The Doomsman, Van Tassel Sutphen [top books to read TXT] 📗
- Author: Van Tassel Sutphen
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"'But this concerns only myself, and it is of Esmay, my daughter, that I would speak. In a year she will be seventeen, and before that time, if at all, the way must be opened for her to go to her mother's people. I am helpless, except for this one opportunity of committing a message to the hands of Chance, one slender line dropped into the ocean of uncertainty. Yet nothing remains to me but to make the cast, for in six months' time I shall be dead; I can count the downward steps of my disease as clearly as though they formed part of the actual stairway under my feet.
"'And this also I know—that the message will reach you, my brother; so far, at least, my eyes are permitted to explore the advancing darkness. You will assuredly receive this letter, but with what disposition of heart? That, alas! I may not know. Nor can I give aught of service in either counsel or means; I must trust to your love and good-will for everything. I can only say that the girl is known to all in Doom as Mad Scarlett's daughter. She has her father's tawny hair and red-brown eyes, and her name, as I have already told you, is Esmay.[Pg 89]
"'To-morrow night I shall make my opportunity to reach the river edge unobserved. I shall then commit to the current the bottle containing this message, a precious freight, for it is my darling's life and happiness.
"'To you, my brother, the gift and the grace of God, according as you deal with me and mine.
Elena.
"'Watch him whom they call Quinton Edge.'"
"The date is a year ago, lacking a month," added Constans, as he handed the roll to his uncle.
Messer Hugolin tied up the document with a piece of tape, labelled it with the date of receipt, and laid it away in a pigeon-hole.
"Well?" said Constans, interrogatively.
"Do you want me to put myself within reach of the Gray Wolf's paws?" retorted Messer Hugolin, shrewdly. "I was flayed badly enough the last time the Black Swan cast anchor before Croye, and I am not paying between rent-days."
"The year is almost up," urged Constans, insistently.
"I have lived my life," returned the old man, with sombre fixity of resolve, "and these things do not interest me. I have other use for my hands than to keep them stretched out idly in the dark."
"But that letter—a mother pleading for her child. You have but to give the word—there are men who will go, and gladly."
"I doubt it not, for there are always drones a-plenty around a beehive. But why should I spend my good, red gold to make a beggar's holiday?"
Constans felt his cheeks burn. "Their blood is redder than your gold," he said. "And if they are not afraid to risk——"[Pg 90]
"What has cost them nothing and for whose loss there is quick repair in a few square inches of sticking-plaster. Tush! boy, you speak of these things as one who dreams visions at noonday. While I—what I know, I know. There is but one thing precious in the world, and that is what a man holds safely in his strong-box. Why should I spend myself for naught?"
"The girl is your niece—your flesh and blood."
"No more so than yourself, nephew. And tell me, have I ever been over-tender with you on that account? Can you call to mind when and where I have spared you because you were of my kin? At least, I make a virtue of my honesty."
Messer Hugolin smiled. He saw from Constans's face that he need not plot out the thought in plainer words, and so they parted without further speaking, although the blood throbbed in Constans's temples as he made obeisance and walked away. He was conscious that he must keep himself in hand; the stocks and the whipping-post were ever ready for the rebellious apprentice, and a single hasty act might imperil his whole future. But as he lay awake that night in his attic bedchamber he resolved that this should be his last week's work in Messer Hugolin's tan-pits. The time had come for him to make a second visit to Doom the Forbidden, and to remain there for an indefinite period—until his work had been accomplished.
It would have been impossible for Constans to have embarked upon this new adventure were it not for the two small gold coins that he had found and carried away from Doom on the occasion of his former visit. It was against the common law of the land for a bound apprentice to possess any money, even a hand[Pg 91]ful of copper pence. He had to be careful, therefore, with whom he dealt, and he expected to be cheated in making his bargain for a boat and a supply of provisions. As it was, he was skilfully skinned by the rascal with whom he finally ventured to open negotiations, and Constans thought himself lucky to exchange it for a leaky, flat-bottomed tub and fifty pounds weight of absolute necessaries, chiefly sun-dried strips of beef and parched grain.
"THEY PARTED WITHOUT FURTHER SPEAKING"
His personal belongings were not burdensome to transfer—the books, half a dozen in all, his revolver and field-glass, and a good ash bow with twelve dozen arrows, each bearing his private mark of a scarlet feather. These last he had been at work upon through many a long evening in the last two months, and he was sure that they would serve him well should need arise. Clothing and blankets he did not trouble about, even with the cold weather close at hand, for he could reckon certainly on finding abundant supplies of this nature in the city itself.
On the fourth night after the finding of the bottle Constans swung lightly out of his garret window. He cast one farewell glance at the shuttered windows of Messer Hugolin's office. Through a chink struggled a feeble beam of pale, yellow light, but his uncle was poring, doubtless, over his ledgers and had heard no sound. The wolf-hound Grip wagged his tail as Constans passed, and he patted his head, the one single creature in his uncle's household who might regret his absence on the morrow. Now the way was clear; he stole off into the darkness, finding no difficulty in scaling the wall, and so was free.
The night was misty and starless and the tide on a[Pg 92] strong ebb. The voyage down-stream was without incident, and by midnight he had landed within the city lines, but much farther up-town than upon the occasion of his first adventure. His plan was to seek some uninhabited house within convenient distance of the library building and make that his temporary headquarters. He found what he wanted in the block immediately to the westward of the library, and in three or four trips he had transported thither his stock of food and other impedimenta. The boat had leaked badly on the way down the river, and was plainly unseaworthy. There was no place in which to hide the craft, and to allow her to remain moored at the pier would be tantamount to announcing his arrival to the first sharp-eyed Doomsman who might chance to pass that way. So, pushing her out into the current with a vigorous shove from his foot, Constans watched the little hull disappear in the darkness. Henceforth he must depend entirely upon his own resources, inadequate as they were for the task before him. But upon this phase of the situation he would not allow himself to dwell. Such unprofitable meditation could breed naught but irresolution and be unnerving to both body and mind; if he were to play the coward now he but invited the fate he feared. Courage, then, and forward![Pg 93]
XITHE SISTERS
A young girl sat before a magnificent fireplace of cut stone gazing into the fire of drift-wood that burned diffidently upon a hearth whose spaciousness would have been more fittingly adorned by Vergil's "no small part of a tree." Out-of-doors the snow was whirling down in small, frozen flakes that the northwest gale ground into powder against the granite walls and then sifted through every crack and crevice; not a door-sill or window-seat but wore its decoration of a pure white wreath. Bitterly cold it had grown with the closing in of the dusk, and the girl drew her cloak, a superb garment of Russian sables, closer about her shoulders and stretched out her hands to the dying blaze. Then she clapped them impatiently. A long interval and a middle-aged man answered the summons—a servant, as the coarse quality of his clothing proclaimed. He shuffled across the floor, his big boots creaking unpleasantly.
"More wood, Ugo," said the girl, without looking around; "and I do wish you would grease your boots. It is unbearable the way you clatter about."
"Grease my boots!" echoed the man, with ironic emphasis. "That is good counsel, seeing there isn't[Pg 94] enough lard in the house for the frying of an egg; yes, and no egg to fry."
The girl half turned, as though about to speak, then checked herself. Ugo went on impertinently:
"I could see long ago how things were going, but, Lord, what was the use of breaking my heart over it! A dainty lip means a short purse-string, and a sick woman's fancy is a bottomless well. Let's have plain speaking about this; it can't hurt any one now, and your mother——"
He stopped short, disconcerted, for all his bravado, by the sudden glint of red that lit up the girl's eyes. Her hand plucked at the black ribbon around her throat; yet when she spoke her voice was clear and even.
"Never mind about my mother," she said, and the man kept sulky silence.
"Is it really true that there is no food in the house?" she continued.
"There was never a rope made that hadn't an end," answered the servant, with a trifle more of his former assurance. "Not a scrap of bacon nor a handful of flour in the larder; even the rats will tell you that. I saw two of them leaving to-day, and I've about made up my mind to follow them."
The girl unlocked a drawer in the teak-wood table that stood at her elbow, and took from it a leathern thong some eight inches in length and knotted together at the ends, a purse-string in common parlance. Upon it were strung three of the thin brass tokens pierced in the centre by a square hole that were in ordinary use among the Doomsmen as currency, redeemable against the material supplies on hand in the public storehouses.[Pg 95]
The girl untied the thong and let the coins fall upon the table. She pushed them over to the fellow with a gesture superbly indifferent.
"Go now," she said, curtly. The man Ugo pocketed the money with a darkening face and turned to depart. At the door he hesitated, making as though he would say a final word. But the girl cut him short.
"Go!" she reiterated, and he had no choice but to obey.
"I should have been in peril of having my ear nicked," he said, under his breath, as he crossed the threshold. "It's just as well that I kept my tongue between my teeth and concluded not to mind Quinton Edge's business." He closed the door.
It had grown quite dark, and the fire was making its last stand for life. Only one small piece of wood remained unconsumed, and the flame licked at it lazily, like a beast of prey hanging over a carcass, gorged to repletion and yet unwilling to give over employment so delicious. Suddenly the girl rose to her feet and went to one of the long windows that looked out upon the street. The casement shook and rattled under the gale's rough hand. Hardly knowing what she did, she flung the window wide open.
In an instant she seemed to have been transported into the midst of the tumult, her face lashed by windy whips, her eyes blinded by fine particles of frozen snow, her ears deafened by the multitudinous voices of the storm sprites shrieking to their fellows. Something in her nature, fierce and untamed, leaped forth to meet the tempest. Intoxicated by the strong wine of its fury, she flung out her arms, half fearing, half hoping that she might be swept away, whirled[Pg 96] like some wild sea-bird, into the heart of the madness. A
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