had met again.
‘December 23rd. Naturally—the day but one before Christmas. Has it any tender reminiscences for you?’ asked Maud in a rallying tone.
He was a cheery, good-hearted young fellow, whose life had in no way diverged from the ordinary lives of his class, nor brought him in contact with the underlying strata of existence. Roger Darcy, on the other hand, was a very different type of man—quiet—considerate, somewhat taciturn, with a touch of melancholy in his dark eyes, and the look of one who has been used to depend on himself and himself alone. It was barely a twelvemonth since the death of an uncle—preceded by that of this uncle’s only son—to whose title and property he had thus succeeded, had recalled him to England and civilisation. For several years before that he had been working hard, and that not unsuccessfully, in the southern States of the Argentine Republic, in various ways, dealing with cattle, sheep and horses. At Maud’s remark, Darcy looked up, with a slow smile.
‘Tender reminiscences,’ he repeated. ‘No, I haven’t gone in much for that sort of thing. It’s more in your way, Charley. Yet the 23rd of December is and always will be a marked day for me. It saw the death of a true friend of mine—true, yes indeed that sounds a cold word for what he was to me—my poor old Dorotéo—that a man should give his life for his friend—and he’d have done that any day. And—he did more than that.’
His voice sank. A strange expression stole into his deep eyes, and Maud, heedless rattle though he was, felt curiously impressed—something almost like a shiver passed through him as he caught sight of Roger’s eyes, and heard his mysterious words.
‘More than that,’ he repeated. ‘What can you mean, Darcy?’
Darcy glanced round. They were alone in the room. It was getting late. For an hour or so it was probable they would be undisturbed.
‘I’ll tell you, if you like,’ he said quietly. ‘But mind you, old fellow—it’s—it’s sacred to me. I couldn’t stand you mocking or making light of it. It did more for me than I could easily express.’
‘I won’t make light of it—give you my word,’ said Maud, whose curiosity, and perhaps some worthier feelings, were by this time aroused. ‘I’m not such a fool as you take me for, on the whole, Roger.’
‘Well then—listen. You know, or perhaps you don’t know, that when by two successive mails—practically to me by the same mail, for I got the letters all at once—I learnt the extraordinary change that had come over my fortunes, I was some way up from the coast, to the north of the Rio Negro, where, after lots of ups and downs, I had at last settled on a good stretch of land. I had had infinite difficulty in getting it, and I could have made a good thing of it. So that it was not without a mixture of feelings that I saw before me no choice. I must sell up and come home. There were new duties and responsibilities before me which I had no right to evade. But I’d got to love the life— much of it, that is to say. There is—no, no words of mine can describe the extraordinary charm of that strange country. I mustn’t let myself go on the subject, or I shall never get my story told. I’d got to love the life, I say, and I’d got some friends, real friends there; horses and dogs as well as human beings! A queer medley. And among the human beings there was no one I trusted more—till I lost him I didn’t realise how he had wound himself round my heart—than one of my guachos, named Dorotéo. I had made him into a sort of head man, or as we call it out there, capitas, or major-domo. And it was he I chose to accompany me in an expedition I planned for myself, as a sort of compromise—a softener of the sharp abruptness of giving up my new country. There was no extreme hurry for my return home, so instead of making my way straight to Buenos Ayres—I resolved to strike into the very heart of Patagonia, south of the Rio Negro, and there to spend some three or four months in exploring what was to me, and indeed is to almost all Europeans, entirely new ground. The season was in my favour—by the time I had made all arrangements for disposing of my land and stock, we were at the end of October—that is to say, the Patagonian spring. No, I wasn’t going to be troubled with any impedimenta. One pack horse could carry all we needed, for we meant only Dorotéo and myself, old and tried campanisteros.’
‘Old and tried how much?’ interposed Maud. Darcy smiled.
‘I’ll avoid local terms in future—as much as I can, that’s to say. “Camp-men” is the nearest translation of the word you object to. Well, to return to our preparations. Sixteen horses exclusive of the madrina mare—oh, by the by, I must explain. In the Argentine, and indeed all over those southern republics, every troop of horses, from seven to twenty, are kept together by the bell mare, to whom they are hefted, following her, as her name implies, as if she were their mother. So whenever the tinkle of her cencesso is heard, you may be sure her tropilla is round her. All you have to do at night to keep the troop from straying, is to mancar—Anglice “hobble”—the madrina. Well, as I w
as saying, sixteen horses were to form our troop—among them, I remember, a bahio; the word is used for a colour you never see in England, a curious yellowish shade horse, belonging to Dorotéo himself.
‘He had had him as a colt, had broken him, and had come to love the creature so, that no offers, however tempting, had ever prevailed with him to part with his bahio— not even when he was drunk—for, alas, it would not be true to life if I made out that my friend, good as he was, was always sober—would Dorotéo have listened to such for a moment! Many a ten-dollar— ten, nay, fifty dollars, had he won on him, a pellejo, —bareback, that is to say. And he was a wonderful beast. You could literally do anything with him. He could cinchar—drag, I mean—a dead cow by himself; he could run out a young colt like no other horse I ever saw. I have known him, riderless, “work” the biggest bull I ever—with one exception—came across; what couldn’t he do? By Jove—no, Charley, you have no idea, you can have no idea to what point a horse’s intelligence can be developed if you take him the right way, and get him straight from nature, so to say, before generations of European management have driven all the individuality out of the breed. But I must hurry up, or I shall never have finished.
‘Well—to make a long story short—we started, and knocked about the part of the country I wanted to see, crossing the Chupat River, bearing south till within seven or eight days’ journey of the dry bed of the Rio Desideo; then striking westward towards the Cordilleras, we moved on in a north-easterly direction, intending to rejoin the Rio Negro at some point not so very far from the coast. But mind you, Charley, simple as this sounds, it took some real travel—we did travel, there was no dawdling or loitering—to cover the ground we did. We camped every night, sitting round the fire—sometimes a poor one enough, when fuel was extra scarce—with our maté and bombilla, as happy as kings, Dorotéo strumming on his guitar, to which the madrina’s bell some little distance off tinkled an accompaniment. I knew it was for the last time—that added to the marvellous charm of it all. Ah me,’—and here Darcy rose from his seat and strolled to the window, from whence the lights and movement of Piccadilly were vaguely visible through the medium of a London fog—‘I can’t put it into fine words, but it comes upon me almost unbearably sometimes that there is more in that, after all, than in what such as you call “life.” Ask any fellow who knows the Pampas if it doesn’t seem so.’
He came back to his seat.
‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘I knew it was for the last time. But yet I little thought how it was to be. It was the night of the twenty second of December. We were within eight days’ ride of the Rio Negro again, and comparative civilisation, when it happened. Sitting by the fire that night before turning in, he asked me— Dorotéo, I mean—if I had noticed fresh tracks of cattle late that afternoon.
‘“If it please the Patron,” he went on, “ we will leave the troop here in the morning and ride about half a league towards where I saw the tracks. About there the plain dips a little, and there is a spring. The cattle will be there. We should like fresh beef.”
‘This for a guacho was a long speech. And the proposal did please me. I liked the idea of another go at wild cattle—another “last time.” So, early in the morning we rode off in the direction Dorotéo proposed, and there sure enough we found the spring—and the cattle. There were about nine of them all told. On hearing us they cleared, all except one, a bull—the hugest monster! —which stood there pawing the ground and lashing his tail in fury. He had a hump on his back almost as big as a camel’s; two men could certainly have scarcely joined hands round his neck.
‘“We’ll cut him up,” said Dorotéo “Plenty of him, though it may be tough. No use turning the others,” and in half a minute his lasso was round the brute’s horns.
‘I never saw Dorotéo miss!
‘He moved on—he was on his bahio, of course—tightening the lasso. But even he and his bahio could not uproot that bull. I hurried up, intending to throw my own lasso over the brute’s hindquarters, but before I had time to do so the guacho called out—
‘“Let him stand,” he shouted. “He is all the easier cut up.”
‘And so saying he dropped off his horse, and making a detour came up from behind, meaning to hamstring the monster, when away went the bull, almost dragging the little bahio off his legs, but a whistle and an encouraging “pingo” from his master steadied him. Then suddenly the bull, feeling himself so far mastered, charged full tilt at the bahio, and, before the gallant little horse could swerve round, the huge brute’s horns were through him—and down he went with a cry—a dreadful cry—almost like a child’s. For one second, Dorotéo changed colour.
‘“Madre de Dios” he shouted. “He has killed my bahio.” Then “Carajo,” he hissed, “Animal de mierda, you shall follow him,” and, driven reckless by grief and rage, he flung himself, as it were, upon the brute, stabbing him repeatedly in the throat, at the fatal spot well known to a guacho.
‘For a moment the bull seemed to stare at him, as if too astonished to feel. Another second and there was a struggling mass on the ground, Dorotéo still working the knife in the gaping wound; all happening so quickly that the describing it takes far longer than the thing itself. I was off my horse in a moment, and with some difficulty managed to extricate him from beneath the still heaving body of the bull, which had partially fallen upon him, only to find, to my horror, that he was fearfully crushed— not dead nor unconscious, but the blood pouring out of his mouth telling its deadly tale.
‘He stretched out his arm and pointed to the sky, “Before the sun is overhead,” he murmured, “I shall be gone.”
‘In a sort of agony, still striving to hope, I cut open his clothes, drawing them apart as tenderly as I could to examine his injured chest. It was worse than I could have imagined—mangled and crushed in. I tried to staunch the blood, it was useless, it streamed on, though more slowly than at first.
‘He opened his eyes again and struggled to speak, while he glanced round.
‘“Your horse, Patron,” he whispered. “He has cleared. You will have to walk to where we left the others.”
‘I had forgotten all about my horse—sure enough he was gone! At first I did not seem to care, till there came over me with a rush the horror of it—the being there alone, on foot on the tremendous Pampas. You can’t understand what it means unless you’ve gone through it.
‘He died, as he had said, before noon.
‘“Amigo,” I heard him whisper, and I bent down lower to catch his words, “take courage. Find the horses and make for the coast.”
‘I was dazed and reckless.
‘“Never mind about me,” I said. “What does it matter? There is no one to care much whether I live or die.”
‘A troubled look crossed his poor face. Then a smile broke through it.
‘“You shall live,” he breathed. “You shall be glad to live.”
‘I think he murmured something more, but I could not catch it. And then all was still.
‘I must have lain there beside him for some time in a sort of stupor. When I roused myself the sun was some way down. I got on my feet and set to work to skin the bull. There was no question of burying my poor old friend, all I could do was to wrap him in the hide with his poncho over his shoulders, and his bolar round his waist, and thus I laid him beside his dead bahio, rolling up his lasso neatly, and tying it to his saddle. And then I left him.
‘Late that evening I reached our camping place of the night before. Our baggage was still there as we had left it in the morning, but nothing more. No sign of the horses. I was too dead beat quite to take it in. I think I cooked a slice of the meat I had brought with me, and then I lay down and slept—from utter exhaustion—till morning. And with the light came back the realisation of it all. If I did not find the horses, what was before me? Death—in one of its most awful forms—lingering death; or else—I would not let myself think of that just yet.
‘I started off, carrying only my poncho, my revolver
, and a little meat. All that day and the next I wandered about in search of the horses, listening intently every now and then for the faintest far-off tinkle of the bell. By the end of the third day my meat was finished. Of the fourth day I have only the vaguest recollection, and all through the fifth I lay on the same spot. It is no good trying to describe what I suffered. By fits and starts I must have been delirious, but towards evening I woke up clearer-headed. Perhaps I had slept a little.
‘And then it is that I remembered praying—really praying, as I had not done for years.
‘“Oh God,” I cried, adding in a sort of frenzy, “if there is a God, help me. Dorotéo, can you hear me? You said I should live—look at me now.”
‘Then I took out my revolver. There were four cartridges left. I remember counting them. That would be more than enough. ‘I stood straight up—an unnatural strength seemed to come to me. Should I do it now? Best be over with it. I could not stand another night.
‘“Talk of God—Providence and all such fables,” I thought. “What power can stop my shooting myself?”
‘I held the revolver out at arm’s length, the muzzle towards me. I looked up—once more—for the last time, at the darkening sky and as my eyes fell again, there—there, just in front of me, only a few yards off, was Dorotéo, on his bahio, just as I had seen him scores, hundreds of times. I could distinguish his features and everything about him down to the smallest detail. He was looking at me—with an expression of affectionate reproach, mingled almost with something of contempt. I took it all in. It was, and it was not Dorotéo.
‘I started towards him; he moved on then, slowly, I following. I remember how the bahio’s queer yellow coat seemed to shine out in the lingering light, as we went—on and on. I had lost all sensation of fatigue, though every now and then I felt him glance towards me over his shoulder with a sort of kindly encouragement. I almost think he smiled.
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs Molesworth Page 30