The Doomsman, Van Tassel Sutphen [top books to read TXT] 📗

can find your boat," whispered Ulick, as they stood facing each other, curiously loath to part.

"Yes," answered Constans, "for I shall follow the river straight down. It will take a little longer, but that matters not. Good-bye; I sha'n't forget."[Pg 81]

A slender figure slipped out from the shadow of a doorway and confronted them. It was Esmay, and she spoke with serene gravity.

"Since you and Ulick are friends you ought to make it up with me also. But not unless you really want to," she added, hastily.

Constans smiled with youthful cynicism.

"Of course," he answered, magnificently condescending. "You are a woman, and knew no better."

She snatched her hand away. "Yes, I am a woman, Master Constans, and some day you will know what that means." She moved away, majestically as does a goddess, conscious of her power but magnanimously refraining from using it. Constans and Ulick laughed after the manner of men-kind who find it easy to disbelieve in what they do not understand. Then, with a long hand-grip, they parted.

The canoe was still in its hiding-place underneath the ruined pier, and Constans's first care was to stow away in the stern-locker the two volumes of the scientific cyclopædia that he had been reading at the time of his capture. Ulick of his own volition had stolen the books from the library hall, and had put them into Constans's hands at the moment of parting. They made a heavy load for him to carry, but what a precious burden it was and how gladly he assumed it! For these were the keys of power.

As Constans paddled out into the stream he heard the steady thumping of oars in rowlock. He shoved back into the shadow of the pier just as a great galley filled with men came foaming down the river. Constans could see that it was a war-vessel of the largest size, for there were full sixty oars on a side arranged in two[Pg 82] banks. The figure-head was the representation of a black swan, and on the poop-deck stood the slight, graceful figure of a man wearing a plumed hat. Constans saw him remove the cigar from his lips as he turned to give an order. Instantly the port-oars held and backed, and the galley, swinging round on her heel, headed up-stream again, passing within fifty yards of Constans's hiding-place. The boy's bow was in his hand, but he had not attempted to fit an arrow to the string. "It will come—the time," he said, under his breath.

Constans stared gravely after the Black Swan as she drove along. But for the best of good-fortune he might now be tugging at a heavy ashen oar, with the lash of the deck-master striping his back. Ulick, Esmay—yes, he had much to remember.

Two hours later he had scaled the wall of Croye, without being discovered by the sleepy sentinels, and was safe on his pallet of corn-husks in Messer Hugolin's attic.[Pg 83]

X

THE MESSAGE

Three years had passed since that first memorable visit to Doom the Forbidden—years of work and of growth. The simple out-door life and the physical toil had been good discipline for Constans, and he was now a well-built young fellow of two-and-twenty, nearly six feet tall and with muscles like steel wire.

The nights, too, had afforded compensation for the labors of the day, for then he could read and study. The two big volumes of the scientific cyclopædia had been his school-masters, and he had striven faithfully to learn of them. What a wonderful lesson it had been, for while there was much in this teaching that he could not understand at all, there was much again that, with the aid of the illustrations and diagrams, he could make really his own. And so, little by little, he had been able to reconstruct, in imagination, at least, the lost civilization of the ancient world; how men had tamed the lightning and bade it speak their will and work their pleasure; how the same vapor that issued from the pot bubbling on Martina's fire could be harnessed and made to draw a hundred wagons at once upon the old-time steel-railed highways; how a child's hand on the crank of a machine-gun might hurl invisible death among a regiment of[Pg 84] men and put even an army to flight. Steam and gunpowder and electricity, what wonderful ideas were connoted in the words! The very names thrilled him with a sense of infinite power.

A wonderfully fascinating study, and yet at times it left him unspeakably weary and depressed, for what did all this knowledge avail without the practical means to apply it? The great machines that the ancients had built, what were they now but masses of red rust, useless alike to the fool who laughed at them and to the visionary who could only dream of their magnificent potentialities.

A dream, for, in truth, a lion was in the way. So long as the Doomsmen held sway in the land, so long must the wheels of progress stay locked. Unable to use themselves the treasures of knowledge stored under their hands, they were unwilling that another should even touch them. What could he or any other one man do?

Once, indeed, during the three years, Constans had found brief opportunity to revisit the scenes of his old home in the valley of the Swiftwater. In this general district of the West Inch were to be found nearly all of the larger estates, a fitting cradling-place, it would seem, for the new liberty, the awakening era.

But time was not yet come, as Constans soon saw clearly. He had been hospitably enough received, for the country-side had not forgotten the story of the Greenwood Keep, and it was plain to see that this clear-eyed, well-set-up lad was of the true Stockader breed. One of his father's bond-friends, Piers Major, of the River Barony, had even offered Constans a home under his roof-tree in exchange for sword-ser[Pg 85]vice. But this he declined, with becoming gratitude indeed, but none the less firmly. He had no fancy to spend the rest of his life in a trooper's saddle riding down naked savages—an agreeable occupation, whose only variation was an afternoon at pig-sticking or a chance crack at some Doomsman's head. Better to endure the drudgery of the tan-pits than to part with all purpose in life.

And so the crusade, which Constans had hoped to father, died at its birth. The kinsmen and friends of his family were sincere enough in their sympathy, but they could not be expected to risk their own skins in the furtherance of his private quarrels, and, so far as it was a question of political economy or of patriotism, these easy-going gentlemen troubled themselves not one whit. For the most part the Doomsmen kept their distance from a Stockader's threshold, and laissez-faire was a good motto for both sides to adopt.

Constans returned to Croye and to Messer Hugolin's attic neither overmuch surprised nor discouraged by the results of his mission. After all, his ultimate object was a personal one—his revenge—and only his own hand could discharge that debt in full. Did the time seem over-long, the way unendurably lonely and toilsome? He had only to close his eyes to remember—to remember. And so the years had passed.

It was the noon spell on a day in late October, and Constans sat on the river end of the long wooden pier at the tanyard eating his luncheon of bread and bacon scraps. The tide was running up slowly, as could be noted from the bubbles and drift-wood that circled past the piling of the wharf, and Constans,[Pg 86] happening to glance down into the swirl, saw something that brought him to his feet. Nothing more remarkable than a bottle of thick, greenish glass, but bottles of any kind had become valuable now that the art of glass blowing was so little practised, and such flotsam was not to be despised.

Having strung a length of noosed cord to a light pole, Constans threw himself flat along the string-piece of the pier and began angling for the prize. A failure or two and then he had it snared securely; now it was in his hand.

The bottle was foul with slime and fungous growth, showing that it had been in the water for a long period. Possibly it had been out to sea and back many times before this particular flood-tide had brought it to Messer Hugolin's tannery and under the eyes of one who would have the wit to distinguish it from a rotten stick. At all events it had found a port at last.

The bottle had been corked and then sealed with pitch, and Constans had to use some care in getting at its contents, a slender cylinder of tightly rolled paper. Finally he succeeded in drawing it out uninjured, and saw that it was superscribed to his uncle Hugolin.

The old man looked up with a frown as Constans presented himself at the door of the counting-room. The rest hour was over and Constans's place was at the tan-pit. How was the work to get done if everybody shirked their part of the common task? A message in a bottle. What foolery was this? Nevertheless, Messer Hugolin extended his hand to receive the roll, and, removing the waxed string that bound it, knit his brows over the enclosure—half a dozen[Pg 87] sheets of writing. Constans was about to retire discreetly, but Messer Hugolin raised his hand.

"The writing is too fine for my eyes," he grumbled. "Read it for me, nephew; but, harkee! you will keep your mouth shut whatever its import." Then, in a sudden gust of passion: "A thousand plagues on that fool of an up-river factor who broke for me my reading-glass! Not another one to be had in Croye for good-will or gold, and I compelled to borrow another's eyes, to live at the mercy of my meanest clerk. Come, boy, you must have the sense of it by this time!"

"Shall I read it aloud?" asked Constans, and then, in compliance with his uncle's nod, he began: