CHAPTER XXIII
THE NORTHERN FIRE-BOX AND DEAD MEN'S TALES
That night Hazel could not get to sleep. Perhaps this was due to having noticed something that afternoon that made her vaguely uneasy. The evenings were beginning to be chilly, and, shortly before supper, she had gone up to Master Nathaniel's room to light his fire. She found the widow and one of the maidservants there before her, and, to her surprise, they had brought down from the attic an old charcoal stove that had lain there unused for years, for Dorimare was a land of open fires, and stoves were practically unknown. The widow had brought the stove to the farm on her marriage, for, on her mother's side, she had belonged to a race from the far North.
On Hazel's look of surprise, she had said casually, "The logs are dampish today, and I thought this would make our guest cozier."
Now Hazel knew that the wood was not in the least damp; how could it be, as it had not rained for days? But that this should have made her uneasy was a sign of her deep instinctive distrust of her grandfather's widow.
Perhaps the strongest instinct in Hazel was that of hospitality—that all should be well, physically and morally, with the guests under the roof that she never forgot was hers, was a need in her much more pressing than any welfare of her own.
Meanwhile, Master Nathaniel, somewhat puzzled by the outlandish apparatus that was warming his room, had got into bed. He did not immediately put out his candle; he wished to think. For being much given to reverie, when he wanted to follow the sterner path of consecutive thought, he liked to have some tangible object on which to focus his eye, a visible goal, as it were, to keep his feet from straying down the shadowy paths that he so much preferred.
Tonight it was the fine embossed ceiling on which he fixed his eye—the same ceiling at which Ranulph used to gaze when he had slept in this room. On a ground of a rich claret colour patterned with azure arabesques, knobs of a dull gold were embossed, and at the four corners clustered bunches of grapes and scarlet berries in stucco. And though time had dulled their colour and robbed the clusters of many of their berries, they remained, nevertheless, pretty and realistic objects.
But, in spite of the light, the focus, and his desire for hard thinking, Master Nathaniel found his thoughts drifting down the most fantastic paths. And, besides, he was so drowsy and his limbs felt so strangely heavy. The colours on the ceiling were getting all blurred, and the old knobs were detaching themselves from their background and shining in space like suns, moons, and stars—or was it like apples—the golden apples of the West? And now the claret-coloured background was turning into a red field—a field of red flowers, from which leered Portunus, and among which wept Ranulph. But the straight road, which for the last few months had been the projection of his unknown, buried purpose, even through this confused landscape glimmered white ... yet, it looked different from usual ... why, of course, it was the Milky Way! And then he knew no more.
In the meantime Hazel had been growing more and more restless, and, though she scolded herself for foolishness, more and more anxious. Finally, she could stand it no more: "I think I'll just creep up to the gentleman's door and listen if I can hear him snoring," she said to herself. Hazel believed that it was a masculine peculiarity not to be able to sleep without snoring.
But though she kept her ear to the keyhole for a full two minutes, not a sound proceeded from Master Nathaniel's room. Then she softly opened the door. A lighted candle was guttering to its end, and her guest was lying, to all appearance, dead, whilst a suffocating atmosphere pervaded the room. Hazel felt almost sick with terror, but she flung open the casement window as wide as it would go, poured half the water from the ewer into the stove to extinguish its fire, and the remainder over Master Nathaniel himself. To her unspeakable relief he opened his eyes, groaned, and muttered something inaudible.
"Oh, sir, you're not dead then!" almost sobbed Hazel. "I'll just go and fetch you a cup of cordial and get you some hartshorn."
When she returned with the two restoratives, she found Master Nathaniel sitting up in bed, and, though he looked a little fuddled, his natural colour was creeping back, and the cordial restored him to almost his normal condition.
When Hazel saw that he was really himself again, she sank down on the floor and, spent with terror, began to sob bitterly.
"Come, my child!" said Master Nathaniel kindly, "there's nothing to cry about. I'm feeling as well as ever I did in my life ... though, by the Harvest of Souls, I can't imagine what can have taken me. I never remember to have swooned before in all my born days."
But Hazel would not be comforted: "That it should have happened, here, in my house," she sobbed. "We who have always stood by the laws of hospitality ... and not a young gentleman, either ... oh, dearie me; oh, dearie me!"
"What do you blame to yourself, my child?" asked Master Nathaniel. "Your hospitality is in no sense to blame if, owing perhaps to recent fatigues and anxieties, I should have turned faint. No, it is not you that are the bad host, but I that am the bad guest to have given so much trouble."
But Hazel's sobs only grew wilder. "I didn't like her bringing in that fire-box—no I didn't! An evil outlandish thing that it is! That it should have happened under my roof! For it is my roof ... and she'll not pass another night under it!" and she sprang to her feet, with clenched fists and blazing eyes.
Master Nathaniel was becoming interested. "Are you alluding to your grandfather's widow?" he asked quietly.
"Yes, I am!" cried Hazel indignantly. "Oh! she's up to strange tricks, always ... and none of her ways are those of honest farmers—no fennel over our doors, unholy fodder in our granary ... and in her heart, thoughts as unholy. I saw the smile with which she looked at you at dinner."
"Are you accusing this woman of actually having made an attempt on my life?" he asked slowly.
But Hazel flinched before this point-blank question, and her only answer was to begin again to cry. For a few minutes Master Nathaniel allowed her to do so unmolested, and then he said gently, "I think you have cried enough for tonight, my child. You have been kindness itself, but it is evident that I am not very welcome to your grandfather's widow, so I must not inflict myself longer upon her. But before I leave her roof there is something I want to do, and I shall need your help."
Then he told her who he was and how he wanted to prove something against a certain enemy of his, and had come here hoping to find a missing clue.
He paused, and looked at her meditatively. "I think I ought to tell you, my child," he went on, "that if I can prove what I want, your grandmother may also be involved. Did you know she had once been tried for the murder of your grandfather?"
"Yes," she faltered. "I've heard that there was a trial. But I thought she was proved innocent."
"Yes. But there is such a thing as a miscarriage of justice. I believe that your grandfather was murdered, and that my enemy—whose name I don't care to mention till I have more to go upon—had a hand in the matter. And I have a shrewd suspicion that the widow was his accomplice. Under these circumstances, will you still be willing to help me?"
Hazel first turned red, and then she turned white, and her lower lip began to tremble. She disliked the widow, but had to admit that she had never been unkindly treated by her, and, though not her own kith and kin, she was the nearest approach to a relative she could remember. But, on the other hand, Hazel belonged by tradition and breed to the votaries of the grim cult of the Law. Crime must not go unpunished; moreover (and here Hazel subscribed to a still more venerable code) one's own kith and kin must not go unavenged.
But the very vehemence with which she longed to be rid of the widow's control had bred a curious irrational sense of guilt with regard to her; and, into the bargain, she was terrified of her.
Supposing this clue should lead to nothing, and the widow discover that they had been imagining? How, in that case, should she dare to face her, to go on living under the same roof with her?
And yet ... she was certain she had tried to murder their guest that night. How dared she? How dared she?
Hazel clenched her fists, and in a little gasping voice said, "Yes, sir, I'll help you."
"Good!" said Master Nathaniel briskly. "I want to take old Portunus's advice—and dig under that herm in the orchard, this very night. Though, mind you, it's just as likely as not to prove nothing but the ravings of a crazy mind; or else it may concern some buried treasure, or something else that has nothing to do with your grandfather's murder. But, in the case of our finding a valuable bit of evidence, we must have witnesses. And I think we should have the law-man of the district with us; who is he?"
"It's the Swan blacksmith, Peter Pease."
"Is there any servant you trust whom you could send for him? Someone more attached to you than to the widow?"
"I can trust them all, and they all like me best," she answered.
"Good. Go and wake a servant and send him off at once for the blacksmith. Tell him not to bring him up to the house, but to take him straight to the orchard ... we don't want to wake the widow before need be. And the servant can stay and help us with the job—the more witnesses the better."
Hazel felt as if she was in a strange, rather terrible dream. But she crept up to the attic and aroused one of the unmarried labourers—who, according to the old custom, slept in their master's house—and bade him ride into Swan and bring the blacksmith back with him on important business concerning the law.
Hazel calculated that he should get to Swan and back in less than an hour, and she and Master Nathaniel crept out of the house to wait for them in the orchard, each provided with a spade.
The moon was on the wane, but still sufficiently full to give a good light. She was, indeed, an orchard thief, for no fruit being left to rob, she had robbed the leaves of all their colour.
"Poor old moon!" chuckled Master Nathaniel, who was now in the highest of spirits, "always filching colours with which to paint her own pale face, and all in vain! But just look at your friend, at Master Herm. He does look knowing!"
For in the moonlight the old herm had found his element, and under her rays his stone flickered and glimmered into living silver flesh, while his archaic smile had gained a new significance.
"Excuse, me, sir," said Hazel timidly, "but I couldn't help wondering if the gentleman you suspected was ... Dr. Leer."
"What makes you think so?" asked Master Nathaniel sharply.
"I don't quite know," faltered Hazel. "I just—wondered."
Before long they were joined by the labourer and the law-man blacksmith—a burly, jovial, red-haired rustic of about fifty.
"Good evening," cried Master Nathaniel briskly, "I am Nathaniel Chanticleer" (he was sure that the news of his deposition could not yet have had time to travel to Swan) "and if my business were not very pressing and secret I would not, you may be sure, have had you roused from your bed at this ungodly hour. I have reason to think that something of great importance may be hidden under this herm, and I wanted you to be there to see that our proceedings are all in order," and he laughed genially. "And here's the guarantee that I'm no masquerader," and he removed his signet ring and held it out to the blacksmith. It was engraved with his well-known crest, and with six chevrons, in token that six of his ancestors had been High Seneschals of Dorimare.
Both the blacksmith and the labourer were at first quite overwhelmed by learning his identity, but he pressed a spade into the hand of each and begged them to begin digging without further delay.
For some time they toiled away in silence, and then one of the spades came against something hard.
It proved to be a small iron box with a key attached to it.
"Out with it! out with it!" cried Master Nathaniel excitedly. "I wonder if it contains a halter! By the Sun, Moon and Stars, I wonder!"
But he was sobered by a glimpse of poor Hazel's scared face.
"Forgive me, my child," he said gently, "my thirst for revenge has made me forget both decency and manners. And, as like as not, there will be nothing in it but a handful of Duke Aubrey crowns—the nest-egg of one of your ancestors."
They unlocked the box and found that it contained nothing but a sealed parchment package, addressed thus:
"To the First Who Finds Me."
"I think, Miss Hazel, it should be you who opens it. Don't you agree, Master Law-man?" said Master Nathaniel. So, with trembling fingers, Hazel broke the seal, tore open the wrapper, and drew out a sheet of writing.
By the light of the blacksmith's lanthorn they read as follows:
I, Jeremiah Gibberty, farmer and law-man of the district of Swan-on-the-Dapple, having ever been a merry man who loved his joke, do herein crack my last, this side of the Debatable Hills, in the hopes that it will not lie so long in the damp earth as to prove but a lame rocket when the time comes to fire it off. And this is my last joke, and may all who hear it hold their sides, and may the tears run down their cheeks. I, Jeremiah Gibberty, was wilfully murdered by my second wife, Clementina, daughter of Ralph Baldbreeches, sailor, and an outlandish woman from the far North. In the which crime she was aided by her lover, Christopher Pugwalker, a foreigner who called himself an herbalist. And I know by sundry itchings of my skin which torment me as I write and by my spotted tongue that I have been given what the folks who know them call death-berries. And they were boiled down to look like mulberry jelly, offered to me by my dear wife, and of which I ate in my innocence. And I bid him who finds this writing to search for a little lad, by name Peter Pease, the son of a tipsy tinker. For this little lad, having an empty stomach and being greedy for pence, came to me but an hour ago with a basket full of these same death-berries and asked me if I should like to buy them. And I, to test him, asked him if he thought there was a blight in my orchard that I should be so hard put to it for fruit. And he said he thought we must like them up at Gibberty's for he had seen the gentleman who lived with us (Christopher Pugwalker) but a week since, gathering them. And if Christopher Pugwalker should leave these parts, then let the law search for a dumpy fellow, with nut-brown hair, a pug-nose freckled like a robin's egg, and one eye brown, the other blue. And in order that my last joke may be a well-built one, I have tested the berries I bought from the little lad, though it wrung my heart to do so, on one of the rabbits of a certain little maid, by name, Marjory Beach, the daughter of my carter. And I have done so because she, being seven years old and a healthy lass, runs a good chance of being still this side of the hills when someone digs up this buried jest. And if she be alive she will not have forgotten how one of her rabbits took to scratching itself, and how its tongue was spotted like a snake, and how she found it lying dead. And I humbly beg her pardon for having played such a cruel trick on a little maid, and I ask my heirs (if so be any of them still alive) to send her a fine buck rabbit, a ham, and ten gold pieces. And, though I am law-man and could put them under arrest before I die, yet, for a time, I hold my hand. Partly because I have been a hunter all my life, and as the hare and deer are given their chance to escape, so shall they have theirs; and partly because I should like to be very far on my wanderings down the Milky Way before Clementina mounts Duke Aubrey's wooden horse; because I think the sound of her strangling would hurt my ears; and, last of all, because I am very weary. And here I sign my name for the last time.