Chapter 17

After this I had some painful minutes. As they dragged by, an abominable curiosity took hold of me, an itch to open the door of the shed, strike a match, and have a look at the dead face I had never seen. Then came into my mind a passage in the _Republic_ which I had read a fortnight before--how that one Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus under the north wall of the city, observed some corpses lying on the ground at the place of execution; and how he fought between his desire to look and his abhorrence until at length, the fascination mastering him, he forced his eyes open with his fingers and ran up exclaiming, "Look, wretches, look! Feed your fill on the fair sight!" . . . My seat was an inverted flower-pot, and clinging to it I began to count. If the Vicar did not arrive before I reached five hundred, why, then . . .

"_Hist!_" He had fetched his compass round by the back of the garden, treading so softly that the signal sounded almost in my ear and fetched me off my flower-pot in a nervous quake. He wore a heavy pea-jacket, and, as a smell of hot varnish announced, carried a dark lantern beneath it. He had strapped this to his waist-belt to leave both hands free.

We lifted the body out and carried it across the meadow, the Vicar taking the shoulders and I the heels. And now came the real hazard of the night. If the coastguard or any belated wanderer should blunder upon us, we stood convicted of kidnapping a corpse, and (as the Vicar afterwards allowed) there was simply no explanation to be given. When we gained the orchard and pushed through the broken fence, every twig that crackled fetched my heart into my mouth: and I drew my first breath of something like ease when at length, in the withy bed at the foot of Gunner's Meadow, we laid our burden down behind the ruin of an old cob-wall and took a short rest before essaying the beach.

But that breath was hardly drawn before I laid a warning hand on the Vicar's sleeve. Someone was coming down the cliff-track: the coastguard, no doubt. He halted on the wooden footbridge, struck a match and lit his pipe. From our covert not ten yards away I saw the glow on his face as he shielded the match in the hollow of both his hands. It was the coastguard--a fellow called Simms. His match lit, I expected him to resume his walk. But no: he loitered there. For what reason, on earth? Luckily his back was towards us now: but to me, as I cowered in the plashy mud and prayed against sneezing, it seemed that the damnatory smell of the Vicar's lantern must carry for half a mile at least.

And now I heard another footstep, coming from the westward, and a loose stone kicked over the cliff. Another coastguard! The pair hailed each other, and stood on the footbridge talking together for a good three minutes.

Then to our infinite relief they parted with a "So long!" and each made slowly off by the way he had come. It was just a meeting of the patrols after all.

Another ten minutes must have gone by before we dared to lift the body again: and after a nervous while in crossing the beach we found the boat left high and dry by the ebb, and had an interminable job to get her down to the water without noise. I climbed in and took the oars: the Vicar lifted a sizeable stone on board and followed.

"The Carracks," he whispered. "That's the spot he named to me."

So I pulled out towards the Carracks, which are three points of rock lying just within the main barrier of Menawhidden, where it breaks up towards its western end into a maze of islets. While I pulled, the Vicar knelt on the bottom-boards and made fast the stone to John Emmet's feet.

Well, I need not tell the rest of our adventure at length. We reached the Carracks, and there the Vicar pulled out a short surplice from the immense inner pocket of his pea-jacket, donned it, and read the burial service in due form by the light of his dark lantern: and by the light of it, as I arranged John Emmet's shroud, I had my first and last glimpse of his face--a thin face, old and hollow, with grey side-whiskers: a face extraordinarily pallid: in other circumstances perhaps not noticeable unless it were for a look of extreme weariness which had lasted even into the rest of death.

"We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead), and the life of the world to come. . . ."

Together we balanced it on the gunwale, and with the help of the stern-board tilted it over. It dropped, into fifteen fathoms of water.

There was another funeral next day in Lansulyan churchyard--where so many have come to be buried who never in life heard the name of Lansulyan: the harvest of Menawhidden, commemorated on weather-beaten stones and, within the church, on many tablets which I used to con on Sundays during the Vicar's discourses. The life-boat men had mustered in force, and altogether there was a large attendance at the graveside. At one point a fit of coughing interrupted the Vicar in his recital of the service. I was the one auditor, however, who understood the meaning of it.

That evening we took our dessert again under the great elm. Somehow I felt certain he would choose this hour for his explanation: and in due course it came.

"I'm a truth-speaking man by habit," he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it. "But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, my conscience is easy."

He sipped his wine, and went on meditatively--

"Morals have their court of equity as well as the law of the land: and with us"--the Vicar was an old-fashioned Churchman--"that court is the private conscience. In this affair you insisted on putting your conscience into my hands. Well, I took the responsibility, and charge myself with any wrong you have committed, letting your confidence stand to your credit, as well as the service you have done for me--and another. Do you know the grey marble tablet on the south wall of the church--the _Nerbuddha_ monument?"

I nodded.

"'_Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Stanhope, C.B., and 105 Officers and Men of Her Majesty's 2-th Regiment of Foot, lost in the wreck of the Nerbuddha, East Indiaman, on Menawhidden, January 15th, 1857. . . ._' Then follows a list of the officers. Underneath, if you remember, is a separate slab to the officers and crew of the _Nerbuddha_, who behaved admirably, all the senior officers keeping order to the last and going down with the ship."

I nodded again, for I knew the inscriptions pretty well by heart.

"The wreck happened in the first winter of my incumbency here. Then, as now, I had one pupil living with me, an excellent fellow. Dick Hobart was his name, his age seventeen or thereabouts, and my business to put some polish on a neglected education before he entered the Army. His elder brother had been a college friend of mine, and indeed our families had been acquainted for years.

"Dick slept in the room you now occupy. He had a habit, which I never cured, of sitting up late over a pipe and a yellow-backed novel: and so he happened to be dressed that night when he saw the first signal of distress go up from Menawhidden. He came to my room at once and called me up: and while I tumbled out and began to dress, he ran down to Porth to give the alarm.

"The first signal, however, had been seen by the folks down there, and he found the whole place in a hubbub. Our first life-boat had arrived less than three months before; but the crew got her off briskly, and were pulling away lustily for the reef when it occurred to a few of those left behind that the sea running was not too formidable for a couple of seine-boats lying high on the beach: and within five minutes these were hauled down and manned with scratch crews--Dick Hobart among them.

"Three days of east wind had knocked up a heavy swell: but the wind was blowing a moderate gale only--nothing to account for a big ship (as she was already reported to be) finding herself on Menawhidden. Three signals only had been shown, and these in quick succession. We learned afterwards that she went down within twelve minutes of striking. She had dashed straight on the Carracks, with the wind well behind her beam, topmasts housed for the night, but, barring that, canvassed like a well-found ship sure of her sea-room. And the Carracks had torn the bottom out of her.

"The difficulty with the life-boat and two seine-boats was to find the position of the wreck, the night being pitch dark and dirty, and the calls and outcries of the poor creatures being swept down the wind to the westward. Our fellows pulled like Trojans, however, hailing and ahoying as they went; and about half-way down the line of Menawhidden they came on the first of the _Nerbuddha's_ boats, laden with women and children, in charge of the fourth officer and half-a-dozen seamen. From her they learned the vessel's name and whereabouts, and having directed her on her way to the Porth, hurried forward again. They passed another boat similarly laden, and presently heard the distracting cries of swimmers, and drove straight into the wreckage and the struggling crowd of bodies. The life-boat rescued twenty-seven, and picked up four more on a second journey: the first seine-boat accounted for a dozen: the second (in which Hobart pulled an oar) was less fortunate, saving five only--and yet, as I shall tell you, my young friend had (and, for that matter, still has) abundant reason to be thankful for his voyage in her; for on that night he plucked from the sea the greatest treasure of his life.

"She--for it was a small girl of seven, and he took her from the arms of a seaman who died soon after being lifted into the boat-turned out to be the Colonel's daughter. She had stood by her mother's side above the gangway while the women passed down the side into the boats: for that noble English lady had insisted that as it was the Colonel's duty to follow his men, so it was for the Colonel's wife to wait until every other woman and every child had filed past. The _Nerbuddha_ had gone down under her as she stood there beside her husband, steadied by his hand on her shoulder. Both bodies were afterwards recovered.

"Altogether fifty-two were buried in this parish: other bodies were washed ashore or picked up from time to time, some at great distances up and down the Channel. In the end the list of those unaccounted for came to forty, or by other accounts thirty-six. That was my first experience of what Menawhidden could do. I have had many since: but to this day our little church--yes, even when we decorate it for harvest-festival and pile the sheaves within the Communion rails--remains for me the dark little building where the bodies lay in rows waiting to be identified, and where I and half-a-dozen volunteers took turns in keeping watch day and night while the windows shook and the damp oozed down the walls.

"The cause of the wreck was never made clear. The helmsman had gone, and the captain (his body was among the missing), and the first, second, and third officers. But two seamen who had been successively relieved at the wheel in the early hours of the night agreed on the course set by the captain. It was a course which must finally bring them straight on Menawhidden. Yet there was no evidence to show that the captain changed it. The men knew nothing of Channel navigation, and had simply obeyed orders. She had struck during the first mate's watch. The fourth officer (survivor) had also been on deck. He gave evidence that his superior, Mr. Rands, had said nothing about the course. For his own part he had supposed the ship to be a good fifteen miles from the coast. They had sighted no shore-lights to warn them: but the weather was hazy. Five minutes before the catastrophe Mr. Rands had remarked that the wind was increasing, but had deferred shortening sail. The ship was an old one, but newly rigged throughout. Her compasses had been adjusted and the ship swung at Greenhithe, just before the voyage. Mr. Murchison, the captain, was a trusted commander of the H.E.I.C.: he came originally from Liverpool, and had worked his way up in the company's service: a positive man and something of a disciplinarian, almost a martinet--not a man who would bear crossing easily. He was in his cabin, but came on deck at once, ready dressed; and had, with Colonel Stanhope's assistance, kept admirable order, getting out the three boats as promptly as possible. A fourth had actually been launched, and was being manned when the vessel plunged and stove her in as she went down.

"That is as much as needs be told about the _Nerbuddha_. Let me get on to the happier part of the story, that which concerns Dick Hobart and the small girl whom by Heaven's mercy he helped to save. Her name was Felicia--Felicia Rose Derwent Stanhope in full. Her uncle and guardian, Sir John Derwent, came down and fetched her home, with the bodies of her father and mother. I have told you that Dick was just then waiting for his commission, which, by the way, his family could poorly afford to purchase. Well, in recognition of his 'gallantry' (as the old gentleman was good enough to term it) Sir John, who possessed a good deal of influence, had him gazetted within six weeks, and to the 2-th Regiment-- 'for which,' so ran the gracious letter bringing the news, 'you have performed the first of what I hope will be a long list of distinguished services.'

"Pretty, was it not? Yes, but there's prettier to come. Felicia, who was an only child and quite an heiress in a small way, kept up from the first a steady correspondence with her 'preserver': childish letters, to begin with, but Dick kept them all. In Bombay, in Abyssinia, for a few weeks in England (when he saw her for the first time since the wreck), then back in India again, he has told me since that the world held but one woman for him, and that was the little girl growing up to womanhood in her Bedfordshire home.

"Well it all happened as you are guessing. Dick, who had inherited a little money by this time, and was expecting his majority, returned to England in '72 on a long furlough. Needless to say he paid a visit to Cressingham, where Felicia lived under the wing of a widowed aunt: equally needless to say what happened there. The engagement was a short one--six weeks: and Dick flattered me immensely with an invitation to come up and perform the ceremony."

The Vicar paused, refilled his glass, and leaning back gazed up at the now silent nests. "All this," thought I, "may be mighty interesting in its way, but what--"

"But what, you'll be asking, has all this to do with John Emmet? I'm coming to that. On the evening of my arrival at Cressingham, Dick, who was lodging at the village inn where I too had a room, took me over to pay my respects to the ladies. We had taken our leave and were passing down the pretty avenue of limes to the entrance gates, when he paused and hailed a man stooping over a fountain in the Italian garden on our left, and apparently clearing it of dead leaves.

"'Hi! John Emmet!'

"The man straightened his back, faced round, and came towards us, touching his hat.

"'This is the gentleman, John, who has come expressly to tie the knot next Wednesday. You must know,' said Dick, turning to me, 'that Miss Felicia and John Emmet are sworn friends, and he owes me a mighty grudge for taking her away. He's been gardener here for fifteen--sixteen--how many years is it, John?'

"'Then,' said I, 'I suppose you were here before the wreck of the _Nerbuddha_, and knew Miss Felicia's parents?'

"The man gave a start, and his hat, which he had pulled off, and with the brim of which he was fumbling, slipped from his fingers and rolled on the turf.

"'Oh, yes, I forgot!' put in Dick. 'I ought to have told you that Mr. West here is the Rector of Lansulyan, and was at the time of the wreck."

"'Indeed, Sir!' John Emmet had recovered his hat, and confronted me with a face for which I spared a glance before bending my eyes on the daisies at my feet. 'I--I took service here some months after that event.'

"'Come, Padre'--these were the next words I heard--'if you wish to prod up all the daisies on Felicia's property, arise early to-morrow and begin. But if we're to dine at the Hall to-night it's time to be getting back to the inn and changing our clothes.'

"I looked up, and my eyes fell on the retreating back of John Emmet, already half-way towards the Italian garden."

"'Queer fellow, that--what's his name?--John Emmet,' said I late that night on our return to the inn, as Dick and I mixed our whiskey and prepared for a smoke before his sitting-room fire.

"'Tile loose, I fancy,' answered Dick, pausing with a lighted match in his hand. 'I've an idea that he owes me a grudge for coming here and carrying off Felicia.'

"'What gives you that notion?'

"'Well, you see he has always been a favourite of hers. She tells me that the hours she managed to steal and spend in the garden, chatting with John Emmet while he worked, were the happiest in her childhood. He seems to have been a kind of out-of-door protector to her, and I'll bet she twisted him round her small thumb.'

"'That's little enough to go upon,' was my comment. 'It struck me, on the contrary, that the man eyed you with some affection, not to say pride.'

"'Well, it's a small thing, but I can't help remembering how he took the news of Felicia's--of our engagement. You see, it happened at a fancy-dress dance.'

"'What happened?'

"'Don't be dense, Padre. Why, _it_--the engagement. The dance was given by some people who live two miles from here--people called Bargrave. Felicia and I drove over. She wore an old Court dress of her grandmother's or great-grand-mother's: I'm no hand at costumes, and can only tell you that she looked particularly jolly in it. I went in uniform--mess uniform, that is. It's one of the minor advantages of the service that on these occasions a man hasn't to put on a cavalier's wig and look like a goat out for a holiday. Well, as I was saying, at this particular dance _it_ happened. It was daybreak when we started to drive home; a perfect midsummer morning, sun shining, dew on the hedges, and the birds singing fit to split themselves. Felicia and I had a lot to say to each other, naturally; and it occurred to us to stop the carriage at the gates and send it on while we walked up to the house together. We took the path leading through the Italian garden, and there--pretty well in the same place where you saw him this afternoon-- we came on John Emmet, already out and at work: or rather he was leaning on a hoe and staring after the carriage as it moved up the avenue behind the limes. We came on him from behind, and, I suppose, suddenly. Anyhow, we scared him. I never saw such a face in my life as he turned on us! It went all white in an instant, and then slowly whiter. No doubt our dress was unusual: but I'm not accustomed to be taken for a ghost--'

"'Was it _you_ who frightened him?'

"'Yes, I think so. He kept his eyes on me, anyway: and at first, when Felicia asked him to congratulate her, he didn't seem to hear. After a bit, however, he picked up his speech and muttered something about fate, and wishing her joy--I forget what. Felicia confessed afterwards that his face had fairly frightened her.'

"'Look here,' I asked; 'it may seem an irrelevant question, but has the 2-th made any changes in its uniform lately?--any important changes, I mean.'

"'No: the War Office has been obliging enough to leave us alone in that respect: out of sight out of mind, I suppose. In point of fact we've kept the same rig--officers and men--for something like a quarter of a century.' He paused. 'I see what you're driving at. The man, you think, may be an old deserter!'

"'Not so fast, please. Now here's another question. You remember the night after the wreck of the _Nerbuddha_: the night you took a turn in Lansulyan Church, watching the bodies? You came to me in the morning with a story which I chose to laugh at--'

"'About the face at the window, you mean?' Dick gave a mock shudder. 'I suppose my nerves were shaken. I've been through some queer things since: but upon my soul I'd as soon face the worst of them again as take another spell with a line of corpses in that church of yours.'

"'But--the face?'

"'Well, at the time I'd have sworn I saw it: peering in through the last window westward in the south aisle--the one above the font. I ran out, you remember, and found nobody: then I fetched a lantern and flashed it about the churchyard.'

"'There were gravestones in plenty a man could hide behind. Should you remember the face?'

"Dick considered for a while. 'No: it didn't strike me as a face so much as a pair of eyes; I remember the eyes only. They were looking straight into mine."

"'Well, now. I've always guessed there was something queer about that _Nerbuddha_ business: though till now I've never told a soul my chief reason for believing so. After you left me that night, and while I was dressing, it occurred to me from the last of the three signals--the only one I saw--that the wreck must be somewhere near the Carracks, and that Farmer Tregaskis had a seine-boat drawn up by the old pallace [1] at Gunner's Meadow, just opposite the Carracks.'"

"'It struck me that if it were possible to knock up Tregaskis and his boys and the farmhand who slept on the premises, and get this boat launched through the surf, we should reach the wreck almost as soon as the life-boat. So I took a lantern and ran across the fields to the farm. Lights were burning there in two or three windows, and Mrs. Tregaskis, who answered my knock, told me that her husband and the boys had already started off--she believed for Gunner's Meadow, to launch their boat. There had been talk of doing so, anyhow, before they set out. Accordingly, off I pelted hot-foot for the meadow, but on reaching the slope above it could see no lanterns either about the pallace or on the beach. It turned out afterwards that the Tregaskis family had indeed visited the beach, ten minutes ahead of me, but judging it beyond their powers to launch the boat short-handed through the surf, were by this time on their way towards the Porth. I thought this likely enough at the time, but resolved to run down and make sure.

"'Hitherto I had carried my lantern unlit: but on reaching the coombe bottom I halted for a moment under the lee of the pallace-wall to strike a match. In that moment, in a sudden lull of the breakers, it seemed to me that I heard a footstep on the loose stones of the beach; and having lit my candle hastily I ran round the wall and gave a loud hail. It was not answered: the sound had ceased: but hurrying down the beach with my lantern held high, I presently saw a man between me and the water's edge. I believe now that he was trying to get away unobserved: but finding this hopeless he stood still with his hands in his pockets, and allowed me to come up. He was bare-headed, and dressed only in shirt and trousers and boots. Somehow, though I did not recognise him, I never doubted for a moment that the man belonged either to my own or the next parish. I was a newcomer in those days, you remember.

"'"Hulloa!" said I, "where do you come from?"'

"'He stared at me stupidly and jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the west. I inferred that he came from one of the shore-farms in that direction. He looked like a middle-aged farmer--a grizzled man with a serious, responsible face. "But you're wet through," I said, for his clothes were drenched.