Chapter XXXII: Retribution

When the crowner, with his twelve good men and true--yokels, for the most part, drawn from the neighbouring farms--came to sit on the body of Quentin Bagott, Scrivener Harnett--he who had witnessed the Will--was present, as representing the interests of the heir to the estate. Evidence as to facts being incontestable, the jury, following the plain lead of their officer--himself a friend of the attorney--gave in their verdict to the effect that the deceased had died by the visitation of God, being a very stout gentleman and suspect of Popish inclinations; which rider, however, the crowner--at Master Harnett’s instance--ruling to be irrelevant, it was omitted from the record, and the simple verdict left to stand.

Melton, indeed, had every reason for desiring to suppress any linking of the dead man’s name with the recusancy associated with it, wishing it to be assumed that the intimacy between them, by which he had himself come unexpectedly to profit, had been one of pure, long-standing, social good-fellowship. The attorney, the inquest over, took particular pains, on his behalf, to convey that impression abroad, with the result that the situation, after serving for a local nine days’ wonder, came generally to be accepted, and some hopes even to be entertained that the Grange, under its new ownership, might cease to be a focus for suspicion and mystery. It seemed a hardship on the absent heir-presumptive; but, as to that, there was no telling, since all had been an enigma which passed behind those drear-shut walls; and for the rest the Law, which has made of Possession a fetish to awe the stoutest scepticism, was there to support its own most incontrovertible claims. So, all considered, it would be well, perhaps, thought popular opinion, to resign to peaceful and undisputed enjoyment of what he had gained, one, who, though a stranger, stood to his rights in the sacred name of Property.

So far so well for the cunning creature’s schemes; but all this was only preliminary to his drawing of a much wider net about the waters in which he fished. In the meantime, planning to secure a greater privacy for his operations, he had taken the second step contemplated by him, and dismissed at a moment’s notice the whole household--with a single exception. It was on the day of the funeral that he had done this, after the mortal remains of the ex-Judge had been taken to Ashburton, and put to rest for all time in a corner of the little old graveyard of St Lawrence’s Chapel. The chaplain himself had come over to preface the obsequies with a little traditional ceremony which, under the circumstances, the good man thought advisable. He made no reflections, he said, but, in view of rumours which could not be altogether ignored, he judged it well, for the reconciling of his office with his conscience, and for the hopefuller salvation of an erring soul, to take the precaution. Wherefore, after seeing the coffin lifted out, and placed upon the cart which was to carry it, he stood before the house-door, and demanded in a loud voice to know if any there was so charitable and so Christian as to take it upon himself to _eat the sins of the deceased_, pawning his own soul, as it were, for the ease and rest of the departed one. Whereat, after a pregnant pause, had come forward honest Nol the porter, and flamingly averred that he was prepared to undertake that pious task, saving the presumption of putting his own soul and that of his dear master’s at a common valuation; and down he had sat upon the stool, or cricket, placed for him, and taking from the clergyman’s hands the groat proffered him, and from Gammer Harlock’s the crust of bread and the mazard-bowl of ale which were the symbols of the sacrifice, had then and there stoically consumed the food, and, washing it securely home in one great draught which emptied the bowl, had risen from the ceremony a refreshed but somewhat haunted man. He went with the body afterwards, with Phineas and William accompanying--Melton, for sufficient reasons, remaining behind; and, after the burying, the three, very sad and downcast, returned to the Grange, and were immediately summoned, together with Mrs Harlock, to the presence of him who was now their master. They obeyed, with a feeling of vague foreboding.

John Melton sat in the room which had been erst his host’s and benefactor’s. He looked at the four as they entered with a dry wintry smile. Beside his chair stood the attorney, a figure no less frosty in suggestion. There was not enough red blood between the two of them to have stained a counter, only the lips of both, and the crafty, slit eyelids of the attorney, showing a pale smear of red.

‘I have sent for ye,’ said Melton, in his arid, measured way, ‘to the intent that ye shall know that from this moment your services are dispensed with, and yourselves dismissed incontinent from the house, your packs taken with you and your wages paid in full.’

A moment’s stupefaction fell upon the group at his words. It was not that those were unexpected, or indeed unwelcome: only faith to their promise had ever resigned them to the prospect of remaining on: but the harsh abruptness and perfidy of the deed was what took their breath away. Nol was the first to find his voice.

‘Is this your promise to his Honour, ye dommed faith-breaker!’ he bellowed, his face reddening with fury.

‘There was no undertaking, save what was conditional on my will,’ answered Melton, concise and clear; ‘nor, since the subject was first mooted, has my will gathered from ye any inducement to consider your claims favourably. The head being gone, the body is best to follow. Shortly, if ye question the legality of the act, here is Master Harnett to answer to the law for it.’

The attorney bent, with a sound as if he creaked rustily at the waist.

‘Answer to the devil!’ cried Nol. ‘Dost think, man, we wished to serve thee? ’Twas faith to his Honour bound us, as it binds not him that hath been a curse to this house ever since his black shadow crossed its threshold. But to dismiss us like this, and his Honour not an hour in his grave! Well, we’ll go.’

‘Yes, you’ll go,’ answered the other imperturbably, ‘and not the slower for your insolence. Dare me, you rascal, and I’ll bring the law on you.’

He spoke quite quietly and wickedly, a thin line of teeth showing between his lips. Nol stood staring at him a moment, inexpressible emotions seething within his breast; then turned to the others:--

‘Come Phineas, come Willy--we were best away, to bide our young master’s return, sith in his absence this house is no longer a place for honest men.’

They were leaving the room, old Harlock following, when Melton called upon her to stay. She had been standing all this while, a silent inscrutable figure, somewhat apart, and now turned, hearing the summons.

‘Ay. What is it, Melton?’

‘I did not mean to include you in this dismissal.’

‘Ay.’

‘Think you I have no bowels of gratitude to the one that nursed me in my sickness and gave me back to health?’

‘What is it ye want of me?’

‘Your continuance in my service, that is all.’

‘To cook your victuals, and make your bed, and give you what comfort a woman may?’

‘Something to that effect.’

‘And share your confidence, maybe?’

‘Not to abuse it, at least.’

She stood staring at him a long while--so keenly that her dark piercing eyes seemed, like a burning-glass, to focus a spot of red even on his sallow cheek. And at last she spoke:--

‘So be it, then. Of this house I have been, and am, and must ever be, until I perish with it, mayhap, off the face of the earth. So be it.’

She turned with the word, and, pushing before the others, left the room first. They shrunk from her, the dark old witch, holding that she but vindicated her title in this betrayal, for self-interest, of a trust. But she cared nothing for their opinions or their repulsion, and, going before them, disappeared into her own quarters.

They delayed no long while after that about their leaving, but, their goods collected and their wages paid--scrupulously, and beyond contention, by the shrewd attorney--shouldered each his bundle and started on foot for Ashburton.

And so another step was gained, and Melton by so much, as he believed, nearer the achievement of his purpose. He had won at last the privacy he desired, and in that virtual solitude could go leisurely and deliberately about the maturation of his plans. Incontestably in legal possession, he no longer dreaded the nephew’s return. If that should happen, he had only to show his warrant.

Now, having so triumphed, he began to linger over this fruition of his hopes, tasting its sweetness. Presently it began to occur to him whether, in contradiction of his real original design, he need leave the Grange at all, but instead settle down to a life of ease and comfort on the spot he had secured so cunningly for his own. That was a fatal thought to pet, inducing in him, as it did, a habit of procrastination. He savoured his days, which that gaunt old housekeeper helped to make curiously attractive to him. She cooked to perfection; she made him comfortable; she kept him in comparative luxury. And all the time he trusted to her stupidity to observe nothing and nurse no suspicions. He had no opinion of her mental faculties, which superstition, he opined, had credited with a sharpness they did not really possess. He thought her, in fact, an old melancholy fool, and it was merely for her usefulness that he had retained her in his service, since he could not go altogether without domestic help.

And the grim warlock herself? She had seen straight enough into his reason for excepting her from the general clearance--and she was content. She knew his true opinion of her--and she was content. Let him trade upon it, cosset his delusions, and play her game. She, too, could plot, as secretly, as craftily, as deadly as himself, only with a brain less prone to the conceit of its own infallibility. Many wily schemes had gone to shipwreck on that conceit; and yet another was destined to go. He should see. When the time fell ripe, he should see.

It fell on a certain still close day in October, when a light stirless mist hung all about the house. There was nothing in the quiet, the loneliness, the glowing tranquillity of the place to presage the storm which was even then marching to burst over it. As it lay so seemingly secure in its green isolation, no hint of tramping footsteps, coming from two directions at once, found even the faintest echo on its walls. Yet the footsteps, or a section of them, were already beating out their ominous rhythm in the fierce dark old heart of her to whose long stealthy machinations, and final summons, they were conveying the fruitful answer. Once, and once again, she mounted to the roof, and, like Sister Ann, looked eastwards, towards Teignmouth and the sea, for the little expected cloud of dust. And the third time, descending, she went straight in to John Melton, where he sat in the great hall, ruminating, as was his wont after dinner, over one of the dead man’s cherished volumes. The remains of the meal, though long finished, still lay upon the table. He looked up, something fretfully, as the old woman entered.

‘You are late,’ he said. ‘Clear this truck away.’

‘Let it be,’ she answered. ‘Mayhap ye’ll need no trencher again, but to lay with salt upon your breast. Have you said your grace, John Melton? I’d add a prayer to it, if I were you.’

She stood, lean, hawk-eyed, something suddenly sinister and formidable, gazing stilly at him, and, as motionless, he gazed up at her. Yet, quiet as he seemed, his heart was in a tumult. What did she mean? and had he been mistaken in her all this time--a viper, like himself, waiting to bite the hand that cherished her? Some prescience, shapeless but intolerable, seized on his nerves; and, before he could command himself, panic had stormed his reason. He rose quickly, the book crashing from his hands to the floor, and stood breathing like one who had lost a race. His lips worked, his eyes had livid circles about them; yet, when he spoke, very habit chilled his words.

‘You mad old fool. What crazy fancy is this? Take the things away.’

‘Never so mad,’ she cried, ‘as to accept your wage and do your service for love of ye. What! would ye fit all souls to your own pattern of treachery and ingratitude? That’s where ye erred, John Melton, and for that ye’ll have to pay.’

He was so amazed, so overwhelmed, in this revelation of a hateful terrific force, where he had looked for nothing but senility and lean subservience, that he had not a word to answer. And she went on:--

‘A fool, was I? Yet not fool nor coward enough to stand unhelping by and see my pretty boy robbed of his birthright. Ye did a bad day’s work for yourself, when ye coerced that poor broken old man into the act ye did; ye set one on your track, then, John Melton, that would know no rest nor mercy till she had dragged ye down. Had ye so forgotten the gleam of the wolves’ white teeth that chased ye hither over the moors? ’Twas you the fool that took the wise woman to housekeeper, thinking your hidden secret safe from her.’

He made a single spasmodic step forward.

‘No!’ he cried, as if very anguish had wrung the word from him.

‘Ay!’ she answered. ‘And what is your secret worth to ye now? Listen!’

A sudden murmur in the air; a confused tramp of many feet; voices; sharp cries; a sense of contiguity to some great hostile presence--and silence. Swaying, as if drunk, he staggered to the window and looked out.

Fifty of them, if one--men such as those others--the same--rough fanatic seamen, the most of them--savages without reason or pity--wild cruel natures and inflamed with drink as with bigotry. They saw him, the white staring, horror-struck face, and a sudden roar went up from the crowd:--

‘There he be--the Papish devil! We have un at last! Throw un out to us, Mother--throw un out!’

And in a moment there was frenzied tumult where had been whispering and cautious footsteps. Some rushed for the window; some the door; others scattered to invest the house and cut off all chance of escape; fists beat on panels; arms stiffened through iron bars, tugging to snap them. Yet through all there grew apparent one deadly purpose, swiftly concentrating itself about a certain spot in the courtyard. Thither hurried forms in quick succession, bearing great masses of sticks and brushwood, heaps of straw, litter and fodder from the stables. They came and came again, never satisfied with the swelling sum, accumulating pile on pile, till a very hillock of fuel had risen before their eyes. Fuel! Great God! It was for the long-delayed holocaust; and the wretched man behind the window saw and understood.

The sill stood too far above their reach for easy gaining; the front door could offer a tough resistance to their battering strokes; he had yet some moments in which to think and act. Reeling back into the room, he felt thin arms, tense as wire, flung about him: and he was held.

‘You devil!’ he panted: ‘let me go!’

She clung on, and, her face half buried against his shoulder, shrieked: ‘He’s here. Come and take him!’

Fighting like a madman, he forced her inch by inch towards the table, freed, with a frantic wrench, his right arm, and, finding a knife, gripped it and struck at her. A thin shrill whine issued from her lips, her arms relaxed, and she fell from him with a thud upon the floor.

Now! To think--to collect himself--to fight down this choking in his throat! If he could only once gain the well-house--the wheel--unobserved! His--Bagott’s closet! He was there--rushing for the casement--and at the very moment blows came raining on it, and the glass crashed. Staggering back, a very extremity of horror paralysed his reason. No instinct remained to him but the last instinct of despair--to escape upwards, upwards, from the earth that had betrayed him. The stairs--on the stairs now--and always frantically mounting them. The roof at last might give him safety.

And, even while he climbed, they were cutting off from beneath his feet his final hope of escape: and, even while he climbed, his Nemesis was toiling in his wake. She had heard him, and risen, ghastly and bloody, to her feet, and followed, dropping her own crimson trail, on his track.

It was the doom of both. For a cry had risen that the soldiers were coming, and that the work that was to do must be done after a more swift and comprehensive fashion than that designed, if the accursed spy was not to slip through their hands. He had vanished from the window: those few who had succeeded in forcing an entrance were still hurrying aimlessly hither and thither, in vain search of their prey. They were called out. Senseless, brutal in its destructive frenzy, the mob gave no thought but to the securing of its purpose by any foul reckless means; gave no thought to the safety of her, their own secret confederate and informer, who was still alive somewhere within the building. They formed a hasty cordon about the walls, and, carrying their massed fuel to a dozen kindling points, flung it in heaps through doors and windows and set fire to it.

And almost in a moment, incredible as it might seem, the place was alight and roaring. It had been a hot summer, the house was dry to its attics, and the old laths and timber caught like touchwood. In a few minutes it was blazing like a gorse-thicket: the pools of flame, like pools of quicksilver, touched and became one, which, involving the whole in one furious conflagration, went rushing up in a single cone of volcanic fire.

Soon the heat was so great that the crowd had to fall farther back to contemplate its own handiwork. Some, taking refuge in the shelter of the gateway, looked forth, half awed over the magnitude of their achievement. And, as they watched, suddenly there was a little figure on the roof, and it was throwing out its arms in a frantic appeal for the help that no power on earth could any longer afford it.

A sort of gloating sigh took the upturned faces like a wind; a pale fanatic creature screamed. The house by now was such a charred and crumbling ruin within the furnace that consumed it, it seemed impossible that any human being could find a foothold there. Was he going to take a last desperate chance by leaping from its walls? Even as they wondered, a second figure, a woman’s, was seen on the roof. The other seemed to turn to it--to turn away--to make a movement to spring. Too late. The next moment she had seized it in her arms and dived with it into the roaring abyss of flame. A silence, as of riven air after a thunderclap, fell upon the people.