FROM a deadening of all his faculties, of all his perceptives, to stupor; from stupor to a delirium of weariness, in which so little as a ring on his finger was a conscious burden; from weariness to fever and a recrudescence of those mental and bodily pains he strove so frenziedly to forget; from this state at last to the yielding stage of exhaustion, and Tuke, the man not so much hurt as overwrought, fell into a profound slumber and got his restoration of it.
For long, before this came, he was aware only of a close darkness—a darkness that seemed a cabined horror of himself, were it not assured and comforted by a presence that, in supreme moments of torture, he grew to know he could depend upon for pitiful help and a silent passion of sympathy. This presence, swift and invisible, was always at hand when he most needed it—soothing, murmuring; taking upon itself the responsibility of questions he could not answer; brushing away with snowflakes the stinging wasps that settled on his shoulder. It was so prompt, so gentle, so full of resource, that he came to think that if he could only put to it the supreme problem that vexed him beyond endurance, it would resolve it at once with a quiet laugh, and so secure him everlasting peace. But, whenever he came to the point of explanation, he found that the problem itself had eluded him, and he could not remember what road it was that his tired brain had gone astray on. At length, ceasing to struggle, he floated inanimate on the tide against which he had fought to make head, and was borne by it into a haven of rest.
He woke to find himself lying on the ground in a queer little chilly chamber, into which a weak light filtered through a cobwebbed window. Looking up, in some pleasure of languor, he was interested in certain straps and buckles that hung from wooden brackets, and a couple of odd bonnet-shaped things that stuck out from the wall. Lazily he amused himself by associating these with twenty different uses, until—reason passing from the fields of romance into the high-road—he came in a moment to the knowledge that he was lying in his own harness-room, and to memory of all that had brought him there.
In the shock of revelation he struggled to a sitting posture and uttered a startled little pipe. It was no great sound, but it was enough to bring a certain bird to its wounded mate.
She came in, shut the door behind her, and, hurrying to him, knelt down and threw her arms round his neck, and cried joyful tears. Her pretty plumes were ruffled, her eyes clouded with the weariness of long watching; but she was ten times woman for her blouzed appearance, and he would not have had her one draggled wisp of hair the neater.
“Why, Betty, I am well—and what a fainting miss to succumb to a scratch!”
“Indeed it is an angry wound, and you were worn and sick.”
“We are houseless, my girl—nothing but the cold fields to nest in. You have your arms about a man of snow, and he melts in their warmth.”
“Ah, me! You plucked me from the fire but to burn yourself. You are a man of passion rather, and you overbear your foolish maid. And are you ruined, dear? I would be joyful to know it that I might work for you and die for you.”
He laughed a little.
“Why,” said he, “the house is gone, to be sure, and all my trouble with it, I hope. And I have that of the vagabond in me that I think I feel the freer for the loss of so responsible a property. But I have enough for us yet, maybe, to make out life withal; and we will e’en look about us, Betty, for Mr. Rogers’s cot by a ‘willowy brook.’”
“And will the gentleman let it to us?”
“That he will, I swear. For I have met him at ‘Whitelaw’s,’ with his dry face sunk in a green tabinet kerchief of the nicest mode, that meant more to him, I’ll warrant, than all the green pastorals he ever invented. But have I slept the night through, my wench; and is our hearth cold that was to have leapt to my wife’s home-coming? It was piled too high, Betty, and I have given you a roasting welcome. And what are we to do now, or how escape from these beggarly quarters?”
“Why, for shame, are you fit to move? But Sir David Blythewood is abroad already with the men, to see if they cannot fashion a raft, or sled is it called, of planks to draw over the freezing snow and carry us all to his own great house.”
“He is an admirable creature. There—give me your soft shoulder, girl, and I will talk with my eyes shut, for my brain spins like a top. Where are the rest? And pray God all are sound!”
“Ah! You don’t remember—the poor captain!”
“Luvaine? Is he hurt?”
“He cannot live—not many hours more. Sir David and I have watched with him all night. He has suffered, but he is at peace now, for he is dead, poor soul, below the waist. ’Twas in shooting at the wicked men that tracked us through the tunnel that he made the explosion, for Mr. Brander says they would bring powder along with them in a barrel, and——”
“Brander? Is the rogue spared, then, when an honest soldier falls?”
“He is sore wounded, but he will recover, perhaps.”
“An idle rally that shall earn him the gallows. And so they came by the hole after all, and were caught in their own springe? He hath a soldier’s death; and tell me that is all, Betty.”
“Ah! no—the girl.”
“I remember—I remember that. She sprang from the roof.”
“Yes.”
“And she is dead? A pitiful account for a dump of red crystal. How much blood yet will it absorb before its lust is quenched? My heart cries for the unhappy child. But something comes to me, Betty, that I think I have struggled for through a fever of hours. You must go——”
“No, no! Oh, don’t bid me away from you!”
“Tush, you simple! ’Tis but a yard or two, and to ask of Dennis the bag the poor natural threw down, for I heard the women cry it.”
“I will ask him. He is with the captain yonder.”
“Why, it loathes me; but I have a shadowy idea, and I must act the part of an honest man, though it were to give the stone a new lease of devilry. And Dennis is there, you say?”
“In the coach-house, where the sad captain lies, and Mr. Brander over against him by the further wall.”
“And where are the rest?”
“The maids and Miss Royston are in the loft. She sleeps on the straw, the pretty tired lady, like a flower that has fallen with the cut corn. And the lord, for he would not have nay, has a stall below to himself.”
“He is fitly housed; and have you filled him the manger with dead thistles? Go, Betty, go—for I shall never be at peace till this about the bag is resolved.”
When he was alone once more, he sank back and yielded himself to bewildering dreaming. Here, it seemed, the second phase of his life ended and the third was to begin. What should be its nature? He could not, nor would he, contemplate the possibility of a self-resurrection to conditions similar to those he had left behind. Indeed, he had no doubt whatever that his circumstances were totally inadequate to a rebuilding of his ruined property, and what would a houseless estate be worth to him or to any one else? But, apart from that question, he felt himself quit of all desire to re-accommodate his innate wildness to the humdrum existence of a country squire. Rather a hundred times would he settle with his dear mate in some remote pasture by woods and waters, and dig his own potatoes and bake his own loaves for the little mouths that should nibble at them by and by. To reverse a familiar image, he had been a butterfly, he had been a grub; and now he would fain be a caterpillar, feeding on the green leaf, and taking the sun and the rain as his animal prerogatives. Then he found himself with an ardent longing to repudiate for once and for all his father’s scornful bequest; to heal him of his wound, and shake the dust of “Delsrop” from his feet, and, holding his love’s hand, to set his face to the wind and to the hills, and walk on and away. But how, then, could he rent his cot, or how feather it for those prospective nestlings? It all worried and confused his weakened brain. He would put it to Betty—Betty, upon whose sympathy he was learning to depend as something very sweet and personal to himself.
He opened his eyes to find her standing beside him, that very pink and white bag that had caught his attention at the lodge, swung in her hand.
“He brought it in last night,” she said, “and here it is untouched. He asked me very humbly when he might see you, for he is lost and broken, though he does his duty like a man.”
“With such a constitution, to act as he hath acted is to outman us all. Good Lord! is the thing stuffed fit to burst with the poor creature’s curiosities? Whatever her mishaps, she must save those, it seems. Empty them out, Betty, on the floor—here, pellmell, beside me; and I will test the value of my surmise. Bah! frogs and sloughed skins and bones! A loathsome collection; and she was like a flaming Dryad of the woods. Here is a rat’s skull, and here——”
He paused, gave out a hard breath, and suddenly struggled to get to his feet. The girl flew to him.
“What are you at?” she cried. “Oh! you will hurt yourself.”
His face was pale and bore a startled look.
“Help me up!” he muttered. “Nay, wench, I must—I must! ’Tis here, the villainous thing, in my hand!”
He held open his palm. A chalky lump was in it—a worthless-looking fragment.
“What is that but rubbish?” she said.
“Rubbish? Why, so it is, Betty, but ’tis the rubbish fools strangle one another to possess. I must go to him, the dying man. I was right. It has lain there thrown away while we were cutting throats. He must see it and know it before he passes. Good God! Betty, Betty, I must go to him, I say!”
He was so wild and impatient in his efforts to rise that she bent all trembling to help him, as the wiser policy.
“And will you be sick again,” she said, “and break my heart?”
“I should be sick to remain. There—I am up and steady. Give me your fine, firm arm, Betty, and lead me to his bed.”
Very slowly and shakily he made his way to the coach-house; but, when he was come there, he stood erect, almost without support, and took in the melancholy scene. Dennis, white and haggard, started up from a stool on which he was seated beside a rough pallet stretched on the ground; but his master put a finger to his lips, and motioned him to silence. Then he went and sat himself down on the vacant seat and looked upon the stricken man.
“Luvaine!” he said, softly.
The dying soldier stirred and gave out a little moan. His face was so scorched and disfigured with gunpowder as to be hardly recognizable, and all the upper part of his body was swollen to grotesque proportions; but the coat that had been drawn over his paralyzed lower limbs lay as flat as though nothing but its natural folds raised it from the floor.
“Luvaine,” said Tuke again, “can you hear me?”
As he spoke the door was opened, and Sir David entered. He looked a fagged and worn little man, but a light of bantam heroism glinted in his eyes.
“Tuke!” he exclaimed in astonishment.
“I have slept, Blythewood, and have found a little of myself again. There is something more I have found—hush, man! the stone.”
“Great God!”
He closed the door and came forward, gasping.
“The stone!” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
Tuke nodded.
“Hush!” he murmured again. “He hears, I think.”
Betty knelt pitifully beside the sufferer. Her breath was like balm on his poor battered face. His eyes turned to her with a pathetic gratitude that was moving in the extreme. They heard him murmuring to her, thickly and brokenly.
“She hath been an angel to his torments,” whispered Sir David. “All the long night she hath never ceased to care for him, and he follows her with his eyes till the tears of both make a veil between. She can read his least desire, as——”
Betty turned her head and looked up.
“He is speaking. He wants you to listen.”
Both men stooped to catch the muttered words.
“It is found. I knew before you spoke. I knew its discovery at the last would find me here—here, on the ground. The curse of the predestined is unfulfilment. Let me look at the wicked talisman that is soaked in the blood of martyrs. Let me look, I say.”
Tuke leaned over and placed the infernal pebble, splotched and overlaid as he had recovered it, in the groping hand. The fingers closed convulsively on it. The eyes of the dying were fixed questioning.
“You would have me say how it came to light?”
He—all the watchers, looked round with a start. Against the further wall a deathly shape was risen upon its elbow—Brander, gasping and shaking and holding his hand to his wounded chest. He nodded frantically, as if he would say, “Go on!”
“It had fallen out, to the bottom of the bag in which the skull was placed for removal. This bag the girl Darda had used, it seems, for transporting her relics to the lodge. The rogues found it there and collected fire-wood in it. Darda, when she escaped, must have pulled out the sticks, returned her treasures to the bag, and brought all home with her. Still those possessions in her poor life that represented most to her, she must carry them with her when she leapt from the parapet; and to me this moment the bag was brought packed as she had left it. Through all this lust of violence and misery the stone hath remained unguessed at where it dropped from the socket of the skull; and, while the scoundrels yonder were gnashing and whetting their teeth, there it lay in their midst, within reach of all, and not a man might buy himself with the knowledge an hour’s surcease of the hell to which he was condemned.”
He turned—he could not help it—with an air of irrepressible triumph to the wounded wretch away from him. A fierce mockery of the creature’s impotent malice was on his lips, but nobility prevailed and he forbore to express it. For a moment Brander stared at him as if he would have bartered his last chance of life for a loaded pistol in his hand; then, with a rending groan, he went flat upon his straw pillow and turned his face to the wall.
A silence of some minutes succeeded, while the dying man twisted the shapeless lump feebly in his fingers. Then, all at once he was speaking again, and his voice gathered strength over the painful syllables.
“Kithless and alone; pre-doomed to a curse, and conquered by it at the last. What chance has ever been mine—what hope to escape the ambush laid for me? The love of woman——”
He slewed his head about, with its melancholy burning eyes, and his gaze dwelt upon the girl beside him.
“The love of woman,” he moaned faintly, “what might it have made of me? I was debarred from that and all by a foul inheritance. The sins of the fathers—the sins of the fathers!”
Again a silence fell; but, of a sudden, with a convulsive effort, he had forced himself up sitting, and, leaned upon one hand, was devouring the stone with a great hunger of vision.
“A life of torment for a minute of ecstasy!” he cried in a strong voice; “and who shall accept the heritage now to his undoing? Is there any fool in the world invites the curse?”
“Luvaine,” said Sir David, gently, “let me take the vile thing and hurl it into the sea.”
The dying man looked at him with a strange stare.
“Because it has been the sport of devils, shall we discard its infinite possibilities of good? It is the means—the means, if somewhere we can find the instrument.”
Betty, with her loving woman’s instinct to pity and relieve, had put her arm about the trembling shoulders to support them. Now Luvaine’s head fell back upon that tender pillow, and a rare smile flickered on his tortured mouth.
“To line the cot for the little piping nestling; to nurse it to rich comfort, and train it to be noble and generous and true; to convert this wickedness into a blessing—take it, my child, and with it the last gratitude of this poor foundered wreck.”
The girl looked up, frightened, at the others.
“No, no, no!” she whispered, in a tearful voice, “I cannot.”
“Child—woman, would you deny me this ray of light into the black pit of my doom? The scale is all weighted down on one side. What shall I have to set against the fearful load? They are pinioning me now—my God! I am called to the question!”
Sir David came forward swiftly, took the gem from the nerveless hand, and placed it in Betty’s. A sigh quivered up from the soldier’s lips. He gathered all he could of breath for a last effort.
“I call those present to witness,” he cried, “that I, Edward Luvaine, do here on my death-bed make free gift of the ruby, called the Lake of Wine, to Betty Pollack.”
He sank back and spoke never again. In a few minutes the death-agony was on him. It was brief, but so convulsive while it lasted that, when he was fallen stiffly to rest, they had to fasten his left arm down with a ligature to bring him to some composure of attitude.
Then the girl, seeing the others desired to talk, begged them to leave her alone with the dead while they went outside, for that her heart was full of tears, and she would pray mercy on the poor sinner.
They went sombrely, and stood without at a little distance in the snow.
“It would scarce be decent to congratulate you,” said Blythewood, gravely.
“Indeed, sir, I am not sure it would, or that it is at all a subject for congratulation. At any rate compliments on such can hardly be exchanged by us.”
“You are bitter, and you have very full cause. I spoke once before without book; and now, it seems, Angel and Dunlone have an understandin’. Give me your hand, man; and, frankly, I’m sorry. Why, I could ha’ wished it was you, by my soul, and what was my rudeness then but a left-handed compliment?”
“My lady Viscountess will grace any position she condescends to!” cried Tuke enthusiastically; and the two men shook hands then and there.
“And now,” said Blythewood, “we have been experimenting with a sledge of our own manufacture; and I make no doubt we can transport the whole party to ‘Chatters’ before the day is out.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
Tuke, a weary ghost of himself, that bodily hurt and mental emotion still would not spare, was returned from inspecting Sir David’s travelling contrivance. As he pushed open the door of the stable, he saw that that drove the blood upon his heart, and paralyzed him, voice and limbs, so that he stood like a man of stone. Betty still knelt, her face buried in her hands, beside the dead soldier; but crawled silently to within touch of her—by what desperate disciplining of suffering who might tell—was the wounded brute that, but a few minutes earlier, was extended, helpless apparently and near to dying, against the further wall. Now, as Brander saw the door swung back, he raised himself on one hand, a short knife poised in the other, and in his eyes was an expression of such devilish triumph as turned the soul of the wretched onlooker sick. The blade whipped aloft—the arm of the dead man sprung up and struck the murderer a backhanded blow full in the face. His knife rattled on the boards—he gave a screech of terror, and rolled grovelling and as Tuke, the horrible spell broken, bounded to his love and caught her, fluttering, to his arms, Sir David and the others rushed into the stable with pale faces, and the how, when, and what, of startled men.
Now, when all was explained, and the half-convulsed ruffian tied up with little regard to his comfort, it was vain to try and convince Betty that the ill-secured ligature had snapped fortuitously, releasing the hard arm like a spring, and, marvellously enough, at the opportune moment, and that her safety was due to an accident. “But,” said she, “the dead struck for his own, and because he had dedicated that to good uses. And now I will take the poor man’s trust, and try to acquit me of it so that he shall have peace in his grave. For I owe him that at least for my life.”
And, with the words, she put her arms around her man’s neck before them all, and that so that she might hide the tears she could not repress, for she was much and for many reasons overcome.
“And what,” said Tuke, with a smile, “have you done with the trust, Betty?”
“Why,” said she, “I slipped it under my garter.”