JOAN HASTE, H. RIDER HAGGARD [free ereaders TXT] 📗

sake of old associations, little as you deserve it; and if there is any more trouble you will get nothing further from me. One more thing: I expect you to hold your tongue about poor Joan's illness and her address--especially to Sir Henry Graves and Mr. Rock. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly, sir."

"Then remember what I say, and good morning; if you want to communicate with me again, you had better write."

Mrs. Gillingwater departed humbly enough, dropping an awkward curtsey at the door.

"Like the month of March, she came in like a lion and has gone out like a lamb," reflected Mr. Levinger as the door closed behind her. "She is a dangerous woman, but luckily I have her in hand. A horrible woman I call her. It makes me shudder to think of the fate of anybody who fell into the power of such a person. And now about this poor girl. If she were to die many complications would be avoided; but the thing is to keep her alive, for in the other event I should feel as though her blood were on my hands. Much as I hate it, I think that I will go to town and see after her. Emma is to start for home to-morrow, and I can easily make an excuse that I have come to fetch her. Let me see: there is a train at three o'clock that would get me to town at six. I could dine at the hotel, go to see about Joan afterwards, and telegraph to Emma that I would fetch her in time for the eleven o'clock train to-morrow morning. That will fit in very well."

Two hours later Mr. Levinger was on his road to London.

 

Mrs. Gillingwater returned to Bradmouth, if not exactly jubilant, at least in considerably better spirits than she had left it. She had wrung ten pounds out of Mr. Levinger, which in itself was something of a triumph; also she had hopes of other pickings, for now she knew Joan's address, which it seemed was a very marketable commodity. At present she had funds in hand, and therefore there was no need to approach Samuel Rock--which indeed she feared to do in the face of Mr. Levinger's prohibition; still it comforted her not a little to think that those five-and-twenty sovereigns also were potentially her own.

CHAPTER XXVIII(THE PRICE OF INNOCENT BLOOD)

 

A month went by, and at the end of it every farthing of Mr. Levinger's ten pounds was spent, for the most part in satisfying creditors who either had sued, or were threatening to sue, for debts owing to them. Finding herself once more without resources, Mrs. Gillingwater concluded that it was time to deal with Samuel Rock, taking the chance of her breach of confidence being found out and visited upon her by Mr. Levinger. Accordingly, towards dusk one evening--for she did not wish her errand to be observed by the curious--Mrs. Gillingwater started upon her mission to Moor Farm.

Moor Farm is situated among the wind-torn firs that line the ridge of ground which separates the sea heath between Bradmouth and Ramborough from the meadows that stretch inland behind it. Perhaps in the whole county there is no more solitary or desolate building, with its outlook on to the heath and the chain of melancholy meres where Samuel had waylaid Joan, beyond which lies the sea. The view to the west is more cheerful, indeed, for here are the meadows where runs the Brad; but, as though its first architect had determined that its windows should look on nothing pleasant, the house is cut off from this prospect by the straggling farm buildings and the fir plantation behind them.

The homestead, which stands quite alone, for all the labourers employed about the place live a mile or more away in the valley, is large, commodious, and massively built of grey stone robbed from the ruins of Ramborough. When the Lacons, Joan's ancestors on the mother's side, who once had owned the place, went bankrupt, their land was bought by Samuel Rock's grandfather, an eccentric man, but one who was very successful in his business as a contractor for the supply of hay to His Majesty's troops. After he had been the possessor of Moor Farm for little more than a year, this James Rock went suddenly mad; and although his insanity was of a dangerous character, for reasons that were never known his wife would not consent to his removal to an asylum, but preferred to confine him in the house, some of the windows of which are still secured by iron bars. The end of the tale was tragic, for one night the maniac, having first stunned his keeper, succeeded in murdering his wife while she was visiting him. This event took place some seventy years before the date of the present story, but the lapse of two generations has not sufficed to dispel the evil associations connected with the spot, and that portion of the house where the murder was committed has remained uninhabited from that day to this.

Mrs. Gillingwater was not a person much troubled by imaginative fears, but the aspect of Moor House as she approached it on that November evening affected her nerves, rudimentary as they were. The day had been very stormy, and angry rays from the setting sun shone through gaps in the line of naked firs behind the house, and were reflected from the broken sky above on to the surface of the meres and of the sea beyond them. The air was full of the voices of wind and storm, the gale groaned and shrieked among the branches of the ancient trees; from the beach a mile away came the sound of the hiss of the surge and of the dull boom of breakers, while overhead a flock of curlews appeared and disappeared as they passed from sunbeam into shadow and from shadow into sunbeam, until they faded among the uncertain lights of the distance, whence the echo of their unhappy cries still floated to the listener's ear. The front of the house was sunk in gloom, but there was still light enough to enable Mrs. Gillingwater, standing by the gate of what in other times had been a little pleasure garden, but was now a wilderness overrun with sea grasses, to note its desolate aspect, and even the iron bars that secured the windows of the rooms where once the madman was confined. Nobody could be seen moving about the place, and she observed no lamp in the sitting-room.

"I hope those brutes of dogs are tied up, for I expect /he's/ out," Mrs. Gillingwater said to herself; "he's fond of sneaking about alone in weather like this."

As the thought passed through her mind, she chanced to glance to her left, where some twenty paces from her, and beyond the intercepting bulk of the building, a red sunbeam pierced the shadows like a sword. There in the centre of this sunbeam stood Samuel Rock himself. He was wrapped in his long dark cloak that fell to the knees, but his hat lay on the ground beside him, and his upturned face was set towards the dying sun in such a fashion that the vivid light struck full upon it, showing every line of his clear-cut features, every hair of the long beard that hung from the square protruding chin, and even the motion of his thin lips, and of the white hands that he moved ceaselessly, as though he were washing them in the blood-red light.

There was something so curious about his aspect that Mrs. Gillingwater started.

"Now what's he a-doing there?" she wondered: "bless me if I know, unless he's saying prayers to his master the devil. I never did see a man go on like that before, drunk or sober;--he gives me the creeps, the beast. Look, there he goes sneaking along the wall of the house, for all the world like a great black snake wriggling to its hole. Well, he's in now, so here's after him, for his money is as good as anybody else's, and I must have it."

In another half-minute she was knocking at the door, which was opened by Samuel.

"Who's that?" he said. "I don't want no visitors at this time of day."

"It's me, Mr. Rock--Mrs. Gillingwater."

"Then I want you least of all, you foul-mouthed, lying woman. Get you gone, or I'll loose the dogs on you."

"You'd better not," she answered, "for I've something to tell you that you'd like to hear."

"Something that I'd like to hear," he answered, hesitating: "is it about /her/?"

"Yes, it's about her--all about her."

"Come in," he said.

She entered, and he shut and locked the door behind her.

"What are you a-doing that for?" asked Mrs. Gillingwater suspiciously.

"Nothing," he answered, "but doors are best locked. You can't tell who will come through them, nor when, if they're left open."

"That's just another of his nasty ways," muttered Mrs. Gillingwater, as she followed him down the passage into the sitting-room, which was quite dark except for some embers of a wood fire that glowed upon the hearth.

"Stop a minute, and I will light the lamp," said her host.

Soon it burnt brightly, and while Samuel was making up the fire Mrs. Gillingwater had leisure to observe the room, in which as it chanced she had never been before, at any rate since she was a child. On the occasions of their previous interviews Samuel had always received her in the office or the kitchen.

It was long and low, running the depth of the house, so that the windows faced east and west. The fireplace was wide, and over it hung a double-barrelled muzzle-loading gun, which Mrs. Gillingwater noticed was charged, for the light shone upon the copper caps. There were two doors--one near the fireplace, leading to the offices and kitchen, and one by which she had entered. The floor was of oak, half covered with strips of matting, and the ceiling also was upheld by great beams of oak, that, like most of the materials in this house, had been bought or stolen from the Abbey at the time when it was finally deserted, a hundred and fifty years before. This was put beyond a doubt, indeed, by the curious way in which it had been the fancy of the builder to support these huge beams--namely, by means of gargoyles that once had carried off the water from the roofs of the Abbey. It would be difficult to imagine anything more grotesque, or indeed uncanny, than the effect of these weather-worn and grinning heads of beasts and demons glaring down upon the occupants of the chamber open-mouthed, as though they were about to spring upon and to devour them. Indeed, according to a tale in Bradmouth, a child of ten, finding herself left alone with them for the first time, was so terrified by their grizzly appearance that she fell into a fit. For the rest, the walls of the room were hung with a dingy paper, and adorned with engravings of a Scriptural character, diversified by prints taken from Fox's "Book of Martyrs." The furniture was good, solid and made of oak, like everything else in the place, with the sole exception