Complete works of a e w.., p.322
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 322
“As for the breeches, sir,” began the landlord.
“I don’t care a button for them,” cried Featherstone. “But there was money in the breeches’ pockets. Fifteen guineas in gold, and a couple of bills on Mr. Nossiter, the banker at Exeter.”
“The bills can be stopped,” said the landlord. “We are but eighteen miles from Exeter.”
“But how am I to travel those miles; do you expect me to walk there in my shirt tails. No, I stay here in bed until my breeches are found, and, burn me, if I don’t eat up everything in the house,” and immediately he began to roar out for food. “I will have chops at once, and there’s a great sirloin of beef, and bring me a tankard of small ale.”
Then he turned again to me, and said pathetically,
“It is not the breeches I mind, though to be sure I shall cut a ridiculous figure on the highroad; no, nor the money, though I have not a stiver left. But I woke up this morning in the sweetest good-humour, and here am I in a violent passion at nine o’clock in the morning, and my whole day spoilt. It is so discouraging,” and he lay back upon the pillow as though he would have wept.
The landlord offered him his Sunday breeches. They were of red cloth, and a belted earl might wear them without shame.
“But not without discomfort,” grumbled Mr. Featherstone, contemplating the landlord who was of a large figure. “They will hang about me in swathes like a petticoat.”
“And as for the fifteen guineas,” said I, “my purse is to that amount at your disposal.”
“That is a very gentlemanly offer, Mr. Berkeley,” said he, “from one stranger to another. But I have a horror of borrowing. I cannot accept your munificence. No, I will walk in my host’s red cloth breeches as far as Rockbere, which to be sure is no more than twelve miles, quite penniless, but when I reach my friends, upon my word, I will make such a noise about this inn as will close its doors, strike me dead and stiff, if don’t.”
His threat had its effect. The landlord, after the usual protestations that such an incident had never occurred before, that he had searched the house even to the servants’ boxes, and that he could make neither head nor tail of the business, wound up his harangue with an offer of five guineas.
“It is all I have in the house, sir,” said he, “and of course I shall charge you neither for food nor lodging.”
“Of course not,” said Mr. Featherstone indignantly. “Well, I must make the best of it, but oh! I woke up with so happy a disposition towards the world;” and dismissing the women he got up and dressed. The landlord fetched the five guineas and his red cloth breeches, which Featherstone drew on.
“Was ever a man so vilely travestied?” he said. “Sure, I shall be taken for a Hollander. That is hard for a person of some elegance,” and he tied his cravat and went grumbling from the room.
“This is a great misfortune, sir, for me,” said my host. “I have lived honest all my days. There is no one in the house who would steal; on that I would stake my life. I can make nothing of it.”
“Mr. Featherstone is quite recovered from his ague,” said I slowly. I crossed over to the empty fireplace heaped with the white ashes of the logs which had blazed there the night before.
“The fire no doubt did him some benefit.”
“That is precisely what I was thinking,” said I, and I knelt down on the hearth-rug and poked amongst the ashes with the shovel. Suddenly, the landlord uttered an exclamation and threw up the window. I heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs upon the road. I got up from my knees and rushed to the window. As I leaned out Mr. Featherstone rode underneath and he rode my horse.
“Stop!” I shouted out.
“Mr. Berkeley,” he cried, airily waving his hand as he rode by, “you may hold very good putt cards, but you haven’t kept your horse.”
“You damned thief!” I yelled, and he turned in his saddle and put out his tongue. It is, if you think of it, a form of repartee to which there is no reply. In any case I doubt if I could have made any reply which would have reached his ears. For he had set the horse to a gallop and was far down the road.
I went back to the hearth where the landlord joined me. We both knelt down and raked away the ashes.
“What’s that?” said I, pointing to something blackened and scorched. The landlord picked it up.
“It is a piece of corduroy.”
“And here’s a bone button,” said I. “The ague was a sham, the fire a device to rob you. He came here without a penny piece and burnt his breeches last night. He has robbed you, he has robbed me, and he will reach the Scilly Islands first. How far is it to Rockbere?”
“Twelve miles.”
“I must walk those twelve miles?”
“Yes.”
“Will I get a horse there?”
“It is doubtful.”
“He has a day’s start then at the least.”
So after all, though the horse did not stumble, nor the rider lie quiet by the roadside, he did not ride out of the forest at a gallop, and down the green bank into the open space beyond.
CHAPTER VI
MY FIRST NIGHT UPON TRESCO
I WALKED THAT day into Rockbere, and taking the advice of the innkeeper with whom I lodged, I hired a hack and a guide from him the next morning and struck across country for the sea; for he assured me that I should most likely find a fishing smack at Topsham whose master would put me over to the Scillies, and that if the wind did but favour me I should reach the islands sooner that way than if I had the quickest horse under me that was ever foaled. It was of the greatest urgency that I should set foot on Tresco before Cullen Mayle. I had to risk something to achieve that object, and I risked the wind. It was in the northeast when I started from Rockbere and suited my purpose finely if it did but hold; so that I much regretted I was not already on the sea, and rode in a perpetual fear lest it should change its quarter. I came to Honiton Clyst that night, and to Topsham the next day, where I was fortunate enough to find a boat of some thirty tons and to come to an agreement with its master. He had his crew ready to his hand; he occupied the morning in provisioning the smack; and we stood out of the harbour in the evening, and with a steady wind on our quarter made a good run to the Start Point. Shortly after we passed the Start the wind veered round into the north, which did us no great harm, since these boats sail their best on a reach. We reached then with a soldier’s breeze, as the saying is, out to the Eddystone Rock and the Lizard Point.
It was directly after we had sighted the Lizard that the wind began to fall light, and when we were just off the Point it failed us altogether. I remember that night as well as any other period in the course of these incidents. I was running a race with Cullen Mayle, and I was beginning to think that it was not after all only on account of his peril that it was needful for me to reach Tresco before he did. These last two days I had been entirely occupied with the stimulation of that race and the inspiriting companionship of the sea. The waves foaming away from the bows and bubbling and hissing under the lee of the boat, the flaws of wind blistering the surface of the water as they came off the land towards us, making visible their invisible approach; the responsive spring of the boat, like a horse under the touch of a spur — these mere commonplaces to my companions had for me an engrossing enchantment. But on that evening at the Lizard Point the sea lay under the sunset a smooth, heaving prism of colours; we could hear nothing but the groaning of the blocks, the creaking of the boom’s collars against the masts; and the night came out from behind the land very peaceful and solemn, and solemnly the stars shone out in the sky. All the excitement of the last days died out of me. We swung up and down with the tide. Now the lights of Falmouth were visible to us at the bottom of the bay, now the Lizard obscured them from us. I was brought somehow to think of those last years of mine in London. They seemed very distant and strange to me in this clean air, and the pavement of St. James’s Street, which I had daily trodden, became an unacceptable thing.
About two o’clock of the morning a broad moon rose out of the sea, and towards daybreak a little ruffing breeze sprang up, and we made a gentle progress across the bay towards Land’s End; but the breeze sank as the sun came up, and all that day we loitered, gaining a little ground now and then and losing it again with the turn of the tide. It was not until the fifth evening that we dropped anchor in the road between St. Mary’s Island and Tresco.
I waited until it was quite dark, and was then quietly rowed ashore with my valise in the ship’s dinghy. I landed on Tresco near to the harbour of New Grimsby. It was at New Grimsby that Dick Parmiter lived, Clutterbuck had told me, and the first thing I had to do was to find Dick Parmiter without arousing any attention.
Now on an island like Tresco, sparsely inhabited and with no commerce, the mere presence of a stranger would assuredly provoke comment. I walked, therefore, very warily towards the village. One house I saw with great windows all lighted up, and that I took to be the Palace Inn, where Adam Mayle and Cullen used to sit side by side on the settle and surprise the visitors by their unlikeness to one another. There was a small cluster of cottages about the inn with a lane straggling between, and further away, round the curve of the little bay, were two huts close to the sea.
It would be in one of these that Dick Parmiter lived, and I crept towards them. There was no light whatever in the first of them, but the door stood open, and a woman and a man stood talking in the doorway. I lay down in the grass and crawled towards them, if by any chance I might hear what they said. For a while I could distinguish nothing of what they said, but at last the man cried in a clear voice, “Good-night, Mrs. Grudge,” and walked off to the inn. The woman went in and closed the door. I was sure then that the next cottage was the one for which I searched. I walked to it; there was a light in the window and the sound of voices talking.
I hesitated whether to go in boldly and ask for Dick. But it would be known the next morning that a stranger had come for Dick; no doubt, too, Dick’s journey to London was known, and the five men watching the house on Merchant’s Point would be straightway upon the alert. Besides Dick might not have reached home. I walked round the hut unable to decide what I should do, and as I came to the back of it a light suddenly glowed in a tiny window there. I cautiously approached the window and looked through. Dick Parmiter was stripping off his jersey, and was alone.
I tapped on the window. Dick raised his head, and then put out the light, so that I could no longer see into the room; but in a moment the window was slowly lifted, and the boy’s voice whispered:
“Is that you, Mr. Mayle?”
I drew a breath of relief. I was ahead of Cullen Mayle, though he had stolen my horse.
“No,” said I; “but I have come on Cullen Mayle’s business.”
The boy leaned out of the window and peered into my face. But voices were raised in the room beyond this cupboard, and a woman’s voice cried out, “Dick, Dick!”
“That’s mother,” said Dick to me. “Wait! I will come out to you.”
He closed the window, and I lay down again in the grass, and waited there for perhaps an hour. A mist was coming up from the sea and thickening about the island; the starlight was obscured; wreaths of smoke, it seemed, came in puffs between myself and the house, and at last I heard the rustling of feet in the grass.
“Dick,” said I in a whisper, and the lad came to me.
“I remember you,” he said. “You were at Lieutenant Clutterbuck’s. Why have you come?”
“Upon my word,” said I, “I should find it difficult to tell you.”
Indeed, it would have taken me half the night to explain the motives which had conjoined to this end.
“And now that you are come, what is it you mean to do?”
“Dick,” I returned, “you ask the most disconcerting questions. You tramp up to London with a wild story of a house watched — —”
“You come as a friend, then,” he broke in eagerly.
“As your friend, yes.”
Dick sat silent for a moment.
“I think so,” he said at length.
“And here’s a trifle to assure you,” I said. “Cullen Mayle is not very far behind me. You may expect him upon Tresco any morning.”
Dick started to his feet.
“Are you sure of that? You do not know him. How are you sure?”
“Clutterbuck described him to me. I overtook him on the road, and stayed the same night with him at an inn. He robbed me and robbed the landlord. There was a trick at the cards, too. Not a doubt of it, Cullen Mayle is close on my heels. Are those five men still watching the house?”
“Yes. They are still upon Tresco. They lodge here and there with the fishermen, and make a pretence to burn kelp or to fish for their living; but their business is to watch the house, as you will see to-night. There are six of them now, not five.”
He led me as he spoke towards the “Palace Inn,” where a light still burned in the kitchen. The cottages about the inn, however, were by this time dark, and we could advance without risk of being seen. Dick stopped me under the shadow of a wall not ten yards from the inn. A red blind covered the lower part of the window, but above it I could see quite clearly into the kitchen.
“Give me a back,” whispered Dick, who reached no higher than my shoulder. I bent down and Dick climbed on to my shoulders, whence he too could see the interior of the kitchen.
“That will go,” said he in a little, and slid to the ground. “Can you see a picture on the wall?”
“Yes.”
“And a man sitting under the picture — a squat, squabby man with white hair and small eyes very bright?”
“Yes.”
“That is the sixth man. He came to Tresco while I was in London. I found him here when I came back two days ago. But I had seen him before. He had come to Tresco before. His name is George Glen.”
“George Glen!” said I. “Wait a bit,” and I took another look at the man in the kitchen. “He was quartermaster with Adam Mayle at Whydah, eh? He is the stranger you brought over to St. Mary’s Church on the day when Cullen Mayle sat in the stocks.”
“Yes,” said Dick, and he asked me how I knew.
“Clutterbuck told me,” I replied.
From the inn we walked some few yards along a lane until we were free of the cottages, and then leaving the path, mounted inland up a hill of gorse. Dick gave me on the way an account of his journey homewards and the difficulties he had surmounted. I paid only an indifferent attention to his story, for I was wholly occupied with George Glen’s presence upon the island. Glen had come first of all to visit Adam Mayle, and was now watching for Cullen. What link was there between his two visits? I was inclined to think that George Glen was the clue to the whole mystery. In spite of my inattention, I gathered this much however from Dick. That tramp of his to London was well known throughout the islands. His mother had given him up for dead when he went away, and had thrashed him soundly when he returned, but the next day had made him out a great hero in her talk. She did not know why he went to London, for Dick had the discretion to hold his tongue upon that point.
So much Parmiter had told me when he suddenly stopped and listened. I could hear nothing, however much I strained my ears, and in a moment or two Dick began to move on. The mist was very thick about us — I could not see a yard beyond my nose; but we were now going down hill, so that I knew we had crossed the ridge of the island and were descending towards the harbour of New Grimsby and the house under Merchant’s Rock.
We had descended for perhaps a couple of hundred yards; then Dick stopped again. He laid a hand upon my arm and dragged me down among the gorse, which was drenched with the fog.
“What is it?” said I.
“Hush,” he whispered; and even as he whispered I saw a sort of brown radiance through the fog a long way to my left. The next instant a speck of clear light shone out in the heart of this radiance: it was the flame of a lantern, and it seemed miles away. I raised myself upon my elbows to watch it. Dick pulled my elbow from beneath me, and pressed me down flat in the grass; and it was fortunate that he did, for immediately the lantern loomed out of the fog not a dozen yards away. I heard it rattle as it swung, and the man who carried it tramped by so near to me that if I had stretched out my hand I could have caught him by the ankle and jerked him off his feet. It was the purest good fortune that he did not detect us, and we lay very still until the rustle of the footsteps had altogether died away.
“Is that one of them?” I asked.
“Yes; William Blads. He lodges with Mrs. Crudge next to our cottage.”
We continued to descend through the gorse for another quarter of an hour or so until an extraordinary sound at our feet brought us both to an halt. It was the strangest melancholy screeching sound that ever I had heard: it was so harsh it pierced the ears; it was so wild and eerie that I could hardly believe a voice uttered it. It was like a shrill cry of pain uttered by some live thing that was hardly human. It startled me beyond words, and the more so because it rose out of the fog directly at our feet. Dick Parmiter trembled at my side.
“Quick,” he whispered in a shaking voice; “let us go! Oh, let us go!”
But he could not move for all his moaning. His limbs shook as though he had the fever; terror chained him there to the ground. Had I not known the boy under other circumstances, I should have set him down for a coward.
I took a step forward. Dick caught hold of my arm and muttered something, but his voice so wavered and gasped I could not distinguish what he said. I shook his arm off, and again stepped forward for one, two, three paces. As I took the third pace the ground suddenly sloped, my feet slipped on the wet grass; I let go of my valise, and I fell to my full length upon my back, and slid. And the moment I began to slide my feet touched nothing. I caught at the grass, and the roots of it came away in my hands. I turned over on my face. Half my body was now hanging over the edge. I hung for a second by my waist, and as I felt my waist slipping, I struck out wildly upon each side with my arms. My right arm struck against a bush of gorse; I seized hold of it, and it bent, but it did not break. I lifted a knee carefully, set it on the edge, and so crawled up the slope again.
