A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread Page 8

  I rose, determined to return to Colmer at a snail’s pace. If I walked speedily I should reach the house before the time Phyllida had appointed: I might disturb her in the act of conquering her last few remembrances, and cause the past to rise drossily. My sadness left me, and I grew happy once more. As I loitered I drew one by one from my vest the withered poppies, and detaching the petals, let one fall at every step, giving to each flower a verse from some ancient ballad.

  When all my poppies were destroyed I bethought myself of an image from Spenser’s ‘Ruines of Time,’ and laughed again and again. It was of the ivory harp with golden strings that the poet saw borne up to heaven. Ah, my joy—mine!—was assured! No malicious intervention could hold me from it now. In one short hour, in one short hour!’

  Twilight deepened into evening as I walked; soon large drops of rain began to fall, and the parched vegetation cried aloud with joy, as its fibres relaxed and its thirsty flowers drank their fill. There was a numbness in the air that foretold a thunderstorm before morning.

  Thrice a light blanched the heavens, showing me the distant avenue that led to the garden. The lime-trees were in full bloom, and the heavy shower beat the flowers to the ground. Scarce had my foot touched the velvety grass ere from the distance came the sound of voices in impetuous discussion. My wonder was great at any human creature’s daring to walk in these weird precincts after nightfall.

  The voices were those of a man and a woman; the one commanding, the other pleading earnestly. They were coming rapidly towards me. Indeed I could already distinguish something black moving beneath the limes.

  A flood of bombast rushed to my lips. The desire for something discordant almost overpowered me, forcing me to rack my brain for some bizarre sarcasm wherewith to distract the love-making of these country sweethearts. Soon their speech resolved into distinct words; it seemed as if they lingered.

  ‘Nay, leave me! Take me no further! Was ever woman so tortured?’ one cried loudly.

  ‘Was ever woman so false? was ever woman so unworthy?’ the other replied.

  ‘But I swear, Cuthbert, I will not come. Oh, let me return! I love him—this very moment he is waiting for me. My darling Rupert, my husband. I will return.’

  At these words I felt my stature lengthen: then sight, speech, everything left me save the quickened sense of hearing.

  ‘Do you remember the old promises? Fool! to think of contending against my influence—to dream of setting that dullard’s power against mine! You are mine, planned so by God, joined to my soul in implacable union. Come, Phyllida.’

  Silence followed.

  Phyllida was false and I was wifeless. I leaned against the trunk of a lime, waiting for the last sight of the woman who had betrayed me so pitifully.

  The footsteps approached nearer, and ere long a man passed. He was more fragile than I, and his long form was shrouded in a black cloak. His arms waved from side to side in magnetic rhythm, and his white face and hands shone like those of a corpse. I watched him, spellbound; and when he had gone a little way I heard the voices begin anew. It was illusion—magic—anything but the terrible thing I had feared. The relief made me fall, face downwards, to the sodden grass.

  In less than half an hour I entered Colmer Hall. Hester, Phyllida’s old nurse, came to me at the foot of the staircase, and laid her hand upon my shoulder.

  ‘Madam—nay, pardon me—my lady, bade me say that she would be in the morning-parlour. She has waited long.’

  I turned the handle of the door, and was confronted by darkness. Yet was I not appalled, for I could understand Phyllida’s delicacy in wishing that our first meeting should be where her blushes might go unseen. I stole to the window, and sat on the praying-stool, with my eyes travelling through the gloom to her place. For the fourth time the sky blanched, and I saw her beside the table, resting her head on her hands, with her hair spread over shoulders and bosom in rippling swathes.

  At last, wounded by her indifference, I spoke, and destroyed a delightful hope that she would bid me welcome.

  ‘Phyllida!’

  The old silence. I knew that she must be in one of those wonderful depths of feeling that she sometimes sounded, and felt proud of a woman of such strange charms. But what had swayed in the mistress troubled in the wife.

  ‘Are we not in perfect sympathy?’ I cried.

  Afraid of I know not what (the air in the room seemed turbulently struggling to pass through the closed windows), I opened the door and took one of the candles from a sconce in the hall.

  ‘Phyllida! Phyllida! Phyllida!’ I whispered, holding the light above my head. ‘I am here, sweet one, look at me!’

  Still silence. Fiercely, perhaps, but still lovingly, I placed my hands beneath her forehead, to make her look upwards. At my touch a bundle of papers fell from her breast, and lay scattered on the floor. The clay bust I had seen on my marriage eve stood near: I thrust out my right hand angrily and broke it into fragments. The past was done with now! I had conquered! My victory made me exultant. Phyllida’s gossamer bonds were torn away for ever.

  As I drew back the hair and let the candlelight fall softly on my wife’s face she sighed heavily.

  ‘Dead love has slain my passion,’ she said.

  The Return

  Five minutes ago I drew the window curtain aside and let the mellow sunset light contend with the glare from the girandoles. Below lay the orchard of Vernon Garth, rich in heavily flowered fruit-trees—yonder a medlar, here a pear, next a quince. As my eyes, unaccustomed to the day, blinked rapidly, the recollection came of a scene forty-five years past, and once more beneath the oldest tree stood the girl I loved, mischievously plucking yarrow, and, despite its evil omen, twining the snowy clusters in her black hair. Again her coquettish words rang in my ears: ‘Make me thy lady! Make me the richest woman in England, and I promise thee, Brian, we shall be the happiest of God’s creatures.’ And I remembered how the mad thirst for gold filled me: how I trusted in her fidelity, and without reasoning or even telling her that I would conquer fortune for her sake, I kissed her sadly and passed into the world. Then followed a complete silence until the Star of Europe, the greatest diamond discovered in modern times, lay in my hand,—a rough unpolished stone not unlike the lumps of spar I had often seen lying on the sandy lanes of my native county. This should be Rose’s own, and all the others that clanked so melodiously in their leather bulse should go towards fulfilling her ambition. Rich and happy I should be soon, and should I not marry an untitled gentlewoman, sweet in her prime? The twenty years’ interval of work and sleep was like a fading dream, for I was going home. The knowledge thrilled me so that my nerves were strung tight as iron ropes and I laughed like a young boy. And it was all because my home was to be in Rose Pascal’s arms.

  I crossed the sea and posted straight for Halkton village. The old hostelry was crowded. Jane Hopgarth, whom I remembered a ruddy-faced child, stood on the box-edged terrace, courtesying in matronly fashion to the departing mail-coach. A change in the sign-board drew my eye: the white lilies had been painted over with a mitre, and the name changed from the Pascal Arms to the Lord Bishop. Angrily aghast at this disloyalty, I cross-questioned the ostlers, who hurried to and fro, but failing to obtain any coherent reply I was fain to content myself with a mental denunciation of the times.

  At last I saw Bow-Legged Jeffries, now bent double with age, sunning himself at his favourite place, the side of the horse-trough. As of old he was chewing a straw. No sign of recognition came over his face as he gazed at me, and I was shocked, because I wished to impart some of my gladness to a fellow-creature. I went to him, and after trying in vain to make him speak, held forth a gold coin. He rose instantly, grasped it with palsied fingers, and, muttering that the hounds were starting, hurried from my presence. Feeling half sad I crossed to the churchyard and gazed through the grated window of the Pascal burial chapel at the recumbent and undisturbed effigies of Geoffrey Pascal, gentleman, of Bretton Hall; and Margot Maltrevor his wife,
with their quaint epitaph about a perfect marriage enduring for ever. Then, after noting the rankness of the docks and nettles, I crossed the worn stile and with footsteps surprising fleet passed towards the stretch of moorland at whose further end stands Bretton Hall.

  Twilight had fallen ere I reached the cottage at the entrance of the park. This was in a ruinous condition: here and there sheaves in the thatched roof had parted and formed crevices through which smoke filtered. Some of the tiny windows had been walled up, and even where the glass remained snake-like ivy hindered any light from falling into their thick recesses.

  The door stood open, although the evening was chill. As I approached, the heavy autumnal dew shook down from the firs and fell upon my shoulders. A bat, swooping in an undulation, struck between my eyes and fell to the grass, moaning querulously. I entered. A withered woman sat beside the peat fire. She held a pair of steel knitting-needles which she moved without cessation. There was no thread upon them, and when they clicked her lips twitched as if she had counted. Some time passed before I recognised Rose’s foster-mother, Elizabeth Carless. The russet colour of her cheeks had faded and left a sickly grey: those sunken, dimmed eyes were utterly unlike the bright black orbs that had danced so mirthfully. Her stature, too, had shrunk. I was struck with wonder. Elizabeth could not be more than fifty-six years old. I had been away twenty years; Rose was fifteen when I left her, and I had heard Elizabeth say that she was only twenty-one at the time of her darling’s weaning. But what a change! She had such an air of weary grief that my heart grew sick.

  Advancing to her side I touched her arm. She turned, but neither spoke nor seemed aware of my presence. Soon, however, she rose, and helping herself along by grasping the scanty furniture, tottered to a window and peered out. Her right hand crept to her throat; she untied the string of her gown and took from her bosom a pomander set in a battered silver case. I cried out; Rose had loved that toy in her childhood; thousands of times had we played ball with it. . . . Elizabeth held it to her mouth and mumbled it, as if it were a baby’s hand. Maddened with impatience, I caught her shoulder and roughly bade her say where I should find Rose. But something awoke in her eyes, and she shrank away to the other side of the house-place: I followed; she cowered on the floor, looking at me with a strange horror. Her lips began to move, but they made no sound. Only when I crossed to the threshold did she rise; and then her head moved wildly from side to side, and her hands pressed close to her breast, as if the pain there were too great to endure.

  I ran from the place, not daring to look back. In a few minutes I reached the balustraded wall of the Hall garden. The vegetation there was wonderfully luxuriant. As of old, the great blue and white Canterbury bells grew thickly, and those curious flowers to which tradition has given the name of ‘Marie’s Heart’ still spread their creamy tendrils and blood-coloured bloom on every hand. But ‘Pascal’s Dribble,’ the tiny spring whose water pulsed so fiercely as it emerged from the earth, had long since burst its bounds, and converted the winter garden into a swamp, where a miniature forest of queen-of-the-meadow filled the air with melancholy sweetness. The house looked as if no careful hand had touched it for years. The elements had played havoc with its oriels, and many of the latticed frames hung on single hinges. The curtain of the blue parlour hung outside, draggled and faded, and half hidden by a thick growth of bindweed.

  With an almost savage force I raised my arm high above my head and brought my fist down upon the central panel of the door. There was no need for such violence, for the decayed-fastenings made no resistance, and some of the rotten boards fell to the ground. As I entered the hall and saw the ancient furniture, once so fondly kept, now mildewed and crumbling to dust, quick sobs burst from my throat. Rose’s spinet stood beside the door of the withdrawing-room. How many carols had we sung to its music! As I passed my foot struck one of the legs and the rickety structure groaned as if it were coming to pieces. I thrust out my hand to steady it, but at my touch the velvet covering of the lid came off and the tiny gilt ornaments rattled downwards. The moon was just rising and only half her disc was visible over the distant edge of the Hell Garden. The light in the room was very uncertain, yet I could see that the keys of the instrument were stained brown, and bound together with thick cobwebs.

  Whilst I stood beside it I felt an overpowering desire to play a country ballad with an over-word of ‘Willow browbound.’ The words in strict accordance with the melody are merry and sad by turns: at one time filled with light happiness, at another bitter as the voice of one bereaved for ever of joy. So I cleared off the spiders and began to strike the keys with my forefinger. Many were dumb, and when I struck them gave forth no sound save a peculiar sigh; but still the melody rhythmed as distinctly as if a low voice crooned it out of the darkness. Wearied with the bitterness, I turned away.

  By now the full moonlight pierced the window and quivered on the floor. As I gazed on the tremulous pattern it changed into quaint devices of hearts, daggers, rings, and a thousand tokens more. All suddenly another object glided amongst them so quickly that I wondered whether my eyes had been at fault,—a tiny satin shoe, stained crimson across the lappets. A revulsion of feeling came to my soul and drove away all my fear. I had seen that selfsame shoe white and unsoiled twenty years before, when vain, vain Rose danced amongst her reapers at the harvest-home. And my voice cried out in ecstasy, ‘Rose, heart of mine! Delight of all the world’s delights!’

  She stood before me, wondering, amazed. Alas, so changed! The red-and-yellow silk shawl still covered her shoulders; her hair still hung in those eldritch curls. But the beautiful face had grown wan and tired, and across the forehead lines were drawn like silver threads. She threw her arms round my neck and, pressing her bosom heavily on mine, sobbed so piteously that I grew afraid for her, and drew back the long masses of hair which had fallen forward, and kissed again and again those lips that were too lovely for simile. Never came a word of chiding from them. ‘Love,’ she said, when she had regained her breath, ‘the past struggle was sharp and torturing—the future struggle will be crueller still. What a great love yours was, to wait and trust for so long! Would that mine had been as powerful! Poor, weak heart that could not endure!’

  The tones of a wild fear throbbed through all her speech, strongly, yet with insufficient power to prevent her feeling the tenderness of those moments. Often, timorously raising her head from my shoulder, she looked about and then turned with a soft, inarticulate, and glad murmur to hide her face on my bosom. I spoke fervently; told of the years spent away from her; how, when working in the diamond-fields she had ever been present in my fancy; how at night her name had fallen from my lips in my only prayer; how I had dreamed of her amongst the greatest in the land,—the richest, and, I dare swear, the loveliest woman in the world. I grew warmer still: all the gladness which had been constrained for so long now burst wildly from my lips: a myriad of rich ideas resolved into words, which, being spoken, wove one long and delicious fit of passion. As we stood together, the moon brightened and filled the chamber with a light like the day’s. The ridges of the surrounding moorland stood out in sharp relief.

  Rose drank in my declarations thirstily, but soon interrupted me with a heavy sigh. ‘Come away,’ she said softly. ‘I no longer live in this house. You must stay with me to-night. This place is so wretched now; for time, that in you and me has only strengthened love, has wrought much ruin here.’

  Half leaning on me, she led me from the precincts of Bretton Hall. We walked in silence over the waste that crowns the valley of the Whitelands and, being near the verge of the rocks, saw the great pinewood sloping downwards, lighted near us by the moon, but soon lost in density. Along the mysterious line where the light changed into gloom, intricate shadows of withered summer bracken struck and receded in a mimic battle. Before us lay the Priests’ Cliff. The moon was veiled by a grove of elms, whose ever-swaying branches alternately increased and lessened her brightness. This was a place of notoriety—a veritable Golgo
tha—a haunt fit only for demons. Murder and theft had been punished here; and to this day fireside stories are told of evil women dancing round that Druids’ circle, carrying hearts plucked from gibbeted bodies.

  ‘Rose,’ I whispered, ‘why have you brought me here?’

  She made no reply, but pressed her head more closely to my shoulder. Scarce had my lips closed ere a sound like the hiss of a half-strangled snake vibrated amongst the trees. It grew louder and louder. A monstrous shadow hovered above.

  Rose from my bosom murmured. ‘Love is strong as Death! Love is strong as Death!’

  I locked her in my arms, so tightly that she grew breathless. ‘Hold me,’ she panted. ‘You are strong.’

  A cold hand touched our foreheads so that, benumbed, we sank together to the ground, to fall instantly into a dreamless slumber.

  When I awoke the clear grey light of the early morning had spread over the country. Beyond the Hell Garden the sun was just bursting through the clouds, and had already spread a long golden haze along the horizon. The babbling of the streamlet that runs down to Halkton was so distinct that it seemed almost at my side. How sweetly the wild thyme smelt! Filled with the tender recollections of the night, without turning, I called Rose Pascal from her sleep.

  ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, waken! waken! waken! See how glad the world looks—see the omens of a happy future.’

  No answer came. I sat up, and looking round me saw that I was alone. A square stone lay near. When the sun was high I crept to read the inscription carved thereon:—‘Here, at four cross-paths, lieth, with a stake through the bosom, the body of Rose Pascal, who in her sixteenth year wilfully cast away the life God gave.’

  The Holocaust

  My husband and master the bishop being called to Court, I journeyed yesterday to Broadlow. This morning my cousin’s second lady vehemently desired me to tell all I know of her who once held the place she adorns so brightly. We were in the still room, and the bantlings played on the floor, pulling the buckles of their mother’s shoes and croodling like culvers. The request was over-sudden; to gain time, I opened the green lattice, and looking out to the herb garden, said that little Bab herself had mounted by Neptune in the empty tank, and that in the sun-haze her countenance bore a plain likeness to one dead. And the row of clarifying waters in the window span round and round, and I swooned in madam’s arms. But she consoled me, and now to her will, I write the following history, in trust that my lord may never be permitted to read. The fustian preface I will omit; ‘tis but a record, unprofitable to the would-be adventurer, of life among the Barbary Rovers, of voyagers to Feginny, of the saving of a ship’s crew. Its six volumes are in the library, bound in pigskin, and revered by all. Of my cousin’s three years in Bologna – years devoted to the joys of Italian gallantry – little is known, for on that score he hath ever been silent.