Donal Grant Part 78

"I will run up to the castle, and hear all about it," he said. "Look after my mare, will you?"

"But I'm tellin' ye, sir, ye'll fin' naebody there!" said the man.

"They're a' gane frae the hoose ony gait. There's no a sowl aboot that but deif Betty Lobban, wha wadna hear the angel wi' the last trump.

Mair by token, she's that feart for robbers she gangs til her bed the minute it begins to grow dark, an' sticks her heid 'aneth the bed-claes--no 'at that maks her ony deifer!"

"Then you think there is no use in going up?"

"Not the smallest," answered the inn-keeper.

"Get me some supper then. I will take a look at my mare."

He went and saw that she was attended to--then set off for the castle as fast as his legs would carry him. There was foul play beyond a doubt!--of what sort he could not tell! If the man's report was correct, he would go straight to the police! Then first he remembered, in addition to the other reported absences, that before he left with Davie, the factor and his sister had gone together for a holiday: had this been contrived?

He mounted the hill and drew near the castle. A terrible gloom fell upon him: there was not a light in the sullen pile! It was darksome even to terror! He went to the main entrance, and rang the great bell as loud as he could ring it, but there was no answer to the summons, which echoed and yelled horribly, as if the house were actually empty.

He rang again, and again came the horrible yelling echo, but no more answer than if it had been a mausoleum. He had been told what to expect, yet his heart sank within him. Once more he rang and waited; but there was no sound of hearing. The place grew terrible to him. But his mother had sent him there, and into it he must go! He must at least learn whether it was indeed abandoned! There was false play! he kept repeating to himself; but what was it? where and how was it to be met?

As to getting into the house there was no difficulty. He had but to climb two walls to get to the door of Baliol's tower, and the key of that he always carried. If he had not had it, he would yet soon have got in; he knew the place better than any one else about it. Happily he had left the door locked when he went away, else probably they would have secured it otherwise. He entered softly, and, with a strange feeling of dread, went winding up the stair to his room--slowly, because he did not yet know at all what he was to do. If there were no false play, surely at least Mrs. Brookes would have written to tell him they were going! If only he could learn where she was! Before he reached the top he found himself very weary. He staggered in, and fell on his bed in the dark.

But he could not rest. The air seemed stifling. The storm had lulled, but the atmosphere was full of thunder. He got up and opened the window. A little breath came in and revived him; then came a little wind, and in the wind the moan of its harp. It woke many memories.

There again was the lightning! The thunder broke with a great bellowing roar among the roofs and chimneys. It was to his mind! He went out on the roof, and mechanically took his way toward the nest of the music.

At the base of the chimneys he sat down, and stared into the darkness.

The lightning came; he saw the sea lie watching like a perfect peace to take up drift souls, and the land bordering it like a waste of dread; then the darkness swallowed both; and the thunder came so loud that it not only deafened but seemed to blind him beyond the darkness, that his brain turned to a lump of clay. Then came a silence, and the silence was like a deeper deafness. But from the deafness burst and trickled a faint doubtful stream: could it be a voice, calling, calling, from a great distance? Was he the fool of weariness and excitement, or did he actually hear his own name? Whose voice could it be but lady Arctura's, calling to him from the spirit world! They had killed her, and she was calling to let him know she was in the land of liberty! With that came another flash and another roar of thunder--and there was the voice again: "Mr. Grant! Mr. Grant! come, come! You promised!" Did he actually hear the words? They sounded so far away that it seemed as if he ought not to hear them. But could the voice be from the spirit-land?

Would she claim his promise thence, tempting him thither? She would not! And she knew he would not go before his hour, if all the spirits on the other side were calling him. But he had heard of voices from far away, while those who called were yet in the body! If she would but say whither, he would follow her that moment! Once more it came, but very faint; he could not tell what it said. A wail of the ghost-music followed close.--G.o.d in heaven! could she be down in the chapel? He sprang to his feet. With superhuman energy he leapt up and caught the edge of the cleft, drew himself up till his mouth reached it, and cried aloud, "Lady Arctura!"

There came no answer.

"I am stupid as death!" he said to himself: "I have let her call me in vain!"

"I am coming!" he cried again, revived with sudden joy. He dropped on the roof, and sped down the stair to the door that opened on the second floor. All was dark as underground, but he knew the way so well he needed but a little guidance from his hands. He hurried to lady Arctura's chamber, and the spot where the press stood, ready with one shove to send it yards out of his way. There was no press there!--nothing but a smooth, cold, damp wall! His heart sank within him. Was he in a terrible dream? No, no! he had but made a mistake--had trusted too much to his knowledge of the house, and was not where he thought he was! He struck a light. Alas! alas! he was where he had intended! It was her room! There was the wardrobe, but nearer the door!

Where it had stood was no recess!--nothing but a great patch of fresh plaster! It was no dream, but a true horror!

Instinctively clutching his skene dhu, he darted to the great stair. It must have been the voice of Arctura he had heard! She was walled up in the chapel!

Down the stair, with swift noiseless foot he sped, and stopped at the door of the half-way room. It was locked!

There was but one way left! To the foot of the stair he shot. Good heavens! if that way also should have been known to the earl! He crept through the little door underneath the stair, feeling with his hands ere his body was through: the arch was open! In an instant he was in the crypt.

But now to get up through the opening into the pa.s.sage above--stopped with a heavy slab! He sprang at the steep slope of the window-sill, but there was no hold, and as often as he sprang he slipped down again. He tried and tried until he was worn out and almost in despair. She might be dying! he was close to her! he could not reach her! He stood still for a moment to think. To his mind came the word, "He that believeth shall not make haste." He thought with himself, "G.o.d cannot help men with wisdom when their minds are in too great a tumult to hear what he says!" He tried to lift up his heart and make a silence in his soul.

As he stood he seemed to see, through the dark, the gloomy place as it first appeared when he threw in the lighted letter. All at once he started from his quiescence, dropped on his hands and knees, and crawled until he found the flat stone like a gravestone. Out came his knife, and he dug away the earth at one end, until he could get both hands under it. Then he heaved it from the floor, and s.h.i.+fting it along, got it under the opening in the wall.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

A MORAL FUNGUS.

Spiritual insanity, cupidity, cruelty, and possibly immediate demoniacal temptation had long been working in and on a mind that had now ceased almost to distinguish between the real and the unreal. Every man who bends the energies of an immortal spirit to further the ends and objects of his lower being, fails so to distinguish; but with the earl the blindness had wrought outward as well as inwardly, so that he was even unable, during considerable portions of his life, to tell whether things took place outside or inside him. Nor did this trouble him--he was past caring. He would argue that what equally affected him had an equal right to be by him regarded as existent. He paid no heed to the different natures of the two kinds of existence, their different laws, and the different demands they made upon the two consciousnesses; he had in fact, by a long course of disobedience growing to utter disuse of conscience, arrived nearly at non-individuality. In regard to what was outside him he was but a mirror, in regard to what was inside him a mere vessel of imperfectly interacting forces. And now his capacities and incapacities together had culminated in a hideous plot, in which it would be hard to say whether the folly, the crime, or the cunning predominated: he had made up his mind that, if the daughter of his brother refused to wed her cousin, and so carry out what he a.s.serted to have been the declared wish of her father, she should go after her father, and leave her property to the next heir, so that if not in one way then in another the law of nature might be fulfilled, and t.i.tle and property united without the intervention of a marriage.

As to any evil that therein might be imagined to befall his niece, he quoted the words of Hamlet--"Since no man has ought of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?"--she would be no worse than she must have been when the few years of her natural pilgrimage were of necessity over: the difference to her was not worth thinking of beside the difference to the family! At the same time perhaps a scare might serve, and she would consent to marry Forgue to escape a frightful end!

The moment Donal was gone, he sent Forgue to London, and set himself to overcome the distrust of him which he could not but see had for some time been growing in her. With the sweet prejudices of a loving nature to a.s.sist him, he soon prevailed so far that, without much entreaty, she consented to accompany him to London--for a month or so, he said, while Davie was gone. The proposal had charms for her: she had been there with her father when a mere child, and never since. She wrote to Donal to let him know: how it was that her letter never reached him, it is hardly needful to inquire.

The earl, in order, he said, to show his recognition of her sweet compliance, made arrangements for posting it all the way. He would take her by the road he used to travel himself when he was a young man: she should judge whether more had not been lost than gained by rapidity!

Whatever shortened any natural process, he said, simply shortened life itself. Simmons should go before, and find a suitable place for them!

They were hardly gone when Mrs. Brookes received a letter pretendedly from the clergyman of the parish, in a remote part of the south, where her mother, now a very old woman, lived, saying she was at the point of death, and could not die in peace without seeing her daughter. She went at once.

The scheme was a madman's, excellently contrived for the instant object, but with no outlook for immediately resulting perils.

After the first night on the road, he turned across country, and a little towards home; after the next night, he drove straight back, but as it was by a different road, Arctura suspected nothing. When they came within a few hours of the castle, they stopped at a little inn for tea; there he contrived to give her a certain dose. At the next place where they stopped, he represented her as his daughter taken suddenly ill: he must go straight home with her, however late they might be.

Giving an imaginary name to their destination, and keeping on the last post-boy who knew nothing of the country, he directed him so as completely to bewilder him, with the result that he set them down at the castle supposing it a different place, and in a different part of the country. The thing was after the earl's own heart; he delighted in making a fool of a fellow-mortal. He sent him away so as not to enter the town: it was of importance his return should not be known.

It is a marvel he could effect what followed; but he had the remnants of great strength, and when under influences he knew too well how to manage, was for the time almost as powerful as ever: he got his victim to his room on the stair, and thence through the oak door.

CHAPTER LXXV.

THE PORCH OF HADES.

When Arctura woke from her unnatural sleep, she lay a while without thought, then began to localize herself. The last place she recalled was the inn where they had tea: she must have been there taken ill, she thought, and was now in a room of the same. It was quite dark: they might have left a light by her! She lay comfortably enough, but had a suspicion that the place was not over clean, and was glad to find herself not undrest. She turned on her side: something pulled her by the wrist. She must have a bracelet on, and it was entangled in the coverlet! She tried to unclasp it, but could not: which of her bracelets could it be? There was something attached to it!--a chain--a thick chain! How odd! What could it mean? She lay quiet, slowly waking to fuller consciousness.--Was there not a strange air, a dull odour in the room? Undefined as it was, she had smelt it before, and not long since!--It was the smell of the lost chapel!--But that was at home in the castle! she had left it two days before! Was she going out of her mind?

The dew of agony burst from her forehead. She would have started up, but was pulled hard by the wrist! She cried on G.o.d.--Yes, she was lying on the very spot where that heap of woman-dust had lain! she was manacled with the same ring from which that woman's arm had wasted--the decay of centuries her slow redeemer! Her being recoiled so wildly from the horror, that for a moment she seemed on the edge of madness. But madness is not the sole refuge from terror! Where the door of the spirit has once been opened wide to G.o.d, there is he, the present help in time of trouble! With him in the house, it is not only that we need fear nothing, but that is there which in its own being and nature casts out fear. G.o.d and fear cannot be together. It is a G.o.d far off that causes fear. "In thy presence is fulness of joy." Such a sense of absolute helplessness overwhelmed Arctura that she felt awake in her an endless claim upon the protection of her original, the source of her being. And what sooner would any father have of his children than action on such claim! G.o.d is always calling us as his children, and when we call him as our father, then, and not till then, does he begin to be satisfied. And with that there fell upon Arctura a kind of sleep, which yet was not sleep; it was a repose such as perhaps is the sleep of a spirit.

Again the external began to intrude. She pictured to herself what the darkness was hiding. Her feelings when first she came down into the place returned on her memory. The tide of terror began again to rise.

It rose and rose, and threatened to become monstrous. She reasoned with herself: had she not been brought in safety through its first and most dangerous inroad?--but reason could not outface terror. It was fear, the most terrible of all terrors, that she feared. Then again woke her faith: if the night hideth not from him, neither does the darkness of fear!

It began to thunder, first with a low distant muttering roll, then with a loud and near bellowing. Was it G.o.d coming to her? Some are strangely terrified at thunder; Arctura had the child's feeling that it was G.o.d that thundered: it comforted her as with the a.s.surance that G.o.d was near. As she lay and heard the great organ of the heavens, its voice seemed to grow articulate; G.o.d was calling to her, and saying, "Here I am, my child! be not afraid!"

Then she began to reason with herself that the worst that could happen to her was to lie there till she died of hunger, and that could not be so very bad! And therewith across the muttering thunder came a wail of the ghost-music. She started: had she not heard it a hundred times before, as she lay there in the dark alone? Was she only now for the first time waking up to it--she, the lady they had shut up there to die--where she had lain for ages, with every now and then that sound of the angels singing, far above her in the blue sky?

She was beginning to wander. She reasoned with herself, and dismissed the fancy; but it came and came again, mingled with real memories, mostly of the roof, and Donal.

By and by she fell asleep, and woke in a terror which seemed to have been growing in her sleep. She sat up, and stared into the dark. >From where stood the altar, seemed to rise and approach her a form of deeper darkness. She heard nothing, saw nothing, but something was there. It came nearer. It was but a fancy; she knew it; but the fancy a.s.sumed to be: the moment she gave way, and acknowledged it, that moment it would have the reality it had been waiting for, and clasp her in its skeleton-arms! She cried aloud, but it only came nearer; it was about to seize her!

A sudden, divine change!--her fear was gone, and in its place a sense of absolute safety: there was nothing in all the universe to be afraid of! It was a night of June, with roses, roses everywhere! Glory be to the Father! But how was it? Had he sent her mother to think her full of roses? Why her mother? G.o.d himself is the heart of every rose that ever bloomed! She would have sung aloud for joy, but no voice came; she could not utter a sound. What a thing this would be to tell Donal Grant! This poor woman cried, and G.o.d heard her, and saved her out of all her distresses! The father had come to his child! The cry had gone from her heart into his!

If she died there, would Donal come one day and find her? No! No! She would speak to him in a dream, and beg him not to go near the place!

She would not have him see her lie like that he and she standing together had there looked upon!

With that came Donal's voice, floated and rolled in music and thunder.

It came from far away; she did not know whether she fancied or really heard it. She would have responded with a great cry, but her voice vanished in her throat. Her joy was such that she remembered nothing more.

CHAPTER LXXVI.