AT breakfast the next morning Darda waited upon her master, with swollen eyes and a very sullen manner of attention. He was in a strange mood himself, compound of perplexity and exaltation. In the girl’s piteous acknowledgment of his mastery over her, he had warmed to a toleration of her foibles that was almost a regard for her as something a possession of his own. He could secretly applaud that loyalty to her brother, when—after venting itself in rebellion against his own mandates—it sunk from arrogance to a heart-broken appeal to his mercy. Having subdued, he could be gentle with her. Moreover, reason resuming a certain sway over his passions, he felt he had acted hastily in that little question of the “Priest’s Hole.”
But, there was a third and very engaging side to his meditations—a thought that, by stooping his stiff neck to the thread of a little glossy sandal, he had tacitly pronounced himself in humble subjection to the owner thereof; in fact, that by submitting Miss Royston as his proxy of grace, he had indirectly suggested, in thin outline, a declaration to her.
His perplexity was for the brother, with whom matters stood as on the first entrance of Miss Angel; and with regard to whose threatened affaire d’honneur, no hint of apology had issued from either side. Assuredly he could not stand up to the manling and seek to let blood that was of a common source with that of his demi-goddess. As surely, for all his tender respect for that same heavenly ichor, he was not going to lend himself to a solitary peppering from motives of delicacy. But, who was to make the first advances?
He preferred putting this on one side, that he might obtain the better mental view of a picture that stuck very agreeably in his memory. This was of Angela, all flushed and softened, bending down to him from her horse as she sat mounted for her departure.
“He is very ill and overcome—the poor servant,” she had said. “Be gentle with him for my sake.”
And he had kissed her gloved hand, and taken rash oath that her whim should be his law. And beyond this, I will swear, he never reflected that she had made nothing of the presumed villainy of the man, as it affected his master’s safety, or that she had asked him, Robert Tuke, to take care of himself for her sake.
He came out of luminous retrospection to find his maid’s eyes fixed upon him with intently mournful regard.
“Come here, Darda,” said he.
The girl obeyed at once; and stood mutely at his side.
“Your brother remains in bed, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Is he ill, or merely shamming?”
“He is broken down—broken down and very ill.”
She spoke in a low troubled voice—so low, that her master could barely distinguish the words. He shifted his position, so as to meet her full face. Her eyes answered the inquiry of his with some sad, crippled defiance.
“Darda,” he said, “you tried to kill me, you know. That was stupid and wicked; for only great trouble could have come to you both had you succeeded. But, I forgive you; for you struck in passion and out of your love for that other. Now, tell me—you saw the stone; and was I not justified in putting him there on the strength of it?”
“It would have killed him—the shadows would have killed him in a little time.”
“Ah! we men are made of tougher clay.”
“Not he—no, not he.”
“He conspired against me.”
“It is a lie. He never did.”
“But the stone says so.”
“Then it lies. Ask him. He will tell you the truth.”
“I have it in my mind to do so. I will go now.”
He rose as he spoke and went towards the door. Halfway he turned and came back to the girl again.
“I have no wish to be harsh with either of you,” he said gently. “Could I convince myself you were faithful to my interests, I could prove, I think, a generous master.”
He took her by the chin, looked in her eyes earnestly a moment, and went from the room.
She stood a full minute, upright and rigid as he had left her. Then suddenly the tears were rolling down her passive face.
She murmured some inaudible words, bent and, with a passionate forlorn gesture, kissed the back of the chair on which he had been seated; and so flung herself down against it, and, twisting her arms about her head, remained quite still.
In the meantime Mr. Tuke was ascending the stairs to a little room in the north wing. He moved pre-occupied, with a certain pulse of embarrassment fluttering in his breast; and tapped on the door he sought, when he reached it, half-apologetically.
There might have been an answer from within—the mere shadow of a broken murmur. Without more ado he turned the handle and entered.
A figure startled up on the truckle-bed and gazed at him with terrified eyes. It was ghastly with the pallor of tortured nerves; and of a sudden it turned, staring over its shoulder, and clutched frantically at the headboard.
“Oh, God!” it whispered. “Not again. I can’t bear it!”
The implied deadly reproach; the conviction driven home that he, a humane man by nature, had in one gust of passion caused this mortal wreck and disaster, pierced the intruder’s heart with a keen blade of remorse. He stood where he had stopped.
“Whimple,” he said gently, “you need fear no more violence. If I meditated you such, I could not be guilty of the inhumanity in your present state.”
Something in his tone or his expression reassured the poor terrified creature. Gradually he loosened his hold of the bedhead, and, turning, sat up on his pillow.
“What do you want?” he whispered.
“I want to know one thing. I want to have a direct answer to a simple question. Are you conspiring against me?”
“Before God, no.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then said Mr. Tuke:
“Representations have been made to me. I own I acted with unconsidered haste. If I have wronged you, I am sorry. Swear to me that your part in the business of that stone was an unwitting one—that you are blameless, and I will believe you and ask your pardon.”
Suddenly the eyes of the weak fellow on the bed filled with tears.
“Sir! sir!” he cried in a full voice. “Oh! if you will only be good to me!—you will—I can see it—I can——”
The other saw him about to fling himself out of bed, and forestalled the act by stepping hastily up to him. Whimple seized his hand in a fervid clasp and looked up in his face.
“I swear it!” he said, half-choking. “From first to last, however the villains tempted me, I gave them no answer. I never knew the girl had got the stone, or that you would think to read my baseness in it. I have desired so earnestly to serve you faithfully from your first coming—to win into your favour and your confidence. But I saw you would never let me—that the curse of my inheritance was on me for ever and ever.”
“What inheritance, my poor fellow?”
The servant had bowed his head; but he looked up eagerly upon hearing the gentle tones.
“May I tell you?—no, not that. But, if you will let me—I have much to say that I have never dared to say yet. I am a coward and I dare so little. Perhaps living in the shadow of this haunted place has wrought upon and unnerved me. But now, if you will let me—I have so longed to ask your leave—to lean humbly upon your boldness and your strength and learn, if I could, to be a man at last.”
Tuke held up a warning finger.
“Ah, no!” said the other. “I am not exciting myself into a fever. Master, if you only knew how I have sickened with the desire to unburden myself to you! But I dared not; and I saw the suspicion and distrust grow in your eyes, and then I dared less and less.”
“Tell me now what it is you have wished to say.”
“Will you let me? Will you be content to take a humble servant’s word for the truth of what he states, when at the same time he implores you not to force him answer where he fain would be silent?”
“A thundering preface. Go on, my friend. I believe that what you do elect to tell me will be God’s truth.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes! Sir, I would ask you—do you know—did you ever hear who was the last tenant of ‘Delsrop’?”
“I have heard. ’Twas one Turk; some dull saturnine fellow that met an unchancy fate.”
“God help him! By such a name was he known. He took me into his employment here scarce a month before he was murdered.”
“The deuce he did.”
“Oh, sir! ’twas the first of my misdirected attitude towards you that I dreaded you would cast me forth did you learn my last service had been with a highwayman.”
“A highwayman!”
“He was indeed, were the truth confessed; as wicked and notorious an outlaw as ever hoodwinked the justices; and his name Cutwater.”
“Cutwater? Good heavens! Surely a past generation was familiar with it?”
“Well, I fear. This was the man—come hither to live on the fruits of his ill-gotten gains, and so to his dreadful fate. Mr. Tuke, he died—God pity him!—according to his deserts; but he left a terrible heritage of evil.”
The listener sat half-bewildered by the revelation. The little cloud that had once before gathered about his father’s memory, broadened and grew darker. From a thief of the road, then, had he passed on this pregnant estate to his son. Haunted in truth—perhaps as the price of blood, and the earnest of deeds too foul for mention.
“Go on,” he muttered.
“Once,” continued the servant in a low, fearful voice, “men came to the house, while I was there. He forced me to be present; and there followed a dreadful scene. The worst of them—bloody Jack Fern—was spokesman. Him you have seen, sir.”
“Have I? Aye, aye. I note the rascal’s white hair.”
“Yes, it is he. It seemed my master, the highwayman, held a great stone of value that they all claimed a share in. ’Twas called, as you will know, the Lake of Wine.”
“The plot opens out.”
“He denied them, with oaths of fury. They had been paid their price like any other clerks of office. They swore the stone was hid somewhere in the house and they would have it out. He barred the door and they made at him. It was numbers only that emboldened them, for he was bitter feared of all and a devil in strength and resource. He caught the first of them—oh, my God! I fall sick to think of it now—he was a blythe young fellow—and broke his neck across his knee. For years the snap and the cough sounded in my dreams.”
“Well, well. It was horrible, as you say.”
“At that, they all drew back, cowed as whipped dogs. I was half-fainting, and can remember little more. I was only a lad of eighteen at the time, and nerveless even then. But I know that they went carrying away their dead; and that they buried somewhere in the grounds. I have never dared to think where. Sir, it was only a day or two after that my master disappeared, and in the meantime I thought myself like to die, and fled upon his mere approach. But, on the night of his murder, they all came back—while he was swinging on the downs—and they forced entrance to the house. By Heaven’s mercy I escaped and hid myself in the woods. There I lay in hunger and wretchedness for days; till, desperate with starvation, I stole back for food. Then I saw the place ransacked and overturned—much as ’twas when you first came—and Mr. Creel taking inventory of the ruin. So ’twas evident a mad search had been conducted; but fruitless, as afterwards appeared.”
“A moment, my friend. I must needs marvel here a little. Why did you not quit Mr. Cutwater’s service when you were informed of Mr. Turk’s real character?”
Whimple slunk back against the bed-head, and put his hands before his face.
“And why did the gentleman take you of all people into his confidence?”
There was no reply.
“Well,” said Tuke, “I perceive this is a point you are sensitive of. Leave it unanswered, then.”
The man looked up gratefully.
“If you will only rest content, sir, with this—that he desired to wean me from honest courses, which failing, he pursued me with all the hatred of his heart.”
“A piece of unconscionable villainy. And had he taken you from other honest employ for the purpose?”
“It was so, sir. I was drudge hitherto in a lads’ school in old Melcombe Regis by the sea.”
“Ah!—well, you happened on Mr. Creel, and——”
“Heaven favour the good gentleman. How he had the news I know not. But so, it seemed, he represented the succeeding owner of ‘Delsrop.’ Sir, I crept back for food. Though the place was my horror and my despair, I had no stomach, feckless creature that I was, to force a living elsewhere. I crept back, and something drove me to tell Mr. Creel my whole unhappy tale. And he believed and pitied me, and put me in charge of the house that had been my bane and my prison. And here have I dwelt ever since; at first in great terror that the men would return, but gradually learning a sad serenity as the years passed and nought occurred to discomfort me.”
“And how would you account for your immunity from further trouble?”
“Ah!—twas e’en that they durst not return to the scene of their crime while yet the hue was up. And so, maybe, with such villains, one came to be hanged and another transported, till all were gone—all but him they called bloody Jack Fern, who hath reappeared after twenty peaceful years, to renew the search.”
“But the others—his present confederates?”
“They are new to me. He must have fellow-rogues, be sure, to whom he will confide—not like that other whom they murdered, who was of those few giants of crime that can be a tower of strength to themselves.”
“Why, my good soul I could swear to a note of enthusiasm in your voice.”
“Oh, sir! ’tis nothing but the natural homage of the weak to the strong; such as I would fain pay to my new master, would he let me.”
“No flattery. And so Mr. Fern turned up again?”
“It was the very day before your arrival that I first saw him. The thatch of his white hairs might not deceive me. And I thought I should ha’ died. After all those years! And the place gone to ruin in that long space, and only I its keeper. For this the fearful man had found out; but not of your coming, that should upset his plans—else had I been likely stiff by this time and rotting underground in some secret hole.”
“And he sought to bribe you?”
“He hath wrought upon me with menaces and promise of reward either to reveal the stone’s hiding-place—which he misdoubts I wot not of—or to give him secret search-warrant during your absences.”
“Yet I must wonder how he ventured to assume your infidelity, nor dreaded you would acquaint me of all.”
“Ah, sir! had he not known me in the pay of that other, his master? the which he used to threaten me, never doubting my old complicity.”
“And all this you have resisted, good fellow, with your heart choking in your mouth?”
“I have so desired—indeed, I have so desired, sir, to be thought clean and honest; and when your dislike fell upon me, I despaired of convincing you how I was no partner to any roguery; and the hopelessness of explaining wrought upon me till I half seemed to myself the very distrustful knave of your suspicions.”
“It is changed—it is all changed. We will circumvent the rascals, and net them in the toils of their own weaving.”
The servant bent forward, his fevered eyes sparkling.
“Such dear confidence as I have sickened for!” he cried. “To look upon your face, and see the bold light break from it, and know I am trusted and believed in!”
“That shall be so, Dennis. Now, one thing, I mind me, you have made no mention of—your sister.”
“She was brought to me, sir, the first year of my care-keeping, and here, by Mr. Creel’s permission, she remained.”
“Brought to you? Whence, and by Whom?”
The answer was near inaudible:
“By a woman that juggled in a travelling show. They had thought to use the mite to a like trade, but her wits ran crooked with their wants, and they were glad to be quit of an encumbrance. She was a natural from the first—a queer, wild midget that was for ever wandering by down and fell and storing, like a magpie, her pitiful wreck of treasures. She was but a snip of five or so when she brought that home—that home—oh, sir! the horrible gallows-tree, that I never dared within eyeshot of, but would walk a mile to avoid.”
Once more a pause fell.
“And so you have told me all?” said Mr. Tuke by and by.
Whimple’s colour heightened; but he was silent.
“All that is material, I mean. ’Twill serve, ’twill serve; and the rest go hang. Now, I have wronged you, Dennis, and we shall e’en be friends according to our positions.”
The man fell into thanks, with a broken voice.
“Nay,” said the other; “for all my strength you flatter, I can ill afford to walk my difficult path without support. And, tell me—you have no least knowledge or surmise of where this mighty gem lies hid?”
“I know no more, by my honour, sir, than bloody Jack himself—or whether, indeed, the fact of its existence be not a bug of evil men’s fancy.”
“That I can answer; for I have heard from whom the jewel was stole in the first instance. And now, Mr. Dennis Whimple, I must ask if you relate all this for my private ear; for I must inform you the interests of another are gravely compromised in the matter.”
“Ah, sir! do you not offer me your noble protection? Before, I stood in bitter desperate loneliness. I place the issue joyfully in your hands, to act as you anyhow will upon my statement.”
“You shall not misprofit thereby. Take rest, good fellow, and we will come to further discussion hereafter.”
“I am well—I am restored. You have made a man of me.”