Page images
PDF
EPUB

Ask Feltram's pardon indeed! For what?

Why, any jury on earth would have hanged him on half the evidence; and I, like a fool, was going to let him off with his liberty and my hundred pounds! Ask his pardon indeed!'

Still there were misgivings in his mind; a consciousness that he did owe explanation and apology to Feltram, and an insurmountable reluctance to undertake either. The old dislike—a contempt mingled with fear-not any fear of his malevolence, a fear only of his carelessness and folly; for, as I have said, Feltram knew many things, it was believed, of the Baronet's continental and Asiatic life, and had even gently remonstrated with him upon the dangers into which he was running. A simple fellow like Philip Feltram is a dangerous depositary of a secret. This Baronet was proud, too; and the mere possession of his secrets by Feltram was an involuntary insult, which Sir Bale could not forgive. He wished him far away; and except for the recovery of his bank-note, which he could ill spare, he was sorry that this suspicion was cleared up.

The thunder and storm were unabated; it seemed indeed that they were growing wilder and more awful.

He opened the window-shutter and looked out upon that sublimest of scenes; and so intense and magnificent were its phenomena, that Sir Bale was for a while absorbed in this contemplation.

When he turned about, the sight of his 100l. note, still between his finger and thumb, made him smile grimly.

The more he thought of it, the clearer it was that he could not leave matters as they were. Well, what should he do? He would send for Mrs. Julaper, and tell her vaguely that he had changed his mind about Feltram, and that he might continue to stay at Mardykes Hall as usual. That would suffice. She could speak to Feltram.

He sent for her; and soon, in the lulls of the great uproar without, he could hear the jingle of Mrs. Julaper's keys and her light tread upon the lobby.

'Mrs. Julaper,' said the Baronet in his dry careless way, 'Feltram may remain; your eloquence has prevailed. What have you been crying about?' he asked, observing that his housekeeper's usually cheerful face was, in her own phrase, all cried.'

It is too late, sir; he's gone.'

And when did he go?' asked Sir Bale, a little put out. 'He chose an odd evening, didn't he? So like him!'

He went about half an hour ago; and I'm very sorry, sir; it's a sore sight to see the poor lad going from the place he was reared in, and a hard thing, sir; and on such a night, above all.'

'No one asked him to go to-night. Where is he gone to ?'

'I don't know, I'm sure; he left my room, sir, when I was upstairs; and Janet saw him pass the window not ten minutes after Mr. Creswell left the house.'

Well, then, there's no good, Mrs. Julaper, in thinking more about it; he has settled the matter his own way; and as he so ordains it-amen, say I.

Good-night.'

CHAPTER X.

ADVENTURE IN TOM MARLIN'S BOAT.

PHILIP FELTRAM was liked very well-a gentle, kindly, and very timid creature, and, before he became so heart-broken, a fellow who liked a joke or a pleasant story, and could laugh heartily. Where will Sir Bale find so unresisting and respectful a butt and retainer? and whom will he bully now?

Something like remorse was troubling Sir Bale's heart a little; and the more he thought on the strange visit of Hugh Creswell that night, with its unexplained menace, the more uneasy he became.

The storm continued; and even to him there seemed something exaggerated and inhuman in the severity of his expulsion on such a night. It was his own doing, it was true; but would people believe that? and would he have thought of leaving Mardykes at all if it had not been for his kinsman's cruelty? Nay, was it not certain that if Sir Bale had done as Hugh Creswell had urged him, and sent for Feltram forthwith, and told him how all had been cleared up, and been a little friendly with him, he would have found him still in the house ?-for he had not yet gone for ten minutes after Creswell's departure, and thus all that was to follow might have been averted. But it was now too late, and Sir Bale would let the affair take its

own course.

Below him, outside the window at which he stood ruminating, he heard voices mingling with the storm. He could with tolerable certainty perceive, looking into the obscurity, that there were three men passing close under it, carrying some very heavy burden among them.

He did not know what these three black figures in the obscurity were about. He saw them pass round the corner of the building toward the front, and in the lulls of the storm could hear their gruff voices talking.

We have all experienced what a presentiment is, and we all know with what an intuition the faculty of observation is sometimes heightened. It was such an apprehension as sometimes gives its peculiar horror to a dream-a sort of knowledge that what those people were about was in a dreadful way connected with his own fate.

He watched for a time, thinking that they might return; but they did not. He was very uncomfortable, and in a state of suspense. 'If they want me, they won't have much trouble in finding me, nor any scruple in plaguing me; they never have.'

Sir Bale returned to his letters, a score of which he was that

night getting off his conscience - an arrear which would not have troubled him had he not ceased, for two or three days, altogether to employ Philip Feltram, who had been accustomed to take all that sort of drudgery off his hands.

All the time he was writing now he had a feeling that the shadows he had seen pass under his window were machinating some trouble for him, and an uncomfortable suspense made him lift his eyes now and then to the door, fancying sounds and footsteps; and after a resultless wait he would say to himself, If any one is coming, why the devil don't they come ?' and apply himself again to his letters. But on a sudden he heard good Mrs. Julaper's step trotting along the lobby, and the tiny ringing of her keys.

[ocr errors]

Here was news coming; and the Baronet stood up looking at the door, on which presently came a hurried rapping; and before he had answered, in the midst of an awful thunder-clap that suddenly broke, rattling over the house, the good woman opened the door in great agitation, and cried with a tremulous uplifting of her hands, 'O, Sir Bale! O, la, sir! here's poor dear Philip Feltram come home drowned !'

Sir Bale stared at her sternly for some seconds.

'Come, now, do be distinct,' said Sir Bale; 'what has happened ?'

'He's lying on the sofer in the old still-room. -my God!-0, sir-what is life ?'

You never saw

'D-n it, can't you cry by and by, and tell me what's the matter now?'

'A bit o' fire there, as luck would have it; but what is hot or cold now? La, sir, they're all doin' what they can, and Tom Warren is on the gallop down to Golden Friars for Doctor Torvey.'

Is he drowned, or is it only a ducking? Come, bring me to the place. Dead men don't usually want a fire, or consult doctors. I'll see for myself.'

So Sir Bale Mardykes, pale and grim, accompanied by the lightfooted Mrs. Julaper, strode along the passages, and was led by her into the old still-room, which had ceased to be used for its original purpose. All the servants in the house were now collected there, and three men also who lived by the margin of the lake; one of them thoroughly drenched, with rivulets of water still trickling from his sleeves, water down the wrinkles and pockets of his waistcoat and from the feet of his trousers, and pumping and oozing from his shoes, and streaming from his hair down the channels of his cheeks like a continuous rain of tears.

The people drew back a little as Sir Bale entered with a quick step and a sharp pallid frown on his face. There was a silence as he stooped over Philip Feltram, who lay on a low bed next the wall, dimly lighted by two or three candles here and there about the room.

He laid his hand, for a moment, on his cold wet breast.

Sir Bale knew what should be done in order to give a man in such a case his last chance for life. Everybody was speedily put in motion. Philip's drenched clothes were removed, hot blankets enveloped him, warming-pans and hot bricks lent their aid; he was placed at the prescribed angle, so that water flowed freely from his mouth. The old expedient for inducing artificial breathing was employed, and a lusty pair of kitchen bellows did duty for his lungs.

But these helps to life, and suggestions to nature, availed not. Forlorn and peaceful lay the features of poor Philip Feltram; cold and dull to the touch; no breath through the blue lips; no sight in the fish-like eyes; pulseless and cold in the midst of all the hot bricks and warming-pans about him.

At length, everything having been tried, Sir Bale, who had been directing, placed his hand within the clothes, and laid it silently on Philip's shoulder and over his heart; and after a little wait, he shook his head, and looking down on his sunken face, he said,

'I'm afraid he's gone. Yes, he's gone, poor fellow! And bear you this in mind, all of you; Mrs. Julaper there can tell you more about it. She knows that it was certainly in no compliance with my wish that he left the house to-night: it was his own obstinate perversity, and perhaps I forgive him for it—a wish in his unreasonable resentment to throw some odium upon this house, as having refused him shelter on such a night, than which imputation nothing can be more utterly false. Mrs. Julaper there knows how welcome he was to stay the night; but he would not; he had made up his mind, it seems, without telling any person. Had he told you, Mrs. Julaper ?'

'No, sir,' sobbed Mrs. Julaper from the centre of a pockethandkerchief in which her face was buried.

'Not a human being: an angry whim of his own. Poor Feltram! and here's the result,' said the Baronet. We have done our best done everything. I don't think the doctor, when he comes, will say that anything has been omitted; but all won't do. Does any one here know how it happened?'

Two men knew very well-the man who had been ducked, and his companion, a younger man, who was also in the still-room, and had lent a hand in carrying Feltram up to the house.

Tom Marlin had a queer old stone tenement by the edge of the lake just under Mardykes Hall. Some people said it was the stump of an old tower that had once belonged to Mardykes Castle, of which in the modern building scarcely a relic was discoverable.

This Tom Marlin had an ancient right of fishing in the lake, where he caught pike enough for all Golden Friars; and keeping a couple of boats, he made money beside by ferrying passengers over now and then. This fellow, with a furrowed face and shaggy eye

brows, bald at top, but with long grizzled locks falling upon his shoulders, said,

'He wer wi' me this mornin', sayin' he'd want t' boat to cross the lake in, but he didn't say what hour; and when it came on to thunder and blow like this, ye may guess I did not look to see him to-night. Well, my wife was just lightin' a pig-tail-tho' light enough and to spare there was in the lift already-when who should come clatterin' at the latch-pin in the blow o' wind and thunder but Philip, poor lad, himself; and an ill hour for him it was. He's been some time in ill fettle, though he was never frowsy, not he, but always kind and dooce, and canty once, like anither; and he asked me to take the boat across the lake at once to the Clough o' Cloostedd at t'other side. The woman took the pet and wodn't hear o't; and, "Dall me, if I go to-night," quoth I. But he would not be put off so, not he; and ding-drive he went to it, cryin' and putrein', ye'd a-said, poor fellow, he was wrang i' his garrets a'most. So at long last I bethought me, there's nout o' a sea to the north o' Snakes Island, so I'll pull him by that side-for the storm is blowin' right up by Golden Friars, ye mind—and when we get near the point, thinks I, he'll see wi' his een how the lake is, and gie it up. For I liked him, poor lad; and seein' he'd set his heart on't, I wouldn't vex him, nor frump him wi' a no. So down we three-myself, and Bill there, and Philip Feltram-come to the boat; and we pulled out, keeping Snakes Island atwixt us and the wind. 'Twas smooth water wi'us, for 'twas a scug there, but white enough was all beyont the point; and passing the finger-stone, not forty fathom from the shore o' the island, Bill and me pullin' and he sittin' in the stern, poor lad, up he rises, a bit rabblin' to himself, wi' his hands lifted so.'

"Look a-head!" says I, thinkin' something was comin' atort us. 'But 'twasn't that. The boat was quiet, for while we looked oo'er our shouthers oo'er her bows, we didn't pull, so she lay still; and lookin' back again on Philip, he was rabblin' on all the same.

"It's nobbut a prass wi' himsel', poor lad," thinks I.

'But that wasn't it neither; for I sid something white come out o' t'water, by the gunwale, like a hand. By Jen! and he leans oo'er and tuk it; and he sagged like, and so it drew him in, under the mere, before I cud du nout. There was nout to thraa tu him, and no time; down he went, and I followed; and thrice I dived before I found him, and brought him up by the hair at last; and there he is, poor lad! and all one if he lay at the bottom o' t' mere.'

As Tom Marlin ended his narrative-often interrupted by the noise of the tempest without, and the peals of thunder that echoed awfully above, like the chorus of a melancholy ballad—the sudden clang of the hall-door bell, and a more faintly-heard knocking, announced a new arrival.

« PreviousContinue »