CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE PRICE OF INNOCENT BLOOD.
A month went by, and at the end of it every farthing of Mr. Levinger’s ten pounds was spent, for the most part in satisfying creditors who either had sued, or were threatening to sue, for debts owing to them. Finding herself once more without resources, Mrs. Gillingwater concluded that it was time to deal with Samuel Rock, taking the chance of her breach of confidence being found out and visited upon her by Mr. Levinger. Accordingly, towards dusk one evening— for she did not wish her errand to be observed by the curious—Mrs. Gillingwater started upon her mission to Moor Farm.
Moor Farm is situated among the wind-torn firs that line the ridge of ground which separates the sea heath between Bradmouth and Ramborough from the meadows that stretch inland behind it. Perhaps in the whole county there is no more solitary or desolate building, with its outlook on to the heath and the chain of melancholy meres where Samuel had waylaid Joan, beyond which lies the sea. The view to the west is more cheerful, indeed, for here are the meadows where runs the Brad; but, as though its first architect had determined that its windows should look on nothing pleasant, the house is cut off from this prospect by the straggling farm buildings and the fir plantation behind them.
The homestead, which stands quite alone, for all the labourers employed about the place live a mile or more away in the valley, is large, commodious, and massively built of grey stone robbed from the ruins of Ramborough. When the Lacons, Joan’s ancestors on the mother’s side, who once had owned the place, went bankrupt, their land was bought by Samuel Rock’s grandfather, an eccentric man, but one who was very successful in his business as a contractor for the supply of hay to His Majesty’s troops. After he had been the possessor of Moor Farm for little more than a year, this James Rock went suddenly mad; and although his insanity was of a dangerous character, for reasons that were never known his wife would not consent to his removal to an asylum, but preferred to confine him in the house, some of the windows of which are still secured by iron bars. The end of the tale was tragic, for one night the maniac, having first stunned his keeper, succeeded in murdering his wife while she was visiting him. This event took place some seventy years before the date of the present story, but the lapse of two generations has not sufficed to dispel the evil associations connected with the spot, and that portion of the house where the murder was committed has remained uninhabited from that day to this.
Mrs. Gillingwater was not a person much troubled by imaginative fears, but the aspect of Moor House as she approached it on that November evening affected her nerves, rudimentary as they were. The day had been very stormy, and angry rays from the setting sun shone through gaps in the line of naked firs behind the house, and were reflected from the broken sky above on to the surface of the meres and of the sea beyond them. The air was full of the voices of wind and storm, the gale groaned and shrieked among the branches of the ancient trees; from the beach a mile away came the sound of the hiss of the surge and of the dull boom of breakers, while overhead a flock of curlews appeared and disappeared as they passed from sunbeam into shadow and from shadow into sunbeam, till they faded among the uncertain lights of the distance, whence the echo of their unhappy cries still floated to the listener’s ear. The front of the house was sunk in gloom, but there was still light enough to enable Mrs. Gillingwater, standing by the gate of what in other times had been a little pleasure garden, but was now a wilderness overrun with sea grasses, to note its desolate aspect, and even the iron bars that secured the windows of the rooms where once the madman was confined. Nobody could be seen moving about the place, and she observed no lamp in the sitting-room.
“I hope those brutes of dogs are tied up, for I expect he’s out,” Mrs. Gillingwater said to herself; “he’s fond of sneaking about alone in weather like this.”
As the thought passed through her mind, she chanced to glance to her left, where some twenty paces from her, and beyond the intercepting bulk of the building, a red sunbeam pierced the shadows like a sword. There in the centre of this sunbeam stood Samuel Rock himself. He was wrapped in his long dark cloak that fell to the knees, but his hat lay on the ground beside him, and his upturned face was set towards the dying sun in such a fashion that the vivid light struck full upon it, showing every line of his clear-cut features, every hair of the long beard that hung from the square protruding chin, and even the motion of his thin lips, and of the white hands that he moved ceaselessly, as though he were washing them in the blood-red light.
There was something so curious about his aspect that Mrs. Gillingwater started.
“Now what’s he a-doing there?” she wondered: “bless me if I know, unless he’s saying prayers to his master the devil. I never did see a man go on like that before, drunk or sober; he gives me the creeps, the beast. Look, there he goes sneaking along the wall of the house, for all the world like a great black snake wriggling to its hole. Well, he’s in now, so here’s after him, for his money is as good as anybody else’s, and I must have it.”
In another half-minute she was knocking at the door, which was opened by Samuel.
“Who’s that?” he said. “I don’t want no visitors at this time of day.”
“It’s me, Mr. Rock—Mrs. Gillingwater.”
“Then I want you least of all, you foul-mouthed, lying woman. Get you gone, or I’ll loose the dogs on you.”
“You’d better not,” she answered, “for I’ve something to tell you that you’d like to hear.”
“Something that I’d like to hear,” he answered, hesitating: “is it about her?”
“Yes, it’s about her—all about her.”
“Come in,” he said.
She entered, and he shut and locked the door behind her.
“What are you a-doing that for?” asked Mrs. Gillingwater suspiciously.
“Nothing,” he answered, “but doors are best locked. You can’t tell who will come through them, nor when, if they’re left open.”
“That’s just another of his nasty ways,” muttered Mrs. Gillingwater, as she followed him down the passage into the sitting-room, which was quite dark except for some embers of a wood fire that glowed upon the hearth.
“Stop a minute, and I will light the lamp,” said her host.
Soon it burnt brightly, and while Samuel was making up the fire Mrs. Gillingwater had leisure to observe the room, in which as it chanced she had never been before, at any rate since she was a child. On the occasions of their previous interviews Samuel had always received her in the office or the kitchen.
It was long and low, running the depth of the house, so that the windows faced east and west. The fireplace was wide, and over it hung a double-barrelled muzzle-loading gun, which Mrs. Gillingwater noticed was charged, for the light shone upon the copper caps. There were two doors one near the fireplace, leading to the offices and kitchen, and one by which she had entered. The floor was of oak, half covered with strips of matting, and the ceiling also was upheld by great beams of oak, that, like most of the materials in this house, had been bought or stolen from the Abbey at the time when it was finally deserted, a hundred and fifty years before. This was put beyond a doubt, indeed, by the curious way in which it had been the fancy of the builder to support these huge beams namely, by means of gurgoyles that once had carried off the water from the roofs of the Abbey. It would be difficult to imagine anything more grotesque, or indeed uncanny, than the effect of these weather-worn and grinning heads of beasts and demons glaring down upon the occupants of the chamber open-mouthed, as though they were about to spring upon and to devour them. Indeed, according to a tale in Bradmouth, a child of ten, finding herself left alone with them for the first time, was so terrified by their grizzly appearance that she fell into a fit. For the rest, the walls of the room were hung with a dingy paper, and adorned with engravings of a Scriptural character, diversified by prints taken from Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” The furniture was good, solid and made of oak, like everything else in the place, with the sole exception of an easy chair, in which it was Samuel’s custom to smoke at night.
“I suppose, now, Mr. Rock,” said Mrs. Gillingwater, pointing to the grinning gurgoyles, “that you don’t find it lonesome up here at nights, with those stone parties for company?”
“Not a bit of it, Mrs. Gillingwater; why, I’ve known them all ever since I was a child, as doubtless others have before me, and they are downright good friends to me, they are. I have names for every one of them, and I talk to them sometimes too—now this and now that, as the fancy takes me.”
“Just what I should have expected of you, Mr. Rock,” answered Mrs. Gillingwater significantly; “not but what I dare say it is good training.”
“Meaning?” said Samuel.
“Meaning, Mr. Rock, that as it is getting late, and it’s a long and windy walk home, we’d better stop talking of stone figures and come to business—that is, if you have a mind for it.”
“By all means, Mrs. Gillingwater. But what is the business?”
“Well, it’s this: last time we met, when we parted in anger, though through no fault of mine, you said that you wanted Joan’s address: and now I’ve got it.”
“You’ve got it? Then tell it me. Come, be quick!” and he leaned towards her across the polished oak table.
“No, no, Mr. Rock: do you think that I am as green as an alder shoot, that you should ask such a thing of me? I must have the money before you get the address. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Mrs. Gillingwater; but be reasonable. How can you expect me to pay you five-and-twenty pounds for what may be gammon after all?”
“Five-and-twenty pounds, Mr. Rock! No such thing, indeed: it is fifty pounds I want, every farthing of it, or you get nothing out of me.”
“Fifty pounds!” answered Samuel; “then I don’t think that we need talk no longer, Mrs. Gillingwater, seeing that I ain’t going to give you fifty pounds, no, not for the address of all the angels in heaven.”
“I dare say not, Mr. Rock: they’d be precious little use to you when you’d got them, either now or at any future time, to judge from what I knows of you”—and she glanced significantly at the sculptured demons beneath the ceiling—“but you see Joan’s whereabouts is another matter, more especially since she isn’t an angel yet, though she’s been nigh enough to it, poor dear.”
“What do you mean by that, ma’am? Is she ill, then?”
“When I’ve got the fifty pounds in my pocket, Mr. Rock, I’ll be glad enough to tell you all about it, but till then my mouth is sealed. Indeed, it’s a great risk that I run letting you know at all, for if the old man yonder finds it out, I think that he’ll be the ruin of me. And now, will you pay, or won’t you?”
“I won’t give you the fifty pounds,” he answered, setting his teeth; “I’ll give you thirty, and that’s the last farthing which you’ll screw out of me—and a lot of money too, seeing that there’s no reason why I should pay you anything at all.”
“That’s just where you’re wrong, Mr. Rock,” she answered: “not that I’m denying that thirty pounds is a lot of money; but then, you see, I’ve got that to sell that you want to buy, and badly. Also, as I told you, I take risks in selling it.”
“What risks?”
“The risks of being turned out of house and home, and being sold up, that’s all. Old Levinger don’t want no one to know Joan’s address; I can’t tell you why, but he don’t, and if he finds out that I have let on, it will be a bad business for me. Now look here: I fancy that there is another person as wouldn’t mind giving a trifle for this address, and if you’re so mean that you won’t cash up, I shall take a walk out yonder to-morrow morning,” and she nodded in the direction of Rosham.
Samuel groaned, for he knew that she was alluding to his rival. “I doubt that he knows it already, curse him,” he said, striking his hand upon the table, “Thirty-five—there, that’s the last.”
“You’re getting along, Mr. Rock, but it won’t do yet,” sneered Mrs. Gillingwater. “See here now, I’ve got something in my hand that I’ll show you just for friendship’s sake,” and producing Mrs. Bird’s letter, she read portions of it aloud, pausing from time to time to watch the effect upon her hearer. It was curious, for as he listened his face reflected the extremes of love, hope, terror and despair.
“God!” he said, wringing his hands, “to think that she may be dead and gone from me for ever!”
“If she were dead, Mr. Rock, it wouldn’t be much use my giving you her address, would it? since, however fond you may be of her, I reckon that you would scarcely care to follow her there. No, I’ll tell you this much, she is living and getting well again, and I fancy that you’re after a live woman, not a dead one.’ This was written a month ago and more.”
“Thank heaven!” he muttered. “I couldn’t have borne to lose her like that; I think it would have driven me mad. While she’s alive there’s hope, but what hope is there in the grave?” Samuel spoke thus somewhat absently, after the fashion of a man who communes with himself, but all the while Mrs. Gillingwater felt that he was searching her with his eyes. Then of a sudden he leant forward, and swiftly as a striking snake he shot out his long arm across the table, and snatched the letter from her grasp.
“You think yourself mighty clever, Mr. Rock,” she said, with a harsh laugh; “but you won’t get the address for nothing in that way. If you take the trouble to look you’ll see that I’ve tore it off. Ah! you’ve met your match for once; it is likely that I was going to trust what’s worth fifty pounds in reach of your fingers, isn’t it?”
He looked at the letter and saw that she spoke truth.
“I didn’t take it for that,” he said, gnawing his hand with shame and vexation; “I took it to see if there was a letter at all, or if you were making up lies.” And he threw it back to her.
“No doubt you did, Mr. Rock,” she answered, jeering at him. “Well, and now you’re satisfied, I hope; so how about them fifty sovereigns?”
“Forty,” he said.
“Fifty. Never a one less.”
Samuel sprang up from his seat, and, coming round the table, stood over her.
“Look here,” he said in a savage whisper, “you’re pushing this game too far: if you’re a wise woman you’ll take the forty and go, or—”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll twist what I want to know out of that black heart of yours, and not a farthing shall you get for it perhaps you’ve forgotten that the door is locked and we are alone in the house. Yes, you might scream till you brought the roof down, but nobody would hear you; and scream you shall if I take hold of you.”
Mrs. Gillingwater glanced at his face, and read something so evil on it, and in the lurid eyes, that she grew frightened.
“Very well,” she said, as unconcernedly as possible, “I won’t stand out for a tenner between friends: down with the cash, and you shall have it.”
“Ah! ma’am, you’re afraid of me now I can feel it and I’ve half a mind to beat you down; but I won’t, I’ll stand by my word. Now you write that address upon this piece of paper and I’ll get the coin.” And rising he left the room by the door near the fireplace, which he took the precaution of locking behind him.
“The murdering viper!” reflected Mrs. Gillingwater; “I pinched his tail a little too much that time, and I sha’n’t be sorry to find myself outside again, though there’s precious little chance of that until he chooses, as he’s locked me in. Well, I must brazen it out now.” And somewhere from the regions of her ample bosom she produced the fragment that she had torn off Mrs. Bird’s letter, on which was written the address and a date.
Presently Samuel returned holding a small bag of money in his hand, from which he counted out forty sovereigns.
“There’s the cash, ma’am,” he said; “but before you touch it be so good as to hand me that bit of writing: no, you needn’t be afraid, I’ll give you the money as I take the paper.”
“I’m not afraid, Mr. Rock; when once I’ve struck a bargain I stick to it like an honest woman, and so, I know, will you. Never you doubt that the address is the right one; you can see that it is torn off the letter I read to you. Joan is there, and through the worst of her illness, so the party she’s lodging with wrote to me; and if you see her I hope you’ll give her my love.” As she spoke she pushed the scrap of paper to him with her left hand, while with her right she drew the shining heap of gold towards herself.
“Honest!” he said: “I may be honest in my way, Mrs. Gillingwater; but you are about as honest as other traitors who sell innocent blood for pieces of money.”
“What do you mean by that, Mr. Rock?” she replied, looking up from her task of securing the forty sovereigns in her pocket-handkerchief. “I’ve sold no innocent blood; I’d scorn to do such a thing! You don’t mean any harm to Joan, do you?”
“No, ma’am, I mean her no harm, unless it’s a harm to want to make her my wife; but it would have been all one to you if I meant to murder her and you knew it, so your sin is just as great, and verily the betrayers of innocent blood shall have their reward,” and he pointed at her with his long fingers. “I’ve got what I want,” he went on “though I’ve had to pay a lot of money for it; but I tell you that it won’t do you any good; you might as well throw it into the mere and yourself after it, as expect to get any profit out of that forty pounds, the price of innocent blood the price of innocent blood.” Then once more Samuel pointed at her and grinned maliciously, till to her fancy his face looked like that of the stone demon above him.
By now Mrs. Gillingwater was so frightened that for a moment or two she hesitated as to whether it would not be wiser to return the money and free herself from the burden of a dreadful thought. In the end her avarice prevailed, as might have been expected, and without another word she rose and walked towards the front door, which Samuel unlocked and opened for her.
“Good-bye,” he said, as she went down the passage.
“You’ve done me a good turn, ma’am, and now I’m sure that I’ll marry Joan; but for all that a day shall come when you will wish that your hand had been cut off before you touched those forty sovereigns: you remember my words when you lie a-dying, Mrs. Gillingwater, with all your deeds behind you and all the doom before.”
Then the woman fled through the storm and the night, more terrified than ever she had been in her life’s day, nor did the gold that she clasped to her heart avail to comfort her. For Rock had spoken truth; it was the price of innocent blood, and she knew it.