Chapter 9

Leaving her scurrying about making preparations, I climbed the stony by-road that branches off to Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. On reaching it I had neither to climb the gate nor to knock--it yielded to my hand. "This is an improvement," I thought. I noticed, too, a fragrance of flowers wafted on the air from among the homely fruit-trees.

"Con-_trary_!" said a voice as sweet as a silver bell "That for the third time, you dunce! I'm not going to tell you again."

"Contrary, then," answered another in deep but softened tones. "And now kiss me for minding so well."

The male speaker was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a table, having a book before him. His handsome features glowed with pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a small white hand over his shoulder. So, not to interrupt Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Heathcliff, I went round to the kitchen, where my old friend Nelly Dean sat sewing and singing a song.

Mrs. Dean jumped to her feet as she recognised me. "Why, bless you, Mr. Lockwood!" she exclaimed. "Pray step in! Have you walked from Gimmerton?"

"No, from the Grange," I replied; "and while they make me a lodging room there I want to finish my business with your master."

"What business, sir?" said Nelly.

"About the rent," I answered.

"Oh, then it is Catherine you must settle with, or rather me, as she has not learned to arrange her affairs yet."

I looked surprised.

"Ah! You have not heard of Heathcliff's death, I see," she continued.

"Heathcliff dead!" I exclaimed. "How long ago?"

"Three months since; but sit down, and I'll tell you all about it."

"I was summoned to Wuthering Heights," she said, "within a fortnight of your leaving us, and I went gladly for Catherine's sake. Mr. Heathcliff, who grew more and more disinclined to society, almost banished Earnshaw from his apartment, and was tired of seeing Catherine--that was the reason why I was sent for--and the two young people were thrown perforce much in each other's company in the house, and presently Catherine began to make it clear to her obstinate cousin that she wished to be friends. The intimacy ripened rapidly, and, Mr. Lockwood, on their wedding day there won't be a happier woman in England than myself. Joseph was the only objector, and he appealed to Heathcliff against 'yon flaysome graceless quean, that's witched our lad wi' her bold een and her forrad ways.' But after a burst of passion at the news, Mr. Heathcliff suddenly calmed down and said to me, 'Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm in its shadow.'

"Soon after that he took to wandering alone, in a state approaching distraction. He could not rest; he could not eat; and he would not see the doctor. One morning as I walked round the house I observed the master's window swinging open and the rain driving straight in. 'He cannot be in bed,' I thought, 'those showers would drench him through.' And so it was, for when I entered the chamber his face and throat were washed with rain, the bed-clothes dripped, and he was perfectly still--dead and stark. I called up Joseph. 'Eh, what a wicked 'un he looks, girning at death,' exclaimed the old man, and then he fell on his knees and returned thanks that the ancient Earnshaw stock were restored to their rights.

"I shall be glad when they leave the Heights for the Grange," concluded Mrs. Dean.

"They are going to the Grange, then?"

"Yes, as soon as they are married; and that will be on New Year's Day."

* * * * *

ROBERT BUCHANAN

The Shadow of the Sword

Robert Buchanan, poet, novelist, and playwright, was born on Aug. 18, 1841, at Caverswall, Staffordshire, England, the son of a poor journeyman tailor from Ayrshire, in Scotland, who wrote poetry, and wandered about the country preaching socialism of the Owen type, afterwards editing a Glasgow journal. Owing, perhaps, in part to his very unconventional training, Robert Buchanan entered on life with a strange freshness of vision. Nothing in ordinary human life seemed common or mean to him, and this sense of wonder, combined with a power of judgment much steadier than his father's, made him a poet of considerable genius. "Undertones," published in 1863, and "Idylls and Legends of Inverburn," which appeared two years later, made him famous. The same qualities which he displayed in his poetry Buchanan exhibited in his earliest and best novels. "The Shadow of the Sword," published in 1876, was originally conceived as a poem, and it still remains one of the best of modern English prose romances. In his latter years Robert Buchanan, tortured by the long and painful illness of his beautiful and gentle wife, wrote a considerable amount of work with no literary merit; but this does not diminish the value of his best and earliest work, which undoubtedly entitles him to a place of importance in English literature. He died on June 10, 1901.

_I.--The King of the Conscripts_

"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant, in a voice that rang like a trumpet through the length of the town hall.

No one answered. The crowd of young Kromlaix men looked at each other in consternation. Was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most daring lad in their village a coward? It was the dark year of 1813, when Napoleon was draining France of all its manhood. Even the only sons of poor widowed women, such as Rohan Gwenfern was, were no longer exempted from conscription. Having lost half a million men amid the snows of Russia, Napoleon had called for 200,000 more soldiers, and the little Breton fishing village of Kromlaix had to provide twenty-five recruits.

"Rohan Gwenfern!" cried the sergeant again.

The mayor rose up behind the ballot-box on the large table, about which the villagers were gathered, and looked around in vain for the splendid figure of the young fisherman.

"Where is your nephew?" he said to Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.

Derval, one of Napoleon's veterans, who had been pensioned after losing his leg at Austerlitz, looked at his pretty niece, Marcelle, with a strange pallor on his furrowed, sunburnt face.

"Rohan was too ill to come," said Marcelle, with a troubled look in her sweet grey eyes. "I will draw in his name."

"Very well, my pretty lass," said the mayor, his grim face softening into a smile as he looked at the beautiful girl, "you shall draw for him, and bring him luck."

Marcelle's hand trembled as she put it into the ballot-box. She let it stay there so long that some of the soldiers began to laugh. But the village women, gathered in a dense crowd at the back of the hall, gazed at her with tears in their eyes. They knew what she was doing. She was praying that she might draw a lucky number for her lover, Rohan. Twenty-five conscripts were wanted, and those who drew a paper numbered twenty-six or upwards were free.

"Come, come, my dear!" said the mayor, stroking his moustache, and nodding encouragingly at Marcelle.

She slowly drew forth a paper, and handed it to her uncle, who opened it, read it with a stare, and uttered his usual expletive. "Soul of a crow!" in an awstricken whisper.

"Read it, corporal!" said the mayor, while Marcelle looked wildly at her uncle.

"It is incredible!" said Corporal Derval, handing the paper to the sergeant, with the look of amazement still on his face.

"Rohan Gwenfern--one!" shouted the sergeant, while Marcelle clung to her uncle, and hid her face upon his arm.

Rohan Gwenfern, who had taken a solemn oath that he would never go forth to slay his fellow-men at the bidding of Napoleon, whom he regarded as a horrible, murderous monster, found himself, when he returned to Kromlaix late that evening, in the sorry position of King of the Conscripts. He was a young man who had led a very solitary life, but solitude, instead of making him morbid, had strengthened his natural feelings of pity and affection. His immense physical strength had never been exerted for any evil, and even in the roughest wrestling matches he had never fought brutally or cruelly.

He certainly rejoiced in his splendid powers of body; but he had the gentleness of soul of a poetic mind, as well as the magnanimity that often goes with great strength. There was, indeed, something lion-like about him as he strode up to the door of his cottage, with his mane of yellow hair floating over his broad brows and falling on his shoulders. An eager crowd was waiting for him, and when he appeared, they all shouted.

"Here he is at last!" cried a voice, which he recognised as that of Mikel Grallon. "Three cheers for the King of the Conscripts!"

Some bag-pipe players struck up a merry tune, but Rohan, with a wild face and stern eyes, pushed his way through the throng into his cottage. On a seat by the fire his mother sat weeping, her face covered with her apron; round her was a band of sympathising friends. The scene explained itself in one flash, and Rohan Gwenfern knew his fate. Pale as death, he rushed across the floor to his mother's side, just as a troop of young girls flocked into the house singing the Marseillaise. At their head was Marcelle.

A hard struggle had gone on in the heart of Rohan's sweetheart. She had been overcome with grief when she drew the fatal number. But her dismay had quickly turned into an heroic pride at the thought of her lover becoming a soldier of Napoleon. From her childhood she had learnt from her uncle to admire and worship the great emperor who had led the armies of France from victory to victory, and she did not think that Rohan would refuse to follow him. It is true that she had often heard Gwenfern say that he loathed war; but many other men of Kromlaix had said the same thing; and yet, when the hour came, and they were called to serve in the Grand Army, they had obeyed.

"Look, Rohan!" she cried, holding up in her hand a rosette with a long, coloured streamer. "Look! I have brought this for you."

Each of the conscripts wore a similar badge, and old Corporal Derval had stuck one on his own breast. All the crowd cheered as Marcelle advanced, with bright eyes and flaming cheeks, to her sweetheart.

"Keep back! Do not touch me!" cried Rohan, his face blazing with strange anger.

"The boy's mad!" exclaimed Corporal Derval, in an angry voice.

"Do you not understand, Rohan?" exclaimed Marcelle, terrified by her lover's look. "As you did not come, someone had to draw in your name. I did so, and you are now the King of the Conscripts, and this is your badge. Let me fasten it upon your breast!"

In a moment her soft fingers attached the rosette to his jacket. Rohan did not stir; his eyes were fixed on the ground, but his features worked convulsively.

"Forward now, all of you to the inn!" said Corporal Derval, when the cheering was over. "We will drink the health of Number One!"

As everybody was moving towards the door, Rohan started as if from a trance.

"Stay!" he shouted.

All stood listening, and his widowed mother crept up and clasped his hand.

"You are all mad," he said, in a wild voice, "and I seem to be going mad, too. What is this you tell me about a conscription and an emperor? I do not understand. I only know you are all mad. Napoleon has no right to compel me to fight for him; and if every Frenchman had my heart, he would not reign another day. I refuse to be led like a sheep to the slaughter. He can kill me if he wills, but he cannot force me to kill my fellow-men. You can go if you like, and do his bloody work. Had I the power I would serve him as I serve this badge of his!"

Tearing the rosette from his breast, he cast it into the flaming fire.

"Rohan, for God's sake be silent!" cried Marcelle. "You speak like a madman. It is all my fault. I thought I should bring you good luck by drawing for you. Won't you forgive me?"

The young fisherman looked sadly into his sweetheart's face, and when he saw her wet eyes and quivering lips his heart was stirred. He took her hand and kissed it, but suddenly an ill-favoured face was thrust forward between the two lovers.

"Isn't it a pity," sneered Mikel Grallon, "to see a pretty girl wasting herself on a coward, when----"

He did not complete the sentence, for Rohan stretched out his hand and smote him down. Grallon fell like a log.

A wild cry arose from all the men, the women screamed, even Marcelle shrank back; and Rohan strode to the door, pushing his way out.

"Hold him! Kill him!" shouted some.

"Arrest him!" cried Corporal Derval.

Rohan hurled his opponents right and left like so many ninepins. They fell back and gasped. Then, turning his white face for an instant on Marcelle, her lover passed unmolested out into the darkness.

_II.--In the Cathedral of the Sea_

Along the wild, rugged shore, a little way from Kromlaix, was an immense cavern of crimson granite, hung with gleaming moss, and washed by the roaring tides of the sea. Its towering walls had been carved by wind and water into thousands of beautiful, fantastical forms, and a dim religious light fell from above through a long, funnel-shaped hole running from the roof of the cavern to the top of the great cliff.

It was here that Rohan Gwenfern hid from the band of soldiers sent in pursuit of him. The air was damp and chill, but he breathed it with the comfort of a hardy animal. He made a bed of dry seaweed on the top of the precipice leading to the hole in the cliff, where his mother came and lowered food to him every evening; and Jannedik, a pet goat that used to follow him everywhere in the days when he was a free man, was his only companion. Strange and solitary was the life he led, but he slept as soundly in his bed of seaweed on the wild precipice as he did in his bed at home.

But one morning, when he awoke, a confused murmur broke upon his ear. Peering over the ledge, he saw a crowd of soldiers standing on the shingle at the mouth of the cavern.

"Come down and surrender, in the name of the emperor!" cried the sergeant.

"Surrender!" shouted all his men. And the vast, dim place rang with the echoing sound of their voices.

"You can have my dead body if you care to come up here for it!" cried Rohan, stepping into the light that fell from the hole in the cliff.

The soldiers stared up in astonishment when Rohan appeared on the ledge of the precipice. He was now a gaunt, forlorn, hunted man, with a few rags hanging about his body, and a great shock of yellow hair tumbling below his shoulders. Under the stress of mental suffering his flesh had wasted from his bones, but his eyes flashed with a terrible light.

"Come down," said the sergeant, raising his gun, "or I will pick you off your perch as if you were a crow."

Instead of getting behind a rock, Rohan stood up with a strange smile on his face, and said, "If you want me, you must come and fetch me."

There was a flash, a roar--the sergeant had fired. But when the smoke had cleared away, Rohan was still standing on the ledge with the strange smile on his face. The shot had gone wide.

"You can smile," said the sergeant angrily, "but you cannot escape. If I cannot bring you down, I will starve you out. My men are watching for you, above and below. You are surrounded."

"And so are you," said Rohan, with a laugh, pointing to the mouth of the cavern. "Look behind you!"

The sergeant and his men turned round, and gave a cry of dismay. The tide had turned, and the sea was surging fiercely into the mouth of the cavern.

"Give him one volley," shouted the sergeant, "and then swim for your lives."

But when the men turned to aim at Rohan, he was no longer visible. They fired at random at the hole in the cliff, and after filling the great cavern with drifting smoke and echoing thunder, they fled for their lives, wading, swimming through the high spring tide.

"At any rate," said the sergeant, when they had all got safely back to land, "we can stop Mother Gwenfern from bringing the mad rebel any more food."

So a watch was set over the cottage in which Rohan's widowed mother lived, and she was always searched whenever she left her house, and bands of armed men kept guard night and day by the hole at the top of the cliff and by the seaward entrance to the cavern. At the end of two weeks the sergeant resolved to make another attack. The man, he thought, must surely have been starved to death, as every avenue of aid had long since been blocked.

So one moonlight night at ebb tide the crowd of soldiers crept into the cavern and lashed two long ladders together, and began to climb up the precipice. But a strong arm seized the ladders from above, and flung them back on the granite floor of the cave. Standing like a ghost in the faint, silvery radiance falling through the hole in the cliff, Rohan hurled down upon the dark mass of the besieging crowd great fragments of rock which he had placed, ready for use, along the ledge on which he slept.

"Fire Fire!" shrieked the sergeant, pointing at the white figure of Rohan.

But before the command could be obeyed, Rohan got under shelter, and the bullets rained harmlessly round the spot where he had just stood. Then, under cover of fire, some men advanced and again placed the ladder against the precipice. As Rohan crouched down on the ledge, he was startled by the apparition of a human face. With a cry of rage, he sprang to his feet, and, heedless of the bullets thudding on the rock around him, he slowly and painfully lifted up a terrible granite boulder, poised it for a moment over his head, and then hurled it down at the shapes dimly struggling below him. There was a crash, a shriek. Under the weight of the boulder the ladders broke, and the men upon them fell down, amid horrible cries of agony and terror.

What happened after this Rohan never knew; for, overcome by frenzy and fatigue, he swooned away. When he opened his eyes, he was lying beneath the hole in the cliff, with the moonlight streaming upon his face. From below him came the soft sound of lapping water, and, looking down, he saw that the tide had entered the cave, and forced the besiegers to give over their attack.

Yes, the battle was over, and he had conquered! His position indeed was impregnable; had he been well supplied with food, he could have held it against hundreds of men for a long period. But, as he laid down on his bed of seaweed, a rough tongue licked his hand. It was his goat, Jannedik. For the last fortnight, Rohan's mother had sent the goat every day to her son with a basket of food tied round its neck and hidden in the long hair of its throat. Rohan groped in the darkness for the basket, and Jannedik uttered a low cry of pain, rolled over at his feet into the moonlight, revealing a terrible bullet-wound in its side, and quivered and died. Some soldier had shot it.

As Rohan stared at the dead body of his four-footed friend, the strength of mind which had enabled him to withstand all the power that Napoleon, the conqueror of Europe, could bring against him at last went from him. Trembling and shivering, he looked around him, overcome by utter desolation and despair. He had held out bravely, but he could hold out no longer; slowly and laboriously he climbed down the dark face of the precipice, and reached the narrow strip of shingle below, just as the moon got clear from a cloud and lighted up the cavern. Its cold rays fell on the white face of the sergeant, who laid half on the shingle and half in the water, crushed by the great boulder with which Rohan had broken down the ladders.

Rohan gazed for a moment on the features of the man he had killed, and then, with a cry of agony and despair, he fell upon his knees.

"Not on my head, O God, be the guilt!" he prayed. "Not on my head, but on his who hunted me down and made me what I am; on his, whose red sword shadows all the world, and drives on millions of innocent men to murder each other! Ah, God, God, God! The men that Napoleon has slain! Is it not high time that some man like me sought him out and killed him, and brought peace back once more to this blood-covered earth of ours? Yes, I will do it!"

Rising wildly to his feet, full of the strange strength and the strange powers of madness, Rohan Gwenfern climbed up the precipice to his bed of seaweed, and then took a path that no man had taken and lived--the sheer, precipitous path from the roof of the cavern to the top of the cliff.

_III.--Rohan Meets Napoleon_

As the Grand Army swept into Belgium for the last great battle against the united powers of England, Germany, Austria, and Russia, a strange, savage creature followed it--a gaunt, half-naked man, with long yellow hair falling almost to his waist, and bloodshot eyes with a look of madness in them. How he lived it is difficult to tell. He never begged, but the soldiers threw lumps of bread at him as he prowled round their camp-fires, asking everyone whom he met: "Where is the emperor? Where is Napoleon? Do you think he will come this way?"

Twice he had been arrested as a spy, and hastily condemned to be shot. But each time, on hearing his sentence of death, he gave so strange a laugh that the officer examined him more closely, and then set him free, saying with scornful pity, "It is a harmless maniac. Let him go."

He always lagged in the rear of the advancing army, and as each fresh regiment arrived he mingled with the soldiers, and asked them in a fierce whisper, "Is the emperor coming now? Isn't he coming?"

At last, one dark rainy evening, the wild outcast saw the man for whom he was seeking. Wrapped in an old grey overcoat, and wearing a cocked hat from which the rain dripped heavily, Napoleon stood on a hill, with his hands clasped behind his back, his head sunk deep between his shoulders, looking towards Ligny. But he was guarded; a crowd of officers stood close behind him, waiting for orders.

Suddenly a bareheaded soldier came riding along the road, spurring and flogging his horse as if for dear life; galloping wildly up the hill he handed the emperor a dispatch. Napoleon glanced at it, and spoke to his staff officers. With a wild movement of joy they drew their swords, and waved them in the air, shouting, "_Vive l'Empereur!"_ Napoleon smiled. His star was again in the ascendant! The Prussians were retreating from Ligny; he had struck the first blow, and it was a victory!

Near the hill on which he was standing was a deserted farmhouse; he gave orders that it should be prepared for his reception. But, as he rode down the hill at the head of his staff, the man who had been watching him divined his intention, and reached the house before his attendants. The soldiers who searched the place before Napoleon entered failed to see the dark figure crouching up in the corner of a loft among the black rafters.

"Leave me," said Napoleon to his men, after he had finished the plain meal of bread and wine set before him.

To-morrow he would meet for the first time, on the rolling fields of Waterloo, the only captain of a European army whom he had not defeated. He wanted to think his plans of battle over in silence. Some time he paced up and down the room, his chin drooping forward on his breast, and his hands clasped upon his back. Through the wide, clear spaces of his mind great armies passed in black procession, moving like storm-clouds over the stricken earth; burning cities rose in the distance, amid the shrieks of dying men, and the thunder of cannon. His plan was at last matured. Victory? Yes, that was certain! So his thoughts ran. An aide-de-camp entered with a dispatch. He tore it open, and ran his eye over it.

"It is nothing," he said. "Don't disturb me for two hours except on a matter of great importance. I want to sleep."

Going up to the old armchair of oak that was set before the fire, he fell on his knees, and covered his eyes and prayed.