Part 5

"Of the south-west side of the greene court is a large bowling greene, with fower mounted walks about it, all walled about with a batteled wall, and sett with all sorts of fruit; and out of it into the feildes there are large walks under many tall elmes orderly planted."

Then follows a description of the orchards and gardens; the servants' offices, brewhouse, bakehouse, dairy, pigeon-houses, and corn-mill; the river and its abundance of fish; the warren, the coppices, the walks; ending thus--

"And all the country north of the house, open champaign, sandy feildes, very dry and pleasant for all kindes of recreation, huntinge, and hawkinge, and profitable for tillage.... The house hath a large prospect east, south, and west, over a very large and pleasant vale ... is seated from the good markett towns of Sherton Abbas three miles, and Ivel a mile, that plentifully yield all manner of provision; and within twelve miles of the south sea."

It was on the grass before this seductive and picturesque structure that the sailor stood at gaze under the elms in the dim dawn of Sunday morning, and saw to his surprise his sister's lover and horse vanish within the court of the building.

Perplexed and weary, Roger slowly retreated, more than ever convinced that something was wrong in his sister's position. He crossed the bowling green to the avenue of elms, and, bent on further research, was about to climb into one of these, when, looking below, he saw a hole large enough to allow a man to creep to the hollow interior. Here Roger ensconced himself, and having eaten a crust of bread which he had hastily thrust into his pocket at the inn, he fell asleep upon the stratum of broken touchwood that formed the floor of the hollow.

He slept soundly and long, and was awakened by the sound of a bell. On peering from the hole he found the time had advanced to full day; the sun was shining brightly. The bell was that of the "faire chappell" on the green outside the gatehouse, and it was calling to matins. Presently the priest crossed the green to a little side-door in the chancel, and then from the gateway of the mansion emerged the household, the tall man whom Roger had seen with his sister on the previous night, on his arm being a portly dame, and, running beside the pair, two little girls and a boy. These all entered the chapel, and the bell having ceased and the environs become clear, the sailor crept out from his hiding.

He sauntered towards the chapel, the opening words of the service being audible within. While standing by the porch he saw a belated servitor approaching from the kitchen-court to attend the service also. Roger carelessly accosted him, and asked, as an idle wanderer, the name of the family he had just seen cross over from the mansion.

"Od zounds! if ye modden be a stranger here in very truth, goodman. That war Sir John and his dame, and his children Elizabeth, Mary, and John."

"I be from foreign parts. Sir John what d'ye call'n?"

"Master John Horseleigh, Knight, who had a'most as much lond by inheritance of his mother as a had by his father, and likewise some by his wife. Why, baint his arms dree goolden horses' heads, and idden his lady the daughter of Master Richard Phelipson of Montislope, in Nether Wessex, known to us all?"

"It mid be so, and yet it mid not. However, th' 'lt miss thy prayers for such an honest knight's welfare, and I have to traipse seaward many miles."

He went onward, and, as he walked, continued saying to himself, "Now to that poor wronged fool Edy. The fond thing! I thought it; 'twas too quick--she was ever amorous. What's to become of her? God wot! How be I going to face her with the news, and how be I to hold it from her? To bring this disgrace on my father's honored name, a double-tongued knave!" He turned and shook his fist at the chapel and all in it, and resumed his way.

Perhaps it was owing to the perplexity of his mind that, instead of returning by the direct road towards his sister's obscure lodging in the next county, he followed the highway to Casterbridge, some fifteen miles off, where he remained drinking hard all that afternoon and evening, and where he lay that and two or three succeeding nights, wandering thence along the Anglebury road to some village that way, and lying the Friday night after at his native place of Havenpool. The sight of the familiar objects there seems to have stirred him anew to action, and the next morning he was observed pursuing the way to Oozewood that he had followed on the Saturday previous, reckoning, no doubt, that Saturday night would, as before, be a time for finding Sir John with his sister again.

He delayed to reach the place till just before sunset. His sister was walking in the meadows at the foot of the garden, with a nursemaid who carried the baby, and she looked up pensively when he approached. Anxiety as to her position had already told upon her once rosy cheeks and lucid eyes. But concern for herself and child was displaced for the moment by her regard of Roger's worn and haggard face.

"Why, you are sick, Roger! You are tired! Where have you been these many days? Why not keep me company a bit? My husband is much away. And we have hardly spoke at all of dear father and of your voyage to the New Land. Why did you go away so suddenly? There is a spare chamber at my lodging."

"Come indoors," he said. "We'll talk now--talk a good deal. As for him (nodding to the child), better heave him into the river; better for him and you!"

She forced a laugh, as if she tried to see a good joke in the remark, and they went silently indoors.

"A miserable hole!" said Roger, looking around the room.

"Nay, but 'tis very pretty!"

"Not after what I've seen. Did he marry 'ee at church in orderly fashion?"

"He did sure--at our church at Havenpool."

"But in a privy way?"

"Ay, because of his friends--it was at night time."

"Ede, ye fond one, for all that he's not thy husband! Th' 'rt not his wife, and the child is a bastard. He hath a wife and children of his own rank, and bearing his name; and that's Sir John Horseleigh of Clyfton Horseleigh, and not plain Jack, as you think him, and your lawful husband. The sacrament of marriage is no safeguard now-a-days. The king's new-made headship of the Church hath led men to practise these tricks lightly."

She had turned white. "That's not true, Roger!" she said. "You are in liquor, my brother, and you know not what you say. Your seafaring years have taught 'ee bad things."

"Edith--I've seen them; wife and family--all. How canst----"

They were sitting in the gathered darkness, and at that moment steps were heard without. "Go out this way," she said. "It is my husband. He must not see thee in this mood. Get away till to-morrow, Roger, as you care for me."

She pushed her brother through a door leading to the back stairs, and almost as soon as it was closed her visitor entered. Roger, however, did not retreat down the stairs; he stood and looked through the bobbin-hole. If the visitor turned out to be Sir John, he had determined to confront him.

It was the knight. She had struck a light on his entry, and he kissed the child, and took Edith tenderly by the shoulders, looking into her face.

"Something's gone awry wi' my dear," he said. "What is it? What's the matter?"

"Oh, Jack!" she cried. "I have heard such a fearsome rumor--what doth it mean? He who told me is my best friend. He must be deceived! But who deceived him, and why? Jack, I was just told that you had a wife living when you married me, and have her still!"

"A wife? H'm."

"Yes, and children. Say no, say no!"

"My God! I have no lawful wife but you; and as for children, many or few, they are all bastards, save this one alone!"

"And that you be Sir John Horseleigh of Clyfton?"

"I mid be. I have never said so to 'ee."

"But Sir John is known to have a lady, and issue of her!"

The knight looked down. "How did thy mind get filled with such as this?" he asked.

"One of my kindred came."

"A traitor! Why should he mar our life? Ah! you said you had a brother at sea--where is he now?"

"_Here!_" said a stern voice behind him. And, flinging open the door, Roger faced the intruder. "Liar," he said, "to call thyself her husband!"

Sir John fired up, and made a rush at the sailor, who seized him by the collar, and in the wrestle they both fell, Roger under. But in a few seconds he contrived to extricate his right arm, and drawing from his belt a knife which he wore attached to a cord round his neck, he opened it with his teeth, and struck it into the breast of Sir John stretched above him. Edith had during these moments run into the next room to place the child in safety, and when she came back the knight was relaxing his hold on Roger's throat. He rolled over upon his back and groaned.

The only witness of the scene, save the three concerned, was the nursemaid, who had brought in the child on its father's arrival. She stated afterwards that nobody suspected Sir John had received his death wound; yet it was so, though he did not die for a long while, meaning thereby an hour or two; that Mistress Edith continually endeavored to staunch the blood, calling her brother Roger a wretch, and ordering him to get himself gone; on which order he acted, after a gloomy pause, by opening the window, and letting himself down by the sill to the ground.

It was then that Sir John, in difficult accents, made his dying declaration to the nurse and Edith, and, later, the apothecary, which was to this purport: that the Dame Horseleigh who passed as his wife at Clyfton, and who had borne him three children, was in truth and deed, though unconsciously, the wife of another man. Sir John had married her several years before, in the face of the whole county, as the widow of one Decimus Strong, who had disappeared shortly after her union with him, having adventured to the North to join the revolt of the Nobles, and on that revolt being quelled retreated across the sea. Two years ago, having discovered the man to be still living in France, and not wishing to disturb the mind and happiness of her who believed herself his wife, yet wishing for legitimate issue, Sir John had informed the king of the facts, who had encouraged him to wed honestly, though secretly, the young merchant's widow at Havenpool; she being, therefore, his lawful wife, and she only. That to avoid all scandal and hubbub he had purposed to let things remain as they were till fair opportunity should arise of making the true case known with least pain to all parties concerned; but that, having been thus suspected and attacked by his own brother-in-law, his zest for such schemes and for all things had died out in him, and he only wished to commend his soul to God.

That night, while the owls were hooting from the forest that encircled the sleeping townlet, and the South-Avon was gurgling through the wooden piles of the bridge, Sir John died there in the arms of his wife. She concealed nothing of the cause of her husband's death save the subject of the quarrel, which she felt it would be premature to announce just then, and until proof of her status should be forthcoming. But before a month had passed, it happened, to her inexpressible sorrow, that the child of this clandestine union fell sick and died. From that hour all interest in the name and fame of the Horseleighs forsook the younger of the twain who called themselves wives of Sir John, and, being careless about her own fame, she took no steps to assert her claims, her legal position having, indeed, grown hateful to her in her horror at the tragedy. And Sir William Byrt, the curate who had married her to her husband, being an old man and feeble, was not disinclined to leave the embers unstirred of such a fiery matter as this, and to assist her in letting established things stand. Therefore, Edith retired with the nurse, her only companion and friend, to her native town, where she lived in absolute obscurity till her death at no great age. Her brother was never seen again in England.

A strangely corroborative sequel to the story remains to be told. Shortly after the death of Sir John Horseleigh, a soldier of fortune returned from the Continent, called on Dame Horseleigh the fictitious, living in widowed state at Clyfton Horseleigh, and, after a singularly brief courtship, married her. The tradition at Havenpool and elsewhere has ever been that this man was already her husband, Decimus Strong, who re-married her for appearance's sake only.

The illegitimate son of this lady by Sir John succeeded to the estates and honors, and his son after him, there being nobody alert to investigate their pretensions. Little difference would it have made to the present generation, however, had there been such a one, for the family in all its branches, lawful and unlawful, has been extinct these many score years, the last representative but one being killed at the siege of Sherton Castle, while attacking in the service of the Parliament, and the other being outlawed later in the same century for a debt of ten pounds, and dying in the county jail. The mansion house and its appurtenances were, as I have previously stated, destroyed, excepting one small wing which now forms part of a farmhouse, and is visible as you pass along the railway from Casterbridge to Ivel. The outline of the old bowling-green is also distinctly to be seen.

This, then, is the reason why the only lawful marriage of Sir John, as recorded in the obscure register at Havenpool, does not appear in the pedigree of the house of Horseleigh.

[_"THE EDGE OF THE FUTURE" SERIES._]

THE RACE TO THE NORTH POLE.

THE EXPEDITIONS OF NANSEN AND JACKSON.

BY HUGH ROBERT MILL, D.SC., Author of "The Realm of Nature."

INTRODUCTION.

Arctic enthusiasm is an intermittent fever, returning in almost epidemic form after intervals of normal indifference. Twelve years ago there was a wide-spread outbreak, but for the last ten years the symptoms have never been so severe as to result in a great expedition. If all goes well this summer there will be a renewed paroxysm; no less than three new ventures northward being sent out by different routes to converge on the pole.

It is refreshing, in this prosaic time, to recognize the power of pure sentiment in the quest for glory. Polar research is a survival, or rather an evolution, of knight-errantry, and our Childe Rolands challenge the "Dark Tower of the North" as dauntlessly as ever their forbears wound slug-horn at gate of enchanted castle. The "woe of years" invests the quest with elements which redeem failure from disgrace; but whoever succeeds in overcoming the difficulties that have baffled all the "lost adventurers" will make the world ring with his fame as it never rang before. We commonplace human beings are as quick to see and prompt to appreciate heroic daring, perseverance, and valor as ever were the dames of mythic Camelot; and the race for the pole will be watched by the world with generous sympathy.

Incidentally the fresh Arctic journeys must secure much scientific information, but that aspect of them appeals to the few. It is as a display of the grandest powers of man in conflict with the tyranny of his surroundings that Arctic travel appeals directly to the heart. Since McClure, in 1850, forced the north-west passage from Bering Strait to Baffin Bay, and Nordenskjold, in 1878, squeezed the "Vega" through, between ice and land, from the North Cape to the Pacific, the futility of the golden dreams of the greedy old merchants who tried to reach the wealth of the Orient by short cuts through the ice has been demonstrated. Although no money is likely to be made out of the Arctic, we want information thence which it is almost impossible to get; and the almost impossible is dear to every valiant heart.

We know a good deal about the state of matters near the poles, but yet not enough to let us understand all the phenomena of our own lands. In this respect, however, the South Pole is the most promising field, for its surroundings probably conceal the mainspring of the great system of winds which do the work of the air on every land and sea. Dr. Nansen has promised to go there after returning from the North, and solving its simpler problems. The chilly distinction of being the coldest part of the earth is probably due to the northern parts of Eastern Siberia, and not to the North Pole. The "magnetic pole," where the needle hangs vertically, has been found in the Arctic archipelago north of America, and in many ways scientific observations there are worth more than at the North Pole itself.

We know that, if attained, the North Pole would probably be like any other part of the Arctic regions, presenting a landscape of ice and snow, perhaps with black rock showing here and there, containing fossils of a former age of heat, perhaps broken by pools or lanes of open water. The pole has no physical mark any more than the top of a spinning coin has, and the pole is not even a fixed point; like the end of the axis of the spinning coin, it moves a little to and fro on the circumference. If the geographical point were reached, the pole-star would be seen shining almost vertically overhead, describing a tiny circle around the actual zenith; and all the other stars of the northern half of the sky would appear slowly wheeling in horizontal circles, never rising, never setting, and each completing its circuit in the space of twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes. In summer the sun would appear similarly, never far above the horizon, but circling for more than half the year in a spiral, winding upward until about 25 deg. above the horizon, and winding downward again until lost to view. The periods of daylight and darkness at the poles do not last exactly six months each, as little geography books are prone to assert. Such little books ignore the atmosphere for the sake of simplicity, but the air-shell that shuts in our globe bends the rays of light, so that the sun appears before his theoretical rising, and remains in sight after his theoretical setting. At the pole, in fact, the single "half-yearly day" is a week longer than the one "half-yearly night."

At the North Pole there is only one direction--south. One could go south in as many ways as there are points on the compass card, but every one of these ways is south; east and west have vanished. The hour of the day at the pole is a paradoxical conception, for that point is the meeting place of every meridian, and the time of all holds good, so that it is always any hour one cares to mention. Unpunctuality is hence impossible--but the question grows complex, and its practical solution concerns few.

No one needs to go to the pole to discover all that makes that point different from any other point of the surface. But the whole polar regions are full of unknown things, which every Arctic explorer of the right stamp looks forward to finding. And the reward he looks forward to most is the approval of the few who understand and love knowledge for its own sake, rather than the noisy applause of the crowd who would cheer him, after all, much as they cheer a winning prize-fighter, or race-horse, or political candidate.

The difficulties that make the quest of the pole so arduous have been discovered by slow degrees. It is marvellous how soon nearly the full limits of northward attainment were reached. In 1596 Barents discovered Spitzbergen in about 78 deg. north; in 1770 Hudson reached 80 deg.; in 1827 Parry, by sledging on the ice when his ship became fast, succeeded in touching 82 deg. 45'. Since then all the enormous resources of modern science--steam, electricity, preserved foods and the experience of centuries--have only enabled forty miles of additional poleward advance to be made.

The accompanying map gives a fair idea of the form of the Arctic regions, and remembering that the circle marked 80 deg. is distant seven hundred miles from the pole, the reader can realize the distances involved. The Arctic Basin, occupied by the Arctic Sea, is ringed in by land; the northern coasts of America, Europe, and Asia, forming a roughly circular boundary broken by three well-marked channels communicating with the ocean. Bering Strait between America and Asia is the narrowest, Baffin Bay between America and Greenland is wider, branching into a number of ice-blocked sounds to the westward, and tapering off into Smith Sound in the north-east. The widest channel of the three lies between Greenland and Europe, and this is bisected just south of 80 deg. North by the island group of Spitzbergen.

The whole region is one of severe cold, and the sea is frozen for the greater part of the year, land and water becoming almost indistinguishable, but for the incessant movement and drift of the sea-ice. In summer the sea-ice breaks up into floes which may drift away southward and melt, or be driven by the wind against the shores of continents or islands, leaving lanes of open water which a shift of wind may change and close in an hour. Icebergs launched from the glaciers of the land also drift with tide, current, and wind through the more or less open water. Possibly at some times the pack may open and a clear waterway run through to the pole, and old whalers tell of many a year when they believed that a few days' steaming would carry them to the end of the world, if they could have seized the opportunity. At other times, routes traversed in safety time after time may be effectively closed for years, and all advance barred. Food in the form of seals or walrus in the open water, reindeer, musk ox, polar bears or birds on the land, may often be procured, but these sources cannot be relied upon. Advance northward may be made by water in a ship, or by dog-sledge, or on foot, over the frozen snow or ice. Each method has grave drawbacks. Advance by sea is stopped when the young ice forms in autumn, and land advance is hampered by the long Arctic night which enforces months of inaction, more trying to health and spirits than the severest exertion.

Smith Sound has been the channel by which most recent Arctic explorers have pushed north. Thus Markham reached latitude 83 deg. 20' North, in 1876, and in 1882 Lockwood got four miles farther north, coming nearer the pole than any other man. From his farthest point an express train could cover the intervening distance in ten hours, but the best ice traveller would require months, even if the way were smooth. This route has been by common consent abandoned, at least for advance by water. No high latitude has been reached from Bering Strait nor along the east coast of Greenland. For ships the most open way to the north lies to the west of Spitzbergen, as Parry found two generations ago. Neither of the two projected expeditions from Europe is, however, intended to take this route. Mr. Jackson means to advance over the ice in sledges, trusting that Franz-Josef Land stretches northward to the immediate neighborhood of the pole. Doctor Nansen also founds his plan on a theory, but his is so novel, and involves a plan of action so different from all previously attempted, that it must be considered in detail.

NANSEN AND HIS PLANS.