Part 9

He fell to silence; awhile I sat and watched him. He said then, musing, “I’ve rotted in this accursed house, since I left the sea. The house with the green ivy webbed about it; I’ve a sense of being caught in the weed—held to die and rot. There’s talk among seamen of waters where the weed’s taken many a ship—I’m held so by the weed. Its roots ’ll strike into my heart. It battens on dead men.”

I knew his mind was decaying with the breaking body. I pitied remembering that he had loved my father. I knew now that, black with guilt, he feared the uncharted sea on which he must soon set sail. And I thought of the old rogues about him watching, waiting, until they feared no longer, and might take what long ago they would have taken, had they dared. Yet I think not pity, not the desire that all men have to be rich, would have prevailed against the terror of the house in the night—the doomed house. I think that I, being of his blood, was led by the spirit of adventure to stay by him. Adventure, and desire to see the play to its end.

“I’ll stay here, sir,” I said, “if you’ll have it so. On a condition—that I be free to go about and abroad as I will.”

“Ay, so long as you bear me company when I’ve need of you,” he answered, with a show of satisfaction.

_Chapter XXIII_. _Dying Fires_

My grandfather, pulling the bell-rope, summoned Thrale, and ordered curtly, “Send Barwise and her man to me!” As Thrale vanished, the old man said to me, “I’ve orders for ’em, John—orders. She’s housekeeper; he’s butler, and their son Nick’s groom. Rogues all!”

He chuckled, and sought his snuff-box; so he made play with it that I observed it cut from ebony, with a silver skull and bones patterned upon it. He ceased his senile chuckling at the rapping on the door; I saw him grip the arms of his chair and hold his head high, as if to make a show of strength and sanity before Barwise and his wife.

The woman held my attention rather than the man. She had been a fine handsome woman in her day; she bore herself still stiffly erect, though she was very old. A black silken gown hung loosely about her shrunken body; keys in a little basket on her arm rattled like fetters. She had a high, white mob-cap on her thick, iron-grey hair; the skin was drawn and withered about the bones of her face; her mouth was firm yet, and her eyes clear and black,—of all the rogues who served my grandfather, I came to like none so ill as the Barwise woman. Her husband was a fat, bald, old rogue, clad in shabby black, his paunch protruding; rolls of fat beneath his chin; his hands were fat and oily. His sunburn was ripened to the rich glow of wine; his little eyes were bloodshot. The woman made a curtsy; the clash of her keys startled me with a notion that all her bones were rattling. Barwise bowed.

My grandfather addressed the woman with the strong and measured utterance he had employed to Mr. Bradbury. “I’ve sent for you, Barwise, and your man there,” he said, “as I’d have you know that this young gentleman, my grandson, is to be obeyed.”

She curtsied once more; for an instant her eyes rested balefully on me.

“I’d have you so instruct your folk,” my grandfather proceeded. “While he’s in my house, you’ll all treat him as your master—d’ye understand me?”

She nodded, staring at him curiously as if remarking a strength become strange to her.

“He’s likely to be master after me, d’ye hear?” my grandfather added. “You take your orders now from me; whatever orders he chooses to give, you take them as from me.”

The woman croaked, “It’s well for you, Mr. Craike, to have the young gentleman by you. I mark a change in you already.”

Her bold eyes warred with his; as understanding her meaning that she knew him near to decay and that this assumed strength was no more than the flash of a dying fire, he roared out, “I want no words from you, mistress! You’re old; you’re presuming on your service. Mark me, I’ll be obeyed!” and started to his feet, and rapped his cane upon the floor with such bullying wrath and strength that she quailed before him and shrank back, her husband staring at him and quivering like a jelly.

She muttered, “I meant nothing!”

“Ay, meant nothing! Time was—” but he broke off, hesitated, at last cried out, “Ay, and the time is yet. I’ll be obeyed. You’ve thought me old, Barwise—you and the lazy crew I support here of my bounty. Take care I don’t make a sweep of ye all—of ye all—d’ye mark me?” Mastering himself then and dropping heavily back in his chair, “That’s all, Barwise. You’ll obey Mr. John Craike—all of ye!”

Propping his chin upon his cane, he sat glaring at them, till, with a venomous look at me, the woman whisked from the room, her husband shuffling after. So he sat stiffly till the door was shut; then lay back in his chair and fell again to senile chuckling. “Eh, John; but they think me near to dying,” he said. “Eh, John, did ye mark how I took the wind from her sails? Eh, but I’m stronger for having Richard’s son beside me. I thought to die captain of my ship many a time. And I think to die master of my own house,” and so, sat chuckling and shaking, his strength leaving him as suddenly as his will had summoned it. He rambled on, “She’s an ill fowl—eh, John? She’s a skeleton held together by her skin—no more. Barwise’s woman,—she’d looks once,—hair black as the storm and eyes as black. She’d wear silks and gold rings. She took a fat picking from my men, when I sailed my ship. She’d a tavern Shadwell way.” He broke off, and looked dully at me. He muttered, “Can you not see, lad, the manner of man I was? Can you not see the wreck I am? How I ruled ’em once and how now that they think me broken—they’d mutiny, they’d rob me; they’d have what they’ll never set their fingers on?”

“Surely my uncle would discipline them at a word from you. Clear the house of them.”

“Ay, ay, Charles! Charles watches me, as they, and thinks to rob me!” He gasped, and huddled in his chair; ghastly now, and the sweat beading his brow.

I said swiftly, “Shall I ring for Thrale? You’re ill, sir!”

He croaked, “And let ’em see me so!”—and clawed in his pocket and poked a slim key into my hands, and whispered, “Hey! The press there—the bottle—pour me a dram!”

I unlocked the press beside him, and taking out a bloated green bottle—much as the bottle at Mother Mag’s—poured some spirit into a glass; and his hands now shaking, so that he must have spilt the drink, I held it to his lips, until he swallowed it down, choking and coughing. Whatever the stuff, it lent him speedy strength and colour. He sat blinking at me with those evil old eyes of his. I could feel scant pity for him, save for the thought that he had been so strong, and was now old and weak, and that the rogues who had formed his crew, and whom for some odd fancy, or fear, he had kept about him would now tear him down, as they would have torn him down, had he been less strong and ruthless, on his ship.

I said, “You’ve a pretty crew of rogues about you, sir. Give me but the word, and I’ll drive off and have Mr. Bradbury back here, and we’ll make a sweep of the whole company.”

He answered, “No. Rogues, but they serve me well. And I ruled ’em once. And I’ll rule ’em till I’m dead. You’ll stay by me, John—ay, ay, and you’ll profit by it, and Charles shall pay for his sins. Now you may leave me, lad. They’ll obey you. They’ll fear you, fearing me still. There are many books in the old house. There’s a horse in the stable. There’s the wench, Milne; and there’s the whelp, Oliver, who’ll ride with you, and drink with you, and rook you. Ay, and there’s guineas for the spending”—clawing suddenly into the pocket of his gown, and drawing out a purse and slinging it to me. It rang with gold, as I caught it in my hand.

_Chapter XXIV_. _The Wood_

Now I was not fated long to test the efficacy of my grandfather’s control over his son and his servants. I’d have you know that twelve folk served my grandfather at Craike House, and that excepting Nick Barwise, the groom, these rogues were of the crew who served under Mr. Craike when he sailed his own ship, and that in his fantastic spirit he would have them by him after his return to England to assume his position as Craike of Craike House. The gates were kept by Isaac, second son of the Barwise union, and his woman, the swart gipsy, whom I had observed on my arrival with Mr. Bradbury. All this disreputable company, as much as my grandfather’s eccentricities, had won the house its ill-name—Rogues’ Haven, among the folk of the countryside; these rogues, too, were leagued with smugglers such as Blunt, who plied their traffic under the very nose of the justice Gavin Masters, and the coastguards.

My uncle, since his father’s advanced years and decay pointed to his speedy death, had torn himself away from the diversions of London and society, of which he was adjudged an ornament. Penniless, while he played devoted son, he had established an advantageous understanding with Blunt and his folk, who would alternate long voyages to America and the Indies, on Lord knows what nefarious traffic, with running smuggled stuff from the Continent to the English coast. That my uncle fretted under the yoke of duty manifested itself daily in his covert sneers at his father; the chagrin of Charles, my grandfather remarked to me, had lent a zest to living.

The days I spent in Craike House passed dully and without noteworthy event. I did not lose my dread of the house in the night; the impressions of my first night under its roof abated in no way, but the good-humour of my uncle, the servility of Thrale and his fellow-rogues, the companionship of Oliver, and the sports which I shared with him, lent me a confidence which was to prove groundless. I passed much of my time in playing chess with my grandfather, in reading to him from old voyagers and romancers—of whose works he had by him a great store, or in listening to his narrative of his own sailings, which, if incomplete, gave me a portrait of him by no means calculated to advance my affection for him. Yet that I advanced daily in his favour was patent; my uncle masked his chagrin under a bland demeanour, and a display of the graces and accomplishments which surely rendered his absence deplored by society. But though my grandfather assured me of protection, and though my uncle professed a truce, I would have been wise to follow my first inclination—not to remain under the roof of Craike House, as I shall now relate.

One morn, a month, I should say, from my coming to Rogues’ Haven, my grandfather informing me, through Thrale, that I was free to pass the day as I pleased, I bade Thrale unlock the door for me, and passed out of the house. The gold sunlight lay upon the garden; if it dispelled for a time the gloom, it emphasised the disrepair of the old house, the ivy climbing to the chimney stacks and lacing the windows; a few it had obscured wholly. As I looked up, I saw the sinister face of Mrs. Barwise looking from a high window; she bobbed back instantly. I estimated the covert hostility of the rogues of Craike House; and, having a certain apprehension of walking abroad unarmed, I took out my knife and speedily fashioned me a heavy cudgel. I went down then by a flight of stone steps into the old sunken garden to the right from the house,—steps crumbling and green with moss, and overshadowed by a tangle of roses and honeysuckle, descending into a cool depth which had been laid out once in ornate flower beds and lawns, but was now overrun with fox-gloves, prevailing through their sturdy strength over other flowers. Yet the air was sweet with the white-starred jasmine over the crumbling walls, shutting the deep garden from the old plantation, which had become a dense wood.

Once paths had curved to the sundial at the heart of the garden. The dial was broken and corroded now; a bramble had caught it in its claws; sparrows fought and chirruped upon it in the sun. Arbours had become thickets; through the broken wall I saw the wood go deep, but the sunlight struck through the trees upon a path among tall grasses and flowers spilled from the garden.

I climbed the broken wall and sauntered down the woodland path, taking delight in beauty, and presently departing from the track, passed down to left into a deep glade—silver and green in the sunlight; the dew was not yet dry on fern and grass. And suddenly I saw the girl Evelyn Milne,—she sat upon a fallen log, moss-grown and bramble-clustered. Her head was bare; her bonnet lying on the turf beside her; she sat bent with her hands clasped at her knees—a picture of melancholy and loneliness; yet the sun found the glossy sheen in her dark hair, and the whiteness of her neck and hands. At the crack of a stick under my feet, she started up, and stood regarding me with sullen eyes. I swept off my hat, but she offered me no greeting.

I stammered, “I ask your pardon, Miss Milne. I did not think to disturb you.”

She looked about her hurriedly; leaning towards me then, she whispered, “Now you’re out of the house—away from them all, why not go on and on through the wood, and never return?”

“You mean,” I said, staring at her pale face, at her white hands fluttering at her bosom, “it would be safer for me, that I’ll never be safe in the house?”

“I mean—it doesn’t matter what I mean. Only, were I you, and had any friends away from here—were not alone as I am alone—I’d go. I’d never return.”

“Miss Milne,” said I, “I do assure you that I’m not afraid. Why should I run away?”

“Afraid!” she whispered still. “You’re only a fool. You’re only a boy. Your life’s before you. Why would you stay? Hoping to profit, and be rich, when that old man is dead? Is that why you’d stay? There’s no price that’s worth your life—to you. Why did you ever come to such a house, or, knowing them for what they are, remain?”

“They are my folk,” I muttered, thinking her—from the wildness of her look, the sudden fevered shining of her eyes, the ceaseless fluttering of her thin hands—distraught from the terrors of the house; recalling how, day after day, she sat by me at table, uttering not a word, and addressed by no one; going then from table to be seen no more, till the next meal was served. She had been no more to me than a pale grey shadow in the house of shadows.

Nor had I felt in her more interest than to ask Oliver carelessly how she spent her days; and he had answered, “Hid in her room for the most, haunting the garden; she’s lifeless, bloodless, the wraith of a maid.”

“They are my folk,” then, I muttered, staring at her.

“Your folk! Are you as they?” she whispered still. “You think only of the money the old man has, and care not how ’twas come by. You’ll smile and fawn on him—that man, that evil old man—as his son smiles and fawns. Knowing—as you must know—”

“The manner of man he is, and the manner of the men about him? The danger I’m like to meet? Miss Milne, I’m not afraid. They failed once; do you know that?”

“I know—yes, I know. They failed once; they’ll not fail again”—suddenly leaning forward clasping her hands, peering at me with wild bright eyes, and whispering, “Go! Go now ere it’s too late. Go! and take me with you from this house—this wicked house!”

I was silent, and stared at her, colouring; thinking her surely mad—such the wildness and terror of her look; as realising, she seemed to struggle to control herself; facing me white and quivering, she said at last more calmly, “Mr. Craike, I hear so many secrets in the house. I have lived here so many years—so many lonely years, and am so little accounted, that they do not heed me, or care, if I hear many things that, if they feared me, I would not hear and know. Knowing—I do beseech you, do not stay within the house! Oh, let no thought of loss, if you offend your grandfather, prevail with you! Go!—ere it is too late!”

I said, standing clumsily before her, no longer meeting her look, “Miss Milne, you ask me to assist you. I know—surely by now I know—the house is no house for a maid; I’ll aid you to leave it. Have you no kin or friends out of the house?”

“No kin, no friends. I have lived in this house since I was a little child. No friends within the house; none in all the world.”

“I’ve a purse of gold,” I said. “I’ll give it to you. With it you may make your way to London and seek out Mr. Bradbury. With this message from me—that he conduct you to my mother, who will befriend you. Come—here’s the purse. I’ll go with you through the wood. You may take a coach from the village inn and drive to London. But I stay here.”

She drew back from me. She whispered, “No! Go now, and take me with you! How should I find my way to London alone, or seek out this man Bradbury, or your mother? I have lived nigh all my life in this house; I am afraid. Go with me!”

“Miss Milne, I must remain,” I said.

“For money?” she said, with scorn; but I answered, “Think that if you will. For adventure, for a promise.”

“It’s like to end in death,” cried she, and drew back from me.

“Well, then, what have you heard?” I asked.

“Plots! Plots! What use to tell you, if you will not heed me? If I tell you, will you go from this house? Will you take me out of it?”

“I do not say I’ll go. But I’ll help you, surely!”

She looked at me with her eyes now dark and sullen; bitterly she said, “I’ve given you warning. I’ll not tell you more. Why should I tell you aught I know? What do I know of you save that you seem a boy—a fool—and not yet lost as they. Though coming of their stock—”

“I do assure you,” I stammered, “I—”

She burst out, “Stay—if you will! Stay! And yet I warn you.” She slipped from me, and vanished like a wraith into the shadows of the wood.

_Chapter XXV_. _Insistence of Captain Blunt_

Now attempting to follow Miss Milne, and have further conversation with her, I found myself presently in a wild tangle of the wood, so that I had much difficulty in forcing my way through it. Not finding her, bramble-scratched and moss-stained at last I reached the wall, and followed it down, thinking to find the breach by which I had left the garden. But as I approached it, I halted suddenly, hearing voices from the garden; and, knowing them for the voices of Blunt and Martin Baynes and my uncle, engaged in an unseemly wrangle, I rejoiced that I was still hidden by the creepers hanging over the wall.

Blunt was growling, “Ay, ay, you’ve given me to know you’ll be rich, when the old man’s gone. You think to lay your hands then on the spoil he’s piled up and held all these years. Ay, but the old man’s alive, and I’m sailin’ again with never a penny of profit to me.”

“And the lad’s come to the old man,” Martin broke in, “and by all saying he’s likely to have every penny, and you not the colour of a farthing. What d’ye say to that, Mr. Craike? what d’ye say?”

My uncle answered disdainfully, “You get nothing from me. You’re a pretty pair of rogues to come and threaten. I trust you, Baynes, to hold the rogue and you to take him aboard, Blunt; and he slips through your hands. I wonder at your audacity.”

“Fine talk!” cried Blunt; and Martin burst out, “You’ll pay nothing! Will you not? What if I go to old Sir Gavin? What if I give him the tale? He’d listen and he’d set you by the heels, as gladly as he’d set Roger Galt. Though you’re one of his kind—”

“You have it,” my uncle assented, “one of Sir Gavin’s kind. Do you threaten me, Martin Baynes, you, for all the repute of the Stone House and Mistress Baynes and her grandsons? Are there not strange tales of the Stone House—of travellers lost on the moors? Of a pedlar whose dog was heard wailing at the gates of the Stone House, as dogs wail for their dead masters? Do you threaten me, Martin Baynes? And you, Blunt? Did you never sail further than the coasts of France? Did you never plunder an English ship? Were you never more than smuggler?”

“Never more,” cried Blunt, “than Edward Craike, and never so much.”

“A gentleman of fortune,” said my uncle, “a voyager born a hundred years and odd after his time. Tush, that my father profited by his voyages is nothing, Blunt; he plundered no English ships; if his men spilt any blood, it was not English.”

“Barwise in his cups—” Blunt began.

“Barwise is just such a besotted fellow,” cried my uncle, “as should pitch you the tale you’d wish to hear, Blunt. Now ere you two presume to threaten me, think who’ll believe you? If I sought to keep John Howe out of the house, and have him shipped overseas—what of it? What should this count against me save with a few virtuous fools to whose praise or blame I am indifferent? D’ye think I’ve no credit with His Majesty’s Ministers? D’ye think that the Town would ever regard me as other than a man of birth and fashion? What if there be rumours of my father’s past, or scandal against me? Your words would avail you nothing. But you, you rogues; the word from me would hang you both. Tush, when you threaten me, you’re fools.”

“We want no more than payment,” Blunt growled.

“That I’d not have to give you, if you’d earned it.”

“There’s money in the house,” Blunt urged. “There’s plate. There’s talk of a great chest of gold and jewels.”

“I would,” said my uncle softly, “I might dip my hands into it.”

“D’ye not know of it?” Blunt asked. “D’ye not know it’s talk among all the folk of the house that the old man hid the richest stuff he ever took?”

“I do not know this, Blunt—upon my honour.”

“And I know,” Martin struck in, “that whatsoever the old man has is like to go to his grandson. And that the old man’s threatened you, if you so much as lift a finger against the boy, he’ll not spare you. I have it from old Thrale.”

“Tush,” said my uncle, “I’ve listened too long, my friends. Your threats do not perturb me. I hold the cards, not you. I know nothing of such a chest. Pray, go! Well for you to be sailing, Blunt. Sir Gavin is no fool, and the _Wasp_ lies off the coast too long for your security. And well for you, Martin Baynes, to be sailing with Blunt; you’re idle; you’re mischievous; you’d be well away.”

“Ay, and the lad?” Blunt asked. “Would you have him sail with us yet?”

“I have no preference.”

“Ay, but if you knew he was safe aboard, and sailing with me—not for France, for pickings in the Indies—would you find me the hundred guineas then, Mr. Craike, ere I sailed?”

“I should find one hundred guineas with ease,” my uncle answered. “I suggest nothing, direct nothing—have no share in any plot against my nephew. Yet if I knew—and none here knew—that he was safely under hatches, Blunt, I’d pay this hundred guineas ere you sailed.”

“He’ll be out of the house this night, aboard by the morning,” Blunt vowed.

I heard my uncle’s light laughter; I heard him humming a tune as he walked away. Blunt and Martin came scrambling over the wall, and not detecting me hidden under the creepers, tramped away through the wood.

_Chapter XXVI_. _Sir Gavin Masters_