CHAPTER IVTELLS IN WHAT A STARTLING MANNER I LEARNED THAT I WAS NOT ALONE IN GRADENSEA-WOOD
THIS was my wife’s story, as I drew it from her among tears and sobs.Her name was Clara Huddlestone: it sounded very beautiful in my ears; butnot so beautiful as that other name of Clara Cassilis, which she woreduring the longer and, I thank God, the happier portion of her life. Herfather, Bernard Huddlestone, had been a private banker in a very largeway of business. Many years before, his affairs becoming disordered, hehad been led to try dangerous, and at last criminal, expedients toretrieve himself from ruin. All was in vain; he became more and morecruelly involved, and found his honour lost at the same moment with hisfortune. About this period, Northmour had been courting his daughterwith great assiduity, though with small encouragement; and to him,knowing him thus disposed in his favour, Bernard Huddlestone turned forhelp in his extremity. It was not merely ruin and dishonour, nor merelya legal condemnation, that the unhappy man had brought upon his head. Itseems he could have gone to prison with a light heart. What he feared,what kept him awake at night or recalled him from slumber into frenzy,was some secret, sudden, and unlawful attempt upon his life. Hence, hedesired to bury his existence and escape to one of the islands in theSouth Pacific, and it was in Northmour’s yacht, the _Red Earl_, that hedesigned to go. The yacht picked them up clandestinely upon the coast ofWales, and had once more deposited them at Graden, till she could berefitted and provisioned for the longer voyage. Nor could Clara doubtthat her hand had been stipulated as the price of passage. For, althoughNorthmour was neither unkind nor even discourteous, he had shown himselfin several instances somewhat overbold in speech and manner.
I listened, I need not say, with fixed attention, and put many questionsas to the more mysterious part. It was in vain. She had no clear ideaof what the blow was, nor of how it was expected to fall. Her father’salarm was unfeigned and physically prostrating, and he had thought morethan once of making an unconditional surrender to the police. But thescheme was finally abandoned, for he was convinced that not even thestrength of our English prisons could shelter him from his pursuers. Hehad had many affairs with Italy, and with Italians resident in London, inthe later years of his business; and these last, as Clara fancied, weresomehow connected with the doom that threatened him. He had shown greatterror at the presence of an Italian seaman on board the _Red Earl_, andhad bitterly and repeatedly accused Northmour in consequence. The latterhad protested that Beppo (that was the seaman’s name) was a capitalfellow, and could be trusted to the death; but Mr. Huddlestone hadcontinued ever since to declare that all was lost, that it was only aquestion of days, and that Beppo would be the ruin of him yet.
I regarded the whole story as the hallucination of a mind shaken bycalamity. He had suffered heavy loss by his Italian transactions; andhence the sight of an Italian was hateful to him, and the principal partin his nightmare would naturally enough be played by one of that nation.
“What your father wants,” I said, “is a good doctor and some calmingmedicine.”
“But Mr. Northmour?” objected your mother. “He is untroubled by losses,and yet he shares in this terror.”
I could not help laughing at what I considered her simplicity.
“My dear,” said I, “you have told me yourself what reward he has to lookfor. All is fair in love, you must remember; and if Northmour fomentsyour father’s terrors, it is not at all because he is afraid of anyItalian man, but simply because he is infatuated with a charming Englishwoman.”
She reminded me of his attack upon myself on the night of thedisembarkation, and this I was unable to explain. In short, and from onething to another, it was agreed between us, that I should set out at oncefor the fisher village, Graden Wester, as it was called, look up all thenewspapers I could find, and see for myself if there seemed any basis offact for these continued alarms. The next morning, at the same hour andplace, I was to make my report to Clara. She said no more on thatoccasion about my departure; nor, indeed, did she make it a secret thatshe clung to the thought of my proximity as something helpful andpleasant; and, for my part, I could not have left her, if she had goneupon her knees to ask it.
I reached Graden Wester before ten in the forenoon; for in those days Iwas an excellent pedestrian, and the distance, as I think I have said,was little over seven miles; fine walking all the way upon the springyturf. The village is one of the bleakest on that coast, which is sayingmuch: there is a church in a hollow; a miserable haven in the rocks,where many boats have been lost as they returned from fishing; two orthree score of stone houses arranged along the beach and in two streets,one leading from the harbour, and another striking out from it at rightangles; and, at the corner of these two, a very dark and cheerlesstavern, by way of principal hotel.
I had dressed myself somewhat more suitably to my station in life, and atonce called upon the minister in his little manse beside the graveyard.He knew me, although it was more than nine years since we had met; andwhen I told him that I had been long upon a walking tour, and was behindwith the news, readily lent me an armful of newspapers, dating from amonth back to the day before. With these I sought the tavern, and,ordering some breakfast, sat down to study the “Huddlestone Failure.”
It had been, it appeared, a very flagrant case. Thousands of personswere reduced to poverty; and one in particular had blown out his brainsas soon as payment was suspended. It was strange to myself that, while Iread these details, I continued rather to sympathise with Mr. Huddlestonethan with his victims; so complete already was the empire of my love formy wife. A price was naturally set upon the banker’s head; and, as thecase was inexcusable and the public indignation thoroughly aroused, theunusual figure of £750 was offered for his capture. He was reported tohave large sums of money in his possession. One day, he had been heardof in Spain; the next, there was sure intelligence that he was stilllurking between Manchester and Liverpool, or along the border of Wales;and the day after, a telegram would announce his arrival in Cuba orYucatan. But in all this there was no word of an Italian, nor any signof mystery.
In the very last paper, however, there was one item not so clear. Theaccountants who were charged to verify the failure had, it seemed, comeupon the traces of a very large number of thousands, which figured forsome time in the transactions of the house of Huddlestone; but which camefrom nowhere, and disappeared in the same mysterious fashion. It wasonly once referred to by name, and then under the initials “X. X.”; butit had plainly been floated for the first time into the business at aperiod of great depression some six years ago. The name of adistinguished Royal personage had been mentioned by rumour in connectionwith this sum. “The cowardly desperado”—such, I remember, was theeditorial expression—was supposed to have escaped with a large part ofthis mysterious fund still in his possession.
I was still brooding over the fact, and trying to torture it into someconnection with Mr. Huddlestone’s danger, when a man entered the tavernand asked for some bread and cheese with a decided foreign accent.
“_Siete Italiano_?” said I.
“_Sì_, _signor_,” was his reply.
I said it was unusually far north to find one of his compatriots; atwhich he shrugged his shoulders, and replied that a man would go anywhereto find work. What work he could hope to find at Graden Wester, I wastotally unable to conceive; and the incident struck so unpleasantly uponmy mind, that I asked the landlord, while he was counting me some change,whether he had ever before seen an Italian in the village. He said hehad once seen some Norwegians, who had been shipwrecked on the other sideof Graden Ness and rescued by the lifeboat from Cauldhaven.
“No!” said I; “but an Italian, like the man who has just had bread andcheese.”
“What?” cried he, “yon black-avised fellow wi’ the teeth? Was he anI-talian? Weel, yon’s the first that ever I saw, an’ I dare say he’slike to be the last.”
Even as he was speaking, I raised my eyes, and, casting a glance
into thestreet, beheld three men in earnest conversation together, and not thirtyyards away. One of them was my recent companion in the tavern parlour;the other two, by their handsome, sallow features and soft hats, shouldevidently belong to the same race. A crowd of village children stoodaround them, gesticulating and talking gibberish in imitation. The triolooked singularly foreign to the bleak dirty street in which they werestanding, and the dark grey heaven that overspread them; and I confess myincredulity received at that moment a shock from which it neverrecovered. I might reason with myself as I pleased, but I could notargue down the effect of what I had seen, and I began to share in theItalian terror.
It was already drawing towards the close of the day before I had returnedthe newspapers at the manse, and got well forward on to the links on myway home. I shall never forget that walk. It grew very cold andboisterous; the wind sang in the short grass about my feet; thin rainshowers came running on the gusts; and an immense mountain range ofclouds began to arise out of the bosom of the sea. It would be hard toimagine a more dismal evening; and whether it was from these externalinfluences, or because my nerves were already affected by what I hadheard and seen, my thoughts were as gloomy as the weather.
The upper windows of the pavilion commanded a considerable spread oflinks in the direction of Graden Wester. To avoid observation, it wasnecessary to hug the beach until I had gained cover from the highersand-hills on the little headland, when I might strike across, throughthe hollows, for the margin of the wood. The sun was about setting; thetide was low, and all the quicksands uncovered; and I was moving along,lost in unpleasant thought, when I was suddenly thunderstruck to perceivethe prints of human feet. They ran parallel to my own course, but lowdown upon the beach instead of along the border of the turf; and, when Iexamined them, I saw at once, by the size and coarseness of theimpression, that it was a stranger to me and to those in the pavilion whohad recently passed that way. Not only so; but from the recklessness ofthe course which he had followed, steering near to the most formidableportions of the sand, he was as evidently a stranger to the country andto the ill-repute of Graden beach.
Step by step I followed the prints; until, a quarter of a mile farther, Ibeheld them die away into the south-eastern boundary of Graden Floe.There, whoever he was, the miserable man had perished. One or two gulls,who had, perhaps, seen him disappear, wheeled over his sepulchre withtheir usual melancholy piping. The sun had broken through the clouds bya last effort, and coloured the wide level of quicksands with a duskypurple. I stood for some time gazing at the spot, chilled anddisheartened by my own reflections, and with a strong and commandingconsciousness of death. I remember wondering how long the tragedy hadtaken, and whether his screams had been audible at the pavilion. Andthen, making a strong resolution, I was about to tear myself away, when agust fiercer than usual fell upon this quarter of the beach, and I sawnow, whirling high in air, now skimming lightly across the surface of thesands, a soft, black, felt hat, somewhat conical in shape, such as I hadremarked already on the heads of the Italians.
I believe, but I am not sure, that I uttered a cry. The wind was drivingthe hat shoreward, and I ran round the border of the floe to be readyagainst its arrival. The gust fell, dropping the hat for a while uponthe quicksand, and then, once more freshening, landed it a few yards fromwhere I stood. I seized it with the interest you may imagine. It hadseen some service; indeed, it was rustier than either of those I had seenthat day upon the street. The lining was red, stamped with the name ofthe maker, which I have forgotten, and that of the place of manufacture,_Venedig_. This (it is not yet forgotten) was the name given by theAustrians to the beautiful city of Venice, then, and for long after, apart of their dominions.
The shock was complete. I saw imaginary Italians upon every side; andfor the first, and, I may say, for the last time in my experience, becameoverpowered by what is called a panic terror. I knew nothing, that is,to be afraid of, and yet I admit that I was heartily afraid; and it waswith a sensible reluctance that I returned to my exposed and solitarycamp in the Sea-Wood.
There I ate some cold porridge which had been left over from the nightbefore, for I was disinclined to make a fire; and, feeling strengthenedand reassured, dismissed all these fanciful terrors from my mind, and laydown to sleep with composure.
How long I may have slept it is impossible for me to guess; but I wasawakened at last by a sudden, blinding flash of light into my face. Itwoke me like a blow. In an instant I was upon my knees. But the lighthad gone as suddenly as it came. The darkness was intense. And, as itwas blowing great guns from the sea and pouring with rain, the noises ofthe storm effectually concealed all others.
It was, I dare say, half a minute before I regained my self-possession.But for two circumstances, I should have thought I had been awakened bysome new and vivid form of nightmare. First, the flap of my tent, whichI had shut carefully when I retired, was now unfastened; and, second, Icould still perceive, with a sharpness that excluded any theory ofhallucination, the smell of hot metal and of burning oil. The conclusionwas obvious. I had been wakened by some one flashing a bull’s-eyelantern in my face. It had been but a flash, and away. He had seen myface, and then gone. I asked myself the object of so strange aproceeding, and the answer came pat. The man, whoever he was, hadthought to recognise me, and he had not. There was yet another questionunresolved; and to this, I may say, I feared to give an answer; if he hadrecognised me, what would he have done?
My fears were immediately diverted from myself, for I saw that I had beenvisited in a mistake; and I became persuaded that some dreadful dangerthreatened the pavilion. It required some nerve to issue forth into theblack and intricate thicket which surrounded and overhung the den; but Igroped my way to the links, drenched with rain, beaten upon and deafenedby the gusts, and fearing at every step to lay my hand upon some lurkingadversary. The darkness was so complete that I might have beensurrounded by an army and yet none the wiser, and the uproar of the galeso loud that my hearing was as useless as my sight.
For the rest of that night, which seemed interminably long, I patrolledthe vicinity of the pavilion, without seeing a living creature or hearingany noise but the concert of the wind, the sea, and the rain. A light inthe upper story filtered through a cranny of the shutter, and kept mecompany till the approach of dawn.