KILDHURM'S OAK.
CHAPTER I.
OLD LADY MAINWARING.
I see by the papers that this grand old lady is dead. She had passed her eighty-ninth birthday. Born in a year when Warren Hastings was still on his trial for high crimes and misdemeanours, the only child of Sir Philip Kildhurm of Kildhurm Tower, she was married at seventeen to Captain Frank Mainwaring, of His Britannic Majesty's Navy—a man who enjoyed the distinction of being wounded at Trafalgar. Captain Mainwaring (knighted in 1811 on acceding to his uncle's estates) died in 1840; he left two sons and a daughter. Both the sons died in the cholera epidemic of 1832, unmarried. The daughter was wedded to a gentleman of family and estate, and accompanied him to India, where he held some official position. But his whole family (several children had been born) were murdered in the Sepoy outbreak. Thus it came about that, for the last twenty years, Lady Mainwaring has been the sole survivor of her race; and now she is gone, they are extinct.
She was a grand, serene old lady: with a noble face, whose beauty time could not altogether take away, and a majestic figure that scarcely stooped beneath the weight of fourscore years and nine. Her eyes were remarkable—large, black, and keen, and innocent of spectacles to the very end; but her hair, famous two generations since for its sable luxuriance, became in later times snow-white, although the long arched eyebrows kept their former hue. A wonderful old lady: endowed to the last with singular personal fascination, her manner the perfection of gentle dignity, in looking at her, or listening to the inflections of her low deep voice, you felt that hers was a spirit of no ordinary capacities and powers. But she was the descendant of no ordinary ancestry. Several of her progenitors had been endowed with gifts of the kind that modern science is always no less quick to explain away than slow to explain, but in which the folk of a less sophisticated age did powerfully and potently believe. I am not at this moment concerned to enter upon a discussion of supernatural phenomena, so called, beyond remarking that no physiologist can pretend to any right to be heard at all on the subject: the credulity which can believe witchcraft and sorcery to be the bugbears of a diseased imagination being too gross to command attention. Reasonable people believe that the human body has a soul; that there is a spiritual sight answering to the bodily sight; and that when this spiritual sight is opened, it must inevitably behold the objects of a spiritual world. Concerning the spiritual world two or three facts, at least, are self-evident. Being a world of the mind, only the laws of the mind can hold sway there; it is therefore free from the trammels of space and time. Further, it is a world of real substance, in contradistinction to the apparent substantiality of the world of matter. Thus far logic carries us; and we do not at present need to go farther. For if man, living as to his body in the material world, lives at the same time as to his spirit in the spiritual world, then prophecy, soothsaying, second-sight, or whatever 'miracle' involves the transgression of no spiritual principle, becomes only the corollary of our theorem. The wonder-workers of old are justified. As for the Charlatans, they are not tricksters merely, but profaners, whose doom is spiritual death.
It was not unknown to some of the more intimate of Lady Mainwaring's friends that she possessed abnormal powers; and though she was constitutionally reserved in her communications, she occasionally came out with some noteworthy utterance on the subject. But if she saw and knew things beyond the ordinary scope, these influenced her spiritual rather than her material existence. She was well poised; there was no one-sidedness in her character; the spirit was so soundly and healthily wedded to the body that neither was in excess; they performed their several functions in such harmony that one was seldom engaged apart from the other. But although this was happily the case with Lady Mainwaring, it had been otherwise with some of her ancestors. They could not walk the world with even and measured steps, but ever and anon plunged or soared into abysses which no mortal plummet has sounded. In Lady Mainwaring's later years, a spirit of sweet and dignified garrulity occasionally inspired her, under the influence of which she would relate to discreet and sympathetic ears many strange particulars both of her own and of her forefathers' history. Now that she is gone, I am at liberty to reproduce some of these communications; giving them, so far as is possible, a connected and consecutive form. Her singularly fascinating narrative faculty, however, I cannot pretend to imitate. She was full of unrhymed and unwritten poetry of an elevated and mystic stamp. She had no ambition to be a writer, and after all she could never have done herself justice on paper. Whoever had listened to the subdued melody of her tones, flexible, various, controlled, and reflecting every emotional phase of the tale as it was told; whoever had felt the blood shrink to his heart at crises of the story, marked by a slight movement of her long white hands, a quiver of the black brows, an unexpected hush in the voice—whoever had had experience of this would have known that it was not to be sought on any printed page. Yet there was nothing histrionic in Lady Mainwaring's demeanour. A person sitting a dozen yards away from her could not have distinguished a word she said, and would scarcely have perceived that she was making use of gestures to enforce her meaning. It needed a close eye to catch all the subtle play of that venerable countenance.
The story I have compiled begins at a period now distant; yet the series of events appears compact and coherent. What fact is there more tough and undeniable than an oak in an English park? Yet, firmly rooted though it be among the things of to-day, its beginnings date back a thousand years; it is a creature of the Dark Ages, a contemporary of legendary heroes and heroines, giants and fairies. It is a tangible proof of the mysterious past; but, in bringing vanished ages into the light of the passing moment, it takes from them the very reality whereof they testify.
CHAPTER II.
SIR BRIAN'S TROUBLES.
The Oak of Kildhurm does not date back a thousand years. Its exact age is not known, but it grew to be a sturdy vegetable, great of girth and royal in its spread of limb. It was first recognisable as a tree in the hither outskirts of Queen Elizabeth's time, or in King James's earlier years: about the epoch, say, of the Gunpowder Treason, when the struggles between King and Parliament which culminated in the rebellion of two-score years later were just beginning: when people wore ruffs and tight waists, and cultivated a stiffness of aspect as if they were continually sitting for their portraits; when the names of Bacon, Raleigh, Shakespeare, and Drake had as yet acquired no legendary halo; when gentlemen were haughty and punctilious, wore long swords with basket hilts, and were bloodthirstily polite in using the same; when women were almost as beautiful and virtuous as they are at the present day, but less squeamish upon certain points; when Spain was as much of a scapegoat for English vituperation as Russia is now; when popery was not merely a picturesque opinion, but a matter of blazing faggots and iron virgins; when El Dorado still gleamed along the horizons of the Spanish main. At about this time it was that two men, riding in opposite directions along a lonely road, met beneath a huge oak tree, whose gnarled limbs, thickly clothed with sombre foliage, extended nearly across the way.
The name of only one of these men has been preserved to us by tradition. Sir Brian Kildhurm, a valiant knight of Queen Elizabeth's manufacture, had fought with distinction in the Spanish wars, and afterwards (though himself of Irish descent) had unsheathed his sword for the repression of the Irish difficulties of that day. He owned a fair estate on the coast of Cumberland, a castle with a broad-bottomed tower on its seaward corner, a little black-haired son, and a very beautiful wife. With regard to this same wife, however, there was a difficulty, it would be hard to say exactly what: but, at all events, the personage who chanced to encounter Sir Brian beneath the overhanging branches of the oak tree on the lonely road was, in Sir Brian's opinion, in some way responsible for it.
They reined-in their horses, and exchanged a few words, which were doubtless of a courteous but hardly of a conciliating tendency. Each wore some light armour on head, arms, and breasts, high heavy boots, and the customary sword and dagger. But it is to be noted that, whereas Sir Brian's sword was of the rapier description, that of his opponent was a ponderous double-edged weapon, fitter to be wielded with two hands than with one. Its owner, however, was a man of vast size and strength, broad of beam and massive of limb, and with a great sheaf of rough red beard blowing about his face and chest; and he could flirt the huge sword about as lightly as if it had been a bamboo walking-stick. Sir Brian, on the other hand, like all the men of his race, was tall, lithe, agile, and terribly skilful of fence.
It will be understood that these details would not have been dwelt upon, had the encounter between the two gentlemen been destined to pass off peacefully. But peace was far from the hearts of either of them. They meant deadly mischief to one another; and Sir Brian at least had long looked for an opportunity of doing his share of it. Accordingly, after levelling a proper amount of fantastic and quaint abuse at one another, these two sons of Adam dismounted from their steeds, placed themselves face to face on the greensward beneath the oak tree, and then and there presently set to work to spill each other's life-blood. Meanwhile, their horses peaceably cropped the herbage, and took the little intermission in their labours in very good part.
Sir Brian never appeared to have a chance against his gigantic adversary. What avails a cunning guard, when sheer strength beats it down, and when blow follows blow so rapidly and with such outrageous force, that the wiriest opponent has much ado to hop out of the way of them, leaving all attempt at retaliation out of the question for the present? In spite of Sir Brian's best activity, the giant's weapon several times reached his body, crushing the light plates of iron armour, and once or twice biting through them to the flesh. 'The caitiff must needs wax scant of breath ere long,' thought Sir Brian to himself, as he saw that steel flail flash up and down; but it was dangerous work waiting for that time to arrive. In a moment a blow fell upon his helmet, sheared away the left side of it, and grazed the scalp, so that blood rushed forth and made gory the knight's face and gorget. A little giddy from this shock, Sir Brian staggered, his knees bent, and his neck felt an inch or two shorter than was comfortable. Perceiving this, his enemy resolved to make an end of him forthwith; for there was no question of giving quarter in this fight, but one or both must never fight again. Grasping his sword with both hands, therefore, he poised it for a back-stroke into which he threw the whole force and weight of his body. Sir Brian, glancing dizzily up, saw the keen blade glitter above him; then down it came—but not all the way down! For in mid-descent it came in contact with a low-lying limb of the oak tree—nine inches thick of hard living wood—sheared through it to the last half-inch, and the hilt flew from the striker's grasp. His arms dropped to his sides, tingling to the shoulder. At the same moment Sir Brian had lunged forward with the strength of despair, and his rapier passed clean through the neck of the other, who fell backwards with a groan and a gurgle, breaking the rapier-blade short off in the wound. He never spoke a word, but bled like a bull, and in a few minutes was dead.
Sir Brian Kildhurm leaned upon the fragment of his sword, recovering his breath, and staring at the red-bearded face of his dead enemy.
'So much for my Lady Ursula's sweetheart!' he muttered to himself.
After standing a little longer, he wiped his sword and slapped it home in the sheath; unlaced and flung away the pieces of his helmet; and at length, kneeling on one knee beside the burly corpse, he cut open with his dagger the front of the doublet. A broad gold chain and locket were revealed, the sight whereof caused Sir Brian's lean visage to wrinkle itself painfully. He took up the locket, sticky as it was with blood, and opened it. It contained, not the lock of crisp black hair that he had put in it ten years ago, but a soft brown coil of a woman's braid. He closed the locket and thrust it into his bosom. He took his enemy's dagger, which was richly inlaid and wrought; and finally he broke off from the branch whose interposition had saved his life a twig with a cluster of acorns growing upon it. These also he dabbled with blood; then he mounted and rode slowly away, leaving the corpse and the other horse beneath the oak tree.
This fight took place on a cool and breezy afternoon in the month of October, in a small valley between Dent Hill and Ennerdale Water in Cumberland. The horse remained beside his dead master until nightfall, because the latter's beard, blowing to and fro in the breeze, made him seem to be alive. But at night the horse trotted away, and by sunrise was standing at the gates of a Catholic monastery, fifty miles south-eastward of that fatal spot.
CHAPTER III.
FATHER, MOTHER, AND SON.
Sir Brian rode north and west, crossing a small river, where he stopped to bathe his wounds, and then forward again for six or seven miles, until he came to the sea-coast and to the Kildhurm estates. It was already dusk when he dismounted in the courtyard of his castle. He had been absent for some weeks, and he had not been expected home so soon; nevertheless he was welcomed back most respectfully. He made no allusion to his late encounter at Ennerdale, but put on a gracious demeanour, and seemed altogether in unusually good spirits. When his wife came out to meet him, holding their little son by the hand, he greeted her with more than his customary urbanity; and stooped to kiss the boy, who, however, shrank away from him with an odd cry of aversion, as if he had smelt the death-scent in his breath.
'He should be trained to better manners,' said the knight, with a smile.
'He should see the world, then,' answered the wife.
'Are we so wholly apart from the world,' returned Sir Brian, fixing his eyes upon her, 'that no guests, bidden or unbidden, ever pass our gates?'
'Who should visit us in a spot so remote as this?' exclaimed Lady Kildhurm. 'It is much if now and then we catch sight of some clownish tenant of ours, riding by on the road beyond the park.'
'You love London better—is it not so?'
'I was bred in London, Brian, and would gladly see it again. When we married, thou didst promise me sometimes to return thither. But now for three years I have not been a day's ride from the castle.'
'Indeed, I have been remiss, Ursula; but thou knowest how vexed the country hath been of late, and I ever commanded hither and thither by our gracious monarch. But I had hoped thou wouldst have found some company in thy solitude.'
'Last night we had a visitor,' spoke up the boy, looking up in his mother's face. 'I saw him—the big man with the red beard——'
'Silence, sirrah!' interrupted the knight, with a stern voice and frown. 'What art thou, to contradict thy mother to her face! Look how thy impudence hath made her blush! Off to thy nurse, and let me hear thy babble no more to-day. Would a big red-bearded man have been here, and thy mother not have told me of it?' And hereupon Sir Brian laughed.
After the boy had been taken away, he sat down in his high-backed chair beside the hearth, and motioned with his hand to Lady Kildhurm to seat herself opposite him.
'This is a lonely spot indeed,' he said, 'and withal none too safe for an unarmed man to ride abroad. Even this very afternoon, Ursula, as I was spurring along the road by Ennerdale Water, thinking of the loving and wifely welcome thou wouldst give me on my arrival here, I was set upon by a brawny ruffian, a huge, bearded varlet, with a sword a cloth-yard and a half long. We fought beneath the Great Oak; and he would have cloven me to the chine, save that, as good luck would have it, he caught his blade against a branch, so that he lost his hold upon the hilt. But my peril was great. See, I have brought away a twig of the tree for remembrance of my escape.'
So saying he drew forth from his breast the cluster of acorns, and held it towards his wife.
'There is blood upon it!' cried Lady Kildhurm, snatching back her half-extended hand. 'Brian—what man was this?'
'What man?' he repeated with a short laugh. 'What but a robber, Ursula, who would rob me of what I hold most precious? But methinks his ill deeds are at an end now!'
'What hast thou done to him?' she asked, trembling very much.
'Nay, I did but pass my rapier through his weazand,' replied the knight, keeping his black eyes on her face. 'Indeed, he was not worthy to die by the hand of a true man, but should rather have been hanged on the tree beneath which he fell, as a warning to all such vermin. But in the hurry of the moment I stood not upon ceremony.... Do not turn so pale, Ursula! Comfort thyself, dear wife—I got but a scratch or so, which will be healed long ere the crows have made a meal of his carcase.'
'This afternoon—by the Oak of Ennerdale?' said Lady Kildhurm in a dull voice, her eyes wide open and fixed.
'And, by the bye, I took a trophy from him—a pretty trinket enough—and have brought it to hang about thy neck as a keepsake. See—pure gold it is, and in its shape strangely like the one I gave thee years ago, and which thou hast doubtless kept so religiously ever since. But this has in it, not my hair, but a braid cut from some woman's head—his light-o'-love's, I take it. Throw that away as unworthy thy chaste ownership: but accept the gold from thy loving husband, Ursula!'
When Lady Kildhurm beheld this sure evidence that what she had perhaps foreboded had come to pass, her trembling ceased, and she became strangely composed. She held out her hand for the locket.
'Give it me,' she said. 'Ay, it is pretty, indeed; and I thank thee for it more than for any other gift of thine. Why, this too is smeared with blood; but my lips shall cleanse it—I will kiss it, kiss it, till all is kissed away. And I will wear it in my bosom, Brian, and it shall never come forth thence—never while I live, I promise thee. Thou canst not say I did not prize this gift! The cluster of acorns—give me them also. Hast thou anything else for me?'
'Here is his dagger,' returned the knight with an attempt at a sneer. 'Thou mayest find a use for that, perhaps!'
She took the dagger, and then, standing erect before her husband, she met his glance unflinchingly. 'Farewell, Brian,' said she. 'Thou hast been a hard and unloving husband to me. Often, when I would have clung to thee, thou hast put me aside with cold and sneering words, and hast shut me out from that confidence and fair entertainment which a wife should have. For years thou hast confined me to this solitude! travelling abroad thyself, and leaving me here, your wife only in name, and as yielding meek obedience to your tyrannous will. Thou hast neither loved, honoured nor cherished me, and since these two years I have known that thou hast held me in suspicion. God alone knows, or ever shall know, whether the suspicion was just. This is my revenge—that I will leave thee in doubt! But hadst thou been kinder to me, Brian—hadst thou answered the craving of my overwrought heart—hadst thou been true to thy duty as a husband, thou wouldst not have thought me failing in mine as a wife. But I do not ask forgiveness: be God judge between us, which has most wronged the other!'
'You have much to say about God, madam,' broke in Sir Brian: 'but my fear is, your deeds are less heavenly than your words.'
'Look to thy own deeds! for they shall condemn thee for ever!' exclaimed Lady Kildhurm, raising both her hands, one holding the dagger, and the other the cluster of acorns, and then letting them droop slowly towards him. 'Thou hast slain a good and holy man, whose shoe's latchet thou wast not worthy to unlace. Evil shall be thy portion in this world: and if ever thou turnest thy steps heavenward, may the blood which thou hast this day shed cause thee to slip and stumble in the way!'
Having thus spoken, Lady Kildhurm retired to her chamber. Sir Brian sat alone in his high-backed chair by the fire-place, resting his lean cheek upon his hand, and staring at the embers. When a servant came to bring him supper, he gave the man so black a look as to send him frightened back; and during the rest of the night, no one ventured to approach the room. As the hours passed away, every sound was hushed, except the heavy thundering of the surf against the shore, and the whipping of the wind-driven foam against the windows. Once Sir Brian fancied he heard an outcry and a sobbing, as of a child in distress,—the voice of his little son; but by degrees the sobbing died away.
In the early morning, as Sir Brian stood at the window, he saw the grey sea hurling itself at the bare coast, and the sea-gulls skimming and eddying amidst the bitter foam of the great breakers. The grey walls of Kildhurm Tower, which stood scarce a hundred paces from the shore, were hoary with clinging flakes of froth. Directly opposite the window where Sir Brian was standing, on the verge of the low headland, lay a heap of something that had not been there the evening before. Was it a mass of sea-wrack, cast up by the waves during the night? Sir Brian could not see clearly; the window-pane was dim with salt, and his eyes were heavy. He stealthily left the room, descended the staircase, and, bareheaded as he was, crossed the wind-swept breadth of turf that intervened between the tower and the headland.
There lay the body of his wife, face downwards, with arms outstretched, and hands that clutched the turf. It was a spot to which she had often come to sit, and to gaze for hours westward across the waves towards Mona, where she was born. Sir Brian stood looking down at her, as he had stood by that other dead body the day before. He had been the death of them both. At first, indeed, he did not quite believe that she was dead. He watched for some movement of those fingers which clutched so sharply into the turf, those soft white fingers that yesterday had been so tremulous. But there was no tremor in them now; they were rigid as iron: the wind that fluttered her garments could not stir them. Poor little hands! Perhaps, after all, Sir Brian had not pressed them so lovingly, or so often as he might have done. He remembered how, sometimes when they had touched his hair or his cheek, he had moodily disregarded their touch, or had brushed them impatiently away. What hands would caress him now? 'Hadst thou not failed in thy duty as a husband;' and again: 'Mayst thou slip and stumble in the blood which thou hast this day shed!' Those were words which could never be unspoken. And yet Sir Brian waited beside the body, as if he expected it to arise and speak to him.
But at length, setting his teeth together, he laid hold of the body, and placed it face upwards across his knee. As he did so, the cause of death was revealed. She had planted the dagger point upwards in the earth, and had fallen upon it. Something else she had planted there, though at the time Sir Brian did not know it—the acorns from the fatal oak of Ennerdale; and she had fertilised them with her very heart's blood.
Some of the servants, who had been peeping out from the castle windows, aghast at so grim a spectacle, now made bold to approach and offer their assistance. Sir Brian, however, as if he had not seen them, rose, lifting the corpse in his arms, and stalked in silence up the ascent to the castle gate, neither staggering nor pausing by the way. The servants followed in a group after him.
When he got to the gate, he was met by his little son, who had his father's black hair and eyes, and his mother's tremulous indignant mouth. The child's nurse had in vain striven to keep him out of the way, and from a knowledge of what had happened. He seemed, indeed, to know more about it than anyone else.
'My dear mamma is dead!' quoth the infant heir of Kildhurm, his cheeks flushing scarlet and his childish voice vibrating. 'You have killed her, you wicked father, and I will never, never forgive you.'
Sir Brian stopped short, and his teeth began to chatter.
'Take the brat away!' he cried out.
But at the same moment his strength forsook him, and he would have fallen on his own threshold, had not those behind upheld him, and carried him and the dead woman into the castle. The stark warrior never fully recovered from the effects of this adventure.
CHAPTER IV.
THE OAK BEGINS TO GROW.
This is the legend of the planting of Kildhurm's Oak. It has, indeed, been affirmed that the child's words were literally true, and that Lady Kildhurm died actually and not figuratively by her husband's hand. But there is no trustworthy evidence in support of such a charge, and it may therefore be discredited. The fact remains that father and son were never reconciled; not because the latter held to his childish threat, but because Sir Brian conceived an unconquerable dread of him, and would never willingly have him in his presence. All accounts agree in representing this hitherto fearless man as having become a victim to superstitious terrors, and as having lapsed into an altogether morbid state of mind. In his sleep he was often heard to shriek out unintelligible words in a choking voice, and sometimes, in the midst of company, he would have the air of suddenly being confronted with sights and sounds to which none but he were sensible. He would point to the ground with his finger, it is said, muttering and staring, and occasionally drawing back his feet, as if to avoid treading upon some imaginary horror. This latter peculiarity was first noticed in him on the day of his wife's funeral. All the chief personages in the neighbourhood had been invited to the ceremony, and a large concourse of people had assembled out of curiosity. The darksome procession had entered the churchyard of the Gothic church that stood in the midst of the village about a mile from Kildhurm Tower. The coffin was being carried in beneath the arched portal, when Sir Brian set his foot on the first of the seven stone steps which led up thither. All at once, to the surprise and discomfiture of the beholders, he halted abruptly, and then gave back a pace or two. His eyes, meanwhile, were observed to be rigidly fixed on the clean and smooth-worn steps before him. Sir Brian slowly extended his arm, with finger outstretched, and seemed to trace therewith the course of some sluggishly-moving thing that crept towards him along the flags, and which, assuredly, nobody except himself could perceive.
'Look, look! 'tis running down the steps! Merciful God! where should so much come from?' he whispered between his chattering teeth.
Whispered though the words were, they were caught up by those nearest him, and by them communicated to others. An awkward and irresolute pause followed; the funeral cortège wavered, and forsook its narrow regularity, and a group of curious, startled, and questioning faces grouped themselves around the knight, who still glared downward, shivering and distraught. At length the clergyman of the parish, an elderly, stern-visaged man, made his way through the press, and laid his hand upon the stricken man's shoulder.
'Honoured Sir Knight,' said he, 'let not a grief which is most natural, and worthy of all respect, overcome you at this moment; for all the people stand amazed, and know not what to do. Go forward, I entreat you, into the church, that the last sad rites may be performed, and the assembly dismissed.'
Thus admonished, Sir Brian pressed both his hands across his eyes, and made a hurried and desperate attempt to reach the church door. But on the first step he slipped and fell headlong, shrieking out in a voice that rang over the crowd and penetrated to the coffin-bearers within the aisle—
'I am cursed! Her blood is upon me!'
It was an ugly and an ominous spectacle. No further attempt was made to induce him to enter the church, nor is it likely that any such attempt would have succeeded. From his behaviour, and from sundry obscure sentences that fell from him, it was inferred that the arched doorway, to his apprehension, was sentinelled by some grisly phantom that waved him back. And it is worthy of note that from this time to the very end of his life, he never made his way into the house of God, or even would accept the ministrations of any member of the sacred profession. To strive to bring his mind into a religious frame was tantamount to throwing him into one of his fits of superstitious delirium; so that those last words of his wife, on parting with him for ever—'May the blood which thou hast this day shed cause thee to slip and stumble in thy way heavenward!'—would seem to have found a sufficiently ample fulfilment.
The fact that he never saw his wife buried, by the way, may account for the notion which constantly possessed him that she was still in some shape or other (a very appalling one, seemingly) above ground. In other words, the man was haunted for the remainder of his days by a spectre; possibly by more than one: but that is a point not easy to determine, since he was the only person to whom it or they were visible. He contracted a habit of betaking himself at certain hours to that particular point on the cliff where the body of Lady Kildhurm had been found: being thereto impelled, we may suppose, not because the place was agreeable to him—for it is probable that no place in the world was less so—but by that perverse horror which is known by the name of fascination, and which drives the fluttering sparrow into the open jaws of the snake. Having regard to all these eccentricities of his, it is not surprising that he came to be considered as a man accursed—incapable of being of use to any human creature, and therefore to be avoided of all. It must be recollected that this was the beginning of the seventeenth century; nobody allows himself to fall into delusions nowadays. And it will be easy for the philosophers of our enlightened age to account for Sir Brian's mania, and his notions about phantoms, as a result of that astounding buffet on the head which he received from him of the Red Beard; a buffet rude enough, certainly, to have disorganised brains stronger than those of the Knight of Kildhurm. There remains, it is true, the question why such a cause should be followed by such an effect; but to insist upon this would be, perhaps, but the refinement of idle curiosity.
The violent extinction of these two lives—of Lady Kildhurm's and of him of the Red Beard—was suffered to pass without legal inquiries, or at all events without legal penalties. The north of England, at this period, was not in a particularly peaceful or settled condition; and, what is more to the purpose, the red-bearded man was known to have been ardently attached to the Roman Catholic religion; and he was doubtless suspected by some of having affiliations with the authors of the Gunpowder Treason. No one, of course, who set any value upon the security of his own vertebra, would care to espouse the cause of a person of whom such things could be said, especially after taking into consideration the fact that the person was no longer alive. As for Lady Kildhurm, if it were true that she had carried on an intrigue with a traitor and conspirator, what more probable and easy to be believed than that she should have sympathised with his political and religious views into the bargain? For when women give themselves up to love, it is their happiness to give themselves without reservation of soul, mind, or body. Let Lady Kildhurm and her lover, therefore, if they needed avenging, manage the matter for themselves, and in their own way.
And, surely, no one who was present at the deathbed of Sir Brian Kildhurm would have ventured to affirm that the blood of those two was unavenged. But over that grim scene let a veil be drawn. After all, Lady Kildhurm may have been innocent; and if Sir Brian found this out when it was too late, his fate was in no respect an enviable one.
CHAPTER V.
THE PROPHECY OF THE OAK.
Ralph Kildhurm—that bold-spoken youngster who bearded his father at the castle gate—had a grand career. His life covers the period of the Puritan Revolution. He was a devoted adherent of King Charles; probably not more from personal sympathy with that unhappy monarch, than because he knew that the Stuarts' cause would have been his mother's, had she been alive. He met his death valiantly at Naseby. But he had married two years previously, and two sons came of the union, one of whom was born six months after his decease. This younger son was destined to be his successor.
Our affair being the story of the Oak, and of the family mainly in so far as it was involved therewith, I can give few further details about Sir Ralph. He was the first baronet of his line. Ralph, it is said, had always taken great interest in the growth of the infant oak tree; as was no wonder, considering that it had been planted by his mother under circumstances so darkly impressive. At the time of Sir Brian's death, the tree had grown to about the height of a man: it flourished with strange vigour. The story of its origin was not unknown in the neighbourhood, and many quaint and fantastic sayings and prophecies concerning it were rife among the people of the neighbourhood. Its rapid growth was plausibly ascribed to the blood which had drenched the soil at its planting; and it was affirmed that this blood had been absorbed into the life and substance of the tree, imparting to it a kind of semi-human vitality; so that, although in outward semblance an oak, much like other oaks, it was in reality a species of oak man—an offspring, in fact, of the valiant race of Kildhurm, born of the alleged unhallowed union between Lady Kildhurm and the Red-Bearded one. Therefore its destiny was bound up with that of the Kildhurms; but whether for weal or for woe was a question as to which different people held different opinions. Some said that, since from evil no good could come, and since Lady Kildhurm had died in sin, the tree that sprang from her blood was an accursed growth instinct with a demon of violence and mischief, and sure, sooner or later, to work harm upon its human kindred. Others, on the contrary, maintained that the charge against Ursula was—in its blacker construction, at all events—a calumny; that he of the Red Beard had been a priest or a monk in disguise, and that the intrigue in which the two were concerned had for its object nothing worse than the furtherance of some religious scheme. Consequently, urged these charitably-disposed persons, the blood which fertilised the planted acorns was the blood of innocence wrongfully accused; and might be expected to carry with it a blessing rather than a curse.
But hereupon the first party would reply that, whether Ursula were guilty or innocent of the crime charged against her, there could at all events be little doubt that she had taken her own life, and no doubt at all that the latest words she spoke to her husband were a deliberate curse. Now, it was a fact established upon Scriptural authority that the evil effect of a curse descends from father to son even unto the third and fourth generation—and this, whether the person who pronounced the anathema desired such an amplification of it or not: curses being like demons, which, once evoked, are not easily laid again. Upon the whole, therefore, it seemed probable that the Kildhurms would fare badly with their oak; yet it appears never to have occurred to anybody to try the effect of rooting the oak up, or cutting it down. But very likely nobody would have been found venturesome enough to act upon the idea, even had it been suggested. Such a proceeding, under the circumstances, would have been regarded as little better than murder, if not a good deal worse: for although Dante could scarcely have been familiar to the Kildhurm family, and still less to the peasantry of that epoch, a belief was widely prevalent that if an axe should be laid to the tree, or so much as a twig torn off it, blood would flow from the wound. And to such a pitch was this grotesque notion carried, that during many years the dead leaves and fallen boughs of the oak are said to have been religiously buried, as if they had been veritable human remains. I do not care to vouch for the truth of this legend, but that it should have existed even as a legend is significant of the serious light in which the whole matter was viewed.
It was during Sir Ralph's lifetime that some local Mother Shipton produced the famous prophetic verses which were ever thenceforward quoted when the Oak and its attributes came up for discussion; and as to the true meaning of which a great deal of speculation and dispute were rife. What may have been the merits of the question can be inferred only from the sequel; but meanwhile it is certain that the prophecy itself so far appealed to the pride or interests of the Kildhurm family, that they caused it to be engraved upon a silver disc, and hung round the bole of the tree by a silver chain. There is no evidence of this chain and the disc ever having been removed; and the story goes that they were gradually overgrown by the substance of the tree; until, by the time the prophecies were ripe for fulfilment, the silver record of them had disappeared. The verses, according to the most trustworthy accounts, ran somewhat as follows:—
At the period to which these verses are assigned, the Kildhurms had no lack of worldly goods, so that the concluding words might have seemed uncalled for. But they did not long continue to lack significance. For, after King Charles had suffered on the block, and the Protector ruled over England, those Englishmen who had favoured the dead King's cause were bound to suffer both in life and lands. Sir Ralph, as we know, had already paid the former penalty; but his surviving relatives were constrained to pay the other. In addition to a fine in money of many thousands of pounds they were deprived of by far the larger part of their landed possessions; nothing, indeed, was left to them but half a dozen acres of barren land, and the Tower of Kildhurm itself. Of course it was a cause for thankfulness that the Tower was not taken too; it was not every Royalist, in those days, who could boast of owning a roof to cover him. Probably, on the other hand, the Kildhurms could have got on better, from a practical point of view, with a little less stone and mortar and a little more gold. All but two or three of the servants had to be dismissed; the domestic expenses had to be cut down to the very lowest figure; and there was the once rich and powerful family, now reduced to half a dozen persons all told, living in one corner of a castle capable of accommodating fifty guests with their retinues. It was a fine place, no doubt, for children to play at hide-and-seek in; but a sad place for the elders who remembered the glories of the past.
The Oak had now completed its first half-century, and was already a noble and stalwart tree. It was an object of almost religious care on the part of the family: they cherished for it the same gloomy and perverse sort of pride that other old families do for the exploits of some godless ancestor, or for some hereditary vice or physical defect in themselves. A low railing had been built round the tree to protect it from careless and irreverent approach, and the little space of turf therein enclosed was kept scrupulously free from rubbish. The tree, however, possessed so much vigour of its own, that it would have flourished under the most adverse circumstances. It bade fair, if opportunity were given it, to become one of the great oaks of England. The trunk was modelled on lines of exceeding strength; the lower main branches, three in number, diverged from one another at equal angles, and extended their level lengths so far that the seaward limb overhung the verge of the cliff. The foliage was thick and dark, and the leaves, in autumn, if seen against the light, showed a deep tinge of crimson. Rain could not penetrate through their manifold living roof: and the shadow they cast upon the ground beneath is said to have been so sombre and so cold, that even in the greatest heat of summer it would strike a subtle chill through the blood. Those persons who had the temerity to take a nap in this shadow, or even to stand in it too long, were visited by appalling dreams, and generally got an ague which lasted them the rest of their lives. It should be noted, however, that these untoward effects did not occur in the case of the members of the Kildhurm family who, on the contrary, were fond of lingering about the tree: seeming to be sensible of a brotherhood with it, and to be agreeably affected by that which others found hurtful: insomuch that the children were brought to lie in their cradles beneath the boughs; and as they grew towards youth, their favourite playground was there.
In winter, when the tree stood forth stripped of its leaves, the peculiarities of its conformation were disclosed. Above the three main boughs already described, the trunk rose nearly erect for a considerable height, and put forth two thick limbs, which, after growing outwards nearly horizontally for half their length, thence ascended perpendicularly with a sudden crook like an elbow; and finally divided and spread abroad in smaller claw-like branches. The effect, therefore, as viewed from a suitable distance, was as if a gigantic but distorted human figure were standing upon the lower trunk as a pedestal, and were uplifting above its head two long and rigid arms. Were those arms raised in defiance of heaven, or in supplication to it? Did they threaten mankind below, or scatter benisons upon them? These may have been disputed questions among the people of that age. Doubtless the popular imagination, stimulated as it must have been by the many wild stories current about the Oak, had much to do with giving the semblance of reality to these human-like attributes; and the Kildhurms themselves, having little except the tree left to put them in mind of their former dignities, would naturally do what they conscientiously could towards heightening the mystery and the interest which surrounded it. Nevertheless, after all proper and due allowances and deductions have been made, much still remains which, to say the least of it, is singular and suggestive, and which in an era unenlightened by electricity and evolution may well have seemed portentous.
CHAPTER VI.
THE UTTERANCE OF THE OAK.
The coast of Cumberland, at the point where the Oak stood, is not more than twenty feet above ordinary high-water mark, and it opposes a face of dull white rock to the waves. But in storms, the Irish Sea drives down upon the shore with tremendous force, and the great rollers sometimes rise to the height of the natural parapet, and the gale bears their crest across it. The growth of an ordinary tree might have been stunted by such oceanic familiarities; but the Oak of Kildhurm, so far from shrinking from them, seemed to find refreshment therein, and never failed to greet the rough play of the storm-inspired waves with outstretched arms of invitation, roaring back an answer to the hoarse clamour of the surf, and tossing its branches gleefully in the shriek of the blast. Occasionally it would send a cluster of leaves whirling out to sea, like a message to the spirit of the tempest: and often in return, wreaths of dark seaweed were found suspended on its limbs—tokens of the ocean's savage amity. And again, when the winds were down and the shining waters came lapping liquidly under the crag, the swarthy Oak was fain to bend its boughs over the verge, and see its darksome image in the mirror of the tide, and, one might fancy, silently communicate some mysterious secret, over which the smiling surface would close for ever, with only a gurgling whisper of acknowledgment, which no human ear could understand. And at night, when the moon was up, the sea would heave and break slowly in long complaining murmurs against the shore, as though calling to some friend that tarried late. And then, to those who looked from the castle windows, their eyes straining through the deceptive dusk, the solid Oak would seem to melt slowly away like a shadow, and so to vanish into the yearning bosom of the deep, leaving naught save its gloomy memory behind it. Yet, in the morning, when the yellow sun stood on the bare edge of the inland hill, the Oak of Kildhurm still towered in its place, staunch and immovable; with nothing about it to tell of its nocturnal ramble, unless it were the long shadow trailing athwart the glistening beach. The sea and the oak knew how to keep each other's secrets.
One October day in the midst of the seventeenth century, Lady Kildhurm, in her widow's weeds, walked slowly out of the castle gate, leading her two little sons each by the hand. The elder, named Maurice, was six years old, his brother Rupert about five; and this was Maurice's birthday. As the heir of Kildhurm, all his birthdays were of course of particular importance; and, although he did not get quite so many testimonials of feudal devotion from the neighbouring peasants and farmers as his grandfather at the same age had been accustomed to expect, nevertheless he had spent a pleasant forenoon receiving the gifts and congratulations of an adoring household. It was now afternoon, the air clear and undisturbed by any wind, and sea and land slept in soft tints beneath the slanting sun-rays. Not a ripple disturbed the pale blue surface; nor was any movement perceptible among the dark leaves of the mysterious tree. The mother and children proceeded to the cliff, and, opening the gate of the little enclosure, they seated themselves beneath the shadow of the Oak. Far away in the offing a vessel lay becalmed, her dim white sails vainly stretched out for a breeze; near at hand a flock of fitfully-screaming gulls swooped and hovered over some floating quarry. A banner, hoisted on the Tower in honour of little Sir Maurice's sixth anniversary, hung in motionless folds about its staff. All nature seemed to be at pause, dreaming of the past, or, it might be, hushing herself in anticipation of some event to come.
Lady Kildhurm sat in a low rustic chair, with her hand beneath her chin, and her eyes fixed thoughtfully on the banner drooping on its staff. The children were playing on the mossy green turf at her feet. By and by Sir Maurice said to his brother, in reference to a small toy sword which had been absorbing their attention:
'Thou mayst take it awhile, brother; but thou must say it is mine and not thine, else I will take it back.'
Rupert received the sword in silence, and then said:
'Buzzer Mau'ice, dis s'ord is mine!'
'Now I shall take it back!'
'No!'
'Yes; and I am the eldest; and the sword and everything belong to me, and nothing to you. You shall not have it!'
'No! I de eldest!'
'Rupert! that was a—not true!'
'Well, I keep de s'oard!' returned the unabashed junior, dwelling upon the noun at exasperating length.
Maurice made a snatch at the disputed weapon; Rupert drew it quickly beyond his reach: then the two little fellows faced each other with defiance in their port; and a battle seemed imminent.
But all of a sudden a low and deep sound began to make itself heard. It was like a whisper, hoarse, yet roughly melodious, issuing out of the very heart of the else omnipresent stillness; and gradually gathering volume, until it roared on the ear like the far-heard music of a cataract. Lady Kildhurm, roused from the reverie into which she had fallen, lifted her head and listened in surprise, and the children postponed their fisticuffs and listened also. What caused the sound? No wind had arisen; there hung the banner, idle as before; yonder stretched the sea in glassy immobility. A dark cloud, however, had crept before the face of the sun; and as the mother raised her glance, she perceived a strange commotion in the Oak. Its huge limbs swayed to and fro, and the thickly clustered leaves hurtled hither and thither, as though under the stress of a mighty breeze. It was from the Oak, then, and only from the Oak, that the multitudinous murmur came. Amidst the autumnal hush of that peaceful afternoon it was uplifting its voice in a many-toned tumult of harmony; and as the sound gained resonance, it seemed to the now pale-cheeked woman as if a voice, indistinct at first, was gradually shaping itself to intelligible utterance, approaching through numberless repetitions nearer and nearer to articulate speech.
Yes, after fifty years, the genius of the tree was full-born and awake, and striving with ten thousand tongues to give expression to his will. As the cry rose higher, he shook his swarthy arms towards the sea; and thereupon a long tidal wave, which had noiselessly been advancing shore-wards across the smooth expanse, burst in mellow thunder along the resounding shore. Slowly the echoes died away, and slowly, likewise, the wild voice of the tree subsided and was still. Everywhere the calm of the October day reigned as before—everywhere save in the mother's frightened heart. The cloud, moreover, still lingered before the sun.
Little Sir Maurice, who had observed this portent attentively throughout, now took hold of his mother's dress and looked up in her face.
'Didst thou hear, mother?' he demanded. 'The Oak said "Maurice! Maurice! Maurice!" over and over again. Why does it call me? Does it want me to go anywhere, or do anything? Tell me, mother!'
'Hush, child, thou talkest foolishly! can trees talk?' returned Lady Kildhurm, trying to hide her uneasiness beneath an assumed asperity. The next moment she bent down and kissed the boy with yearning tenderness on cheek and brow. Then she glanced fearfully at the unmoving masses of sombre foliage.
'Pray God he be not called from me!' she said half aloud. 'But how strange a thing! Pooh! it was my fancy!—nay, for he heard it also!—and then that great wave, like an answer from the sea! But—pshaw! I am more foolish than my children. It was but some sudden wind-gust. I will think of it no more. Maurice, and thou, Rupert, come now into the house. The air is not so warm as an hour since.'
Rupert, it may be remarked, had kept stubborn hold of the sword all through this adventure, in which, for the rest, he had seen nothing at all remarkable. But he was a politic as well as an obstinate baby, and he now executed a diplomatic stroke which would have done credit to an older head.
'See what I dot, buzzer,' he said, as he and Maurice followed their mother towards the castle. He held up a cluster of acorns.
'Oh, how did you get them?'
'Dey fall on ze g'ound; dey very pooty!'
'I wish I had found some. I have always wanted some.'
'I give 'ou dese, if 'ou say I keep de s'oard,' said the diplomatist, hazarding his stroke.
'Oh, have you the sword still? I had forgot it. Well, I cannot give you the sword, because mother gave it to me; but if you will give me the acorns, you shall keep the sword till I want it.'
'Well, I keep de s'oard,' said Rupert, as he handed over the acorns. And it is to be feared that he added a mental rider to the effect that he would himself be the judge of the time when his brother should want it back again.
Lady Kildhurm, turning at the castle gate, saw the acorns in Maurice's grasp.
'Thou shouldst not have brought them, son,' she said nervously. 'Thou knowest we do not use to touch the fruit of the Oak. Run back and put them again where thou didst find them.'
'No, mother,' said Maurice, 'let me keep them. This is my birthday, and the Oak has given me these for a birthday gift.'
'Yes, muzzer, he keep'em,' put in Rupert who perceived that, if his brother was deprived of the acorns, his own possession of the sword might be thereby endangered. And the mother yielded, having no very valid arguments on her side, and being, besides, unwilling to cross the little heir on his birthday.
It was destiny, no doubt—destiny that would have fulfilled itself in some other way, if not in this. No outcry of child or demon disturbed Lady Kildhurm that night, after she had kissed the two boys in their cribs and bidden them farewell. Her sleep was peaceful and dreamless; but Maurice slept more soundly yet, and never woke in this world. It was afterwards discovered that he had taken his acorns to bed with him; and the inference was that he must have eaten one of them, and that it had poisoned him. At all events, the Oak of Kildhurm had claimed and taken its first victim; and Master Rupert was free to keep the sword.
CHAPTER VII.
THE OAK BIDES ITS TIME.
When this strange story, with suitable exaggerations, got abroad, it added greatly to the Oak's reputation. The notion that it was to be a sort of Banshee of the Kildhurms, speaking with miraculous voice before the death of any member of the family—this notion had great vogue for a time; but the Oak itself declined to countenance it. Its soul, if it had one, was of a rank superior to that of Banshees, and would not be classed with them. Several members of the family died in due season, and in an ordinary manner, without any sign from the Oak. The tree, for a great number of years behaved in all respects as another tree might have done. But it never could divest itself of its sinister reputation. Not uneducated people merely, but often those who pretend to some degree of culture, betray a disposition to put faith in a thing precisely because they are unable to explain it. Possibly some leaven of the inexplicable may be indispensable to a healthy mental organisation. It is inexplicable, so far as our knowledge of natural laws extends, that the leaves and branches of the Oak should have swayed and rustled independently of the action of the wind. On the other hand, if we assign a conscious and self-acting spirit to man, what shall prevent us from assigning the like to a tree? Before giving a too credulous ear to those who would persuade us that this or that is incredible because it is a miracle, it were prudent to require them to put their finger on something that is not miraculous.
Let the reader, therefore, form his own conclusions as to the special miraculousness of Kildhurm's Oak: noting, meanwhile, that little Rupert, the stubborn and wily, grew up to be a courtier; and, while still no more than a boy in his teens, was able on one or two occasions to render some important service to the second Charles, who was then awaiting with what patience he might the demise of the terrible Protector. On Charles's accession to power, Rupert was attached to his court, and, if all accounts be true, he approved himself a congenial abettor of the merry monarch's frolics. It was here that he made the acquaintance of John, Earl of Rochester, and the connection benefited him little either in health or reputation. Nor did its ill effects stop there; for having, in the year 1678, invited a party of dissolute young nobles, of whom Rochester was one, to spend a few days at Kildhurm Tower, a most stupendous orgy forthwith began, which lasted nearly a week, and ended in the castle taking fire. There was no means of putting out the flames; and within six hours the only part of the building that remained habitable was the tower itself and one or two rooms adjoining it. This mishap happened in the winter; and the aspect of the naked Oak lit up by the red glare of the conflagration, and standing forth against the sable background of sea and sky, was demoniacal in the extreme.
'Ods-life, my lads,' remarked the wild Earl, as he gazed upon it, 'it does look damnably like one of us as we shall be a few years sooner or later!'
This was one of the last escapades in which Rochester was concerned. He soon afterwards fell into that illness which proved to be his last, and in the course of which he formed his edifying friendship with good Bishop Burnet. As for Sir Rupert, the disaster sobered him, not only at the time, but permanently. He stayed at what was left of his home for the remainder of his days, married the daughter of a neighbouring baronet, and died full of years and piety, though poor in this world's goods, in the latter part of George I.'s reign. He had a son, of whom this history has nothing to say, but with that son's son, born about the time of the grandfather's decease, our narrative resumes its thread.
Sir Norman Kildhurm was a scholar of some eminence, and of a philosophical and speculative turn; he is said to have written several lengthy and abstruse works, all of which have withdrawn into a dignified and happy oblivion. Personally, he was an odd, unconventional genius, of uneven temper and behaviour. His mind, in some of its aspects, was amazingly lucid and sane; but in others it seemed to forsake all rationality and clearness, and immersed itself in clouds of mysticism and paradox. The family Oak had, as might readily be supposed, a profound attraction for him. He spent much time in studying it, and posterity is indebted to him for having gathered together all available scraps of its past history, both actual and apocryphal. Among other discoveries he made the somewhat curious one that the Oak differed from all known species of the Quercus family, and was of another variety even than the Oak of Ennerdale, whereof tradition made it an off-shoot. Sir Norman boldly accounted for this difference by ascribing it to the strain of human blood which flowed in the tree's veins. Perhaps he may have known for a fact that a fluid which was not vegetable sap coursed beneath the rough bark; and, indeed, there is a rumour that he once dared to lop off one of the lesser branches, doubtless with a view to putting this questionable ichor to a chemical test. Whether the tree forgave the liberty in consideration of the importance of the result to be obtained, is open to question; though probably any being directly connected, as the Oak was, with the operations of destiny, would be superior to petty emotions of revenge or partiality. It cannot be denied, on the other hand, that Sir Norman's connection with the Oak was foreordained to end disastrously for him.
It is not to be expected of a man such as Sir Norman is described as being, that he would be socially inclined; and yet it is probable that his poverty was at least as much the cause of his seclusion, as was any innate aversion from, or quarrel with, his kind. Misanthropist or not, he married, when about thirty years of age, a daughter of Bishop Ferrand. The young lady might have made a more brilliant match; Kildhurm was quoted in the matrimonial market at by no means a high figure: we are forced to the conclusion that she must have fallen in love. She was no ordinary woman. In point of mental cultivation she was her husband's equal. As regards personal appearance, her features were rather too strongly marked to fulfil the ideal of feminine beauty; but her figure was stately and tall, her bearing dignified and graceful. She was ardently attached to her husband, and devoted herself in every way she could to his happiness and comfort. Not only did she square his worldly cash accounts for him, she assisted him also in his literary and philosophical labours; she even—so it is hinted—aided him in certain unorthodox efforts of his to pierce through the natural veil of things, and to explore secrets which are conditionally withheld from common approach. This may mean that Sir Norman had in some degree pretended to anticipate the exploits of the future Cagliostro; and used his lady as a passive but effective lens, to apprise him of matters which he was impotent to master by his own unfettered eyesight.
Be this as it may, there is reason for supposing that the Lady Kildhurm of this epoch was a person of exceptional temperament; that her manifestations were not always entirely comprehensible; that, in short, despite her cleverness, there was a screw loose in her somewhere. Sir Norman and she were not unfrequently referred to in critical social circles of the vicinity as the crazy couple, the mad Kildhurms. They bore their reputation philosophically, and were very fond of each other. A year or two after their marriage a son was born to them, and they approved themselves affectionate parents. But they were almost intolerably poor; and when poverty amounts to an inadequacy of means to ends, it becomes irksome. It was highly desirable that their financial resources should be increased. I cannot say whether Sir Norman, in addition to his other investigations, made any search for the philosopher's stone; but there can be no doubt that he stood greatly in need of some such implement. He was angry with fortune; he conceived that wealth was his due, not on account of his station merely, but by reason of personal merit. From a state of mind such as this—from a keen perception of the injustice of fortune—it is not always a long step to attempting to force fortune's hand. The Baronet's philosophical studies may have so expanded his views as to enable him to consider the feasibility of acquiring money by means divergent from what is vulgarly called morality. He was a slight-built, nervous man, of a bilious temperament, with the features and peculiarities of his race strongly pronounced in him; but he possessed in addition—what most of his ancestors did not—a soft and winning tone of voice, and a tongue which could be persuasive when he chose to make it so. Few women could withhold their confidence from him, if he set himself to gain it: and not a few men had acknowledged the pleasant cajolery which he could employ on occasion.
Soon after the baby was born, a widowed sister of Lady Kildhurm's—Mrs. Harriet Chepstow by name—came to the Tower and took up her abode there. Mr. Chepstow, deceased, was a younger son of a wealthy family, and had obtained some share of the property; consequently, there is every reason to suppose that the widow did not eat her host's bread without paying him a fair equivalent for it. The subject is a delicate one, but it is necessary that we should touch upon it. There was nothing in the affair to cause Sir Norman any mortification. The widow needed a home, and he needed a few pounds a week; it was a fair exchange. Nevertheless, the Baronet was, in his own way, a very proud man, and it is easily conceivable that he did not enjoy the spectacle of the descendant of his forefathers enacting the rôle of a lodging-house keeper; and that his desire to find the philosopher's stone, or some equivalent for it, should grow more than ever urgent. Lady Kildhurm sympathised with him, and tried, no doubt, to quiet and console him. She liked poverty no better than he did; but she was not rebellious at heart, like him, and still less was she capable of entertaining the unorthodox views as to moral responsibility which have been above alluded to. Sir Norman felt this, and had the good sense, or the precaution, never to attempt to argue such hazardous questions with her. A man must become a very bad man indeed who does not like to see his wife more honourable and more virtuous than he is himself. Let it not be inferred from this remark that Sir Norman had contemplated any definite criminal act. All that he had done thus far—and thousands of guiltless men have done as much—was to ask himself whether circumstances might not make some wrongs more justifiable than certain rights. At that point, or very little beyond it, he paused: circumstance and opportunity might carry the matter further, or might let it stand where it was. There was no telling.
CHAPTER VIII.
A HATFUL OF DIAMONDS.
Mrs. Chepstow, unlike most newly made widows, had little or nothing to say about her late husband; she was much more communicative concerning a redoubtable cousin of hers, a military gentleman, who had latterly been on service in India. Nothing had been heard of Colonel Banyon for upwards of a year, and Mrs. Chepstow began to express fears regarding his safety. She was a comfortable, round-bodied, fresh-faced woman, easily moved to tears or to laughter; and it would have been evident, even had she more striven to conceal it than she did, that if her valiant kinsman would only return home, and avail himself of his chances, he might have one of the most admirable and affectionate wives in the world. The Colonel, as she described him, was a charmingly gallant and romantic fellow, much addicted to harebrained adventures and dashing escapades; delightfully fortunate, moreover, and at the same time contemptuous of fortune. His way through the world was always from good to better, from bright to brilliant; and since he was as generous as he was lucky, he was altogether just the sort of person one would like to be acquainted with.
'We were very fond of each other, and I don't mind saying it to you, sister,' the widow observed to Lady Kildhurm, on more than one occasion. 'We seemed to get on together so well, if you know what I mean. And I was very sad to have him go to the Indies, so soon after my husband died, too. And I remember, the day he went away, he promised he'd bring me back his hat full of diamonds.'
'A hatful of diamonds?' repeated Sir Norman, who had come into the room without being observed by Mrs. Chepstow, and had overheard her last sentence.
'Oh, Sir Norman, how you startled me. Yes, indeed, his whole hat full; and he has a good-sized head, too, I assure you.'
'How did he expect to come by the diamonds?'
'Oh, from those Indian idols, as he called 'em. He says they're covered with 'em. Idols, I suppose you know, Rebecca,' she continued, turning to Lady Kildhurm, 'I suppose you know they're a kind of magistrate they have over there: so I understood from the Colonel. And he said they sometimes had diamonds in place of eyes; but I think he was only jesting then. And he said he should loot 'em—that was one of his words he was always using—as he had the right to do, because England was at war with the Indies, and then, besides, idols are always the enemies of Christians. But I should think it would be more Christianlike for us to convert 'em than to loot 'em; and I mean to tell the Colonel so, if ever I meet him again. Heigho! poor fellow! I hope he's not dead. If he is, I should never forgive myself, for I should always be thinking it was in getting me the diamonds that he lost his life. And he was always too venturesome—and having made a promise, he would be sure to try and keep it; so I fear all the idols may have got together and killed him. And oh! I had a dream last night; I dreamt I saw him floating in the sea over the cliff there, near the Oak, and he had a place crushed in on his head. I hope it won't come true! It isn't worth losing one's life for, Rebecca, is it?'
Lady Kildhurm, during this conversation, if conversation it could be termed, had been mending a hole in one of her little son's stockings; and the child himself was sitting on her knee, his attention divided between his own bare toes and the movement of his mother's darning-needle.
'What isn't worth losing one's life for, my dear?' she asked.
'A hatful of diamonds,' answered the widow.
'A hatful of diamonds?—No!' said Lady Kildhurm, bending to kiss her son's cheek, and thinking, perhaps, how many lives and how many diamonds into the bargain she would be ready to sacrifice for his sake.
'A hatful of diamonds?—I don't know!' murmured Sir Norman, glancing meditatively out of window, where the Oak stood dark against the afternoon sea of tender purple grey.
Presently afterwards he left the room and the Tower, and walked slowly down to the cliff. He sat himself down beneath the Oak, and, with his head thrown back, gazed up into its depths. Very gloomy it was, and very still; not a leaf stirred upon its twig. But after a long time, an acorn fell, and smote him smartly on the forehead. This broke his reverie; he rose, and laid his hand upon the ponderous bole of the tree, as upon the shoulder of a friend.
'Come, old demon!' he said, half aloud, 'I have waited long enough: it is time something should happen. Awake, and do your best, or your worst; the prophecy is ripe for fulfilment. "Death of three and wealth of one!" If I be not the one, 'tis very sure I shall be of the three, and that speedily! Come—promise me a hatful of diamonds! or even a handful.'
The tree made no sign: it only seemed to become gloomier than ever. Sir Norman emitted a long tremulous sigh.
'It is all folly!' he said dejectedly and with bitterness. 'Why could I not go to India and win diamonds for myself? Much good my calculations and my horoscopes and my hopes and fears have done me! A man may rob in India and be called a hero for it: why am I in England, where robbery is hanging? Here have I stayed, as if I were a rooted tree myself, and have gathered together the legends about this dumb old Oak, and pondered over them, and believed in them, until at last I have come verily to expect that these barren boughs shall drop gold upon me! I will expect it no more. This is the last day that it could have happened. Old demon, thou art a liar and a blockhead! I disbelieve and abjure thee! If ever thou didst have power, it is gone out of thee, never to return. To-morrow I will have thee hacked down, like any other timber, and piled up for use in the kitchen fire. And for my own part, I will cease to wait for the fulfilment of prophecies made by greater fools than myself; I will begin to act, and that to some purpose!'
An abrupt, thunderous sound, prolonging itself in softer echoes, seemed to answer him from the shore. A great wave had stolen unobserved through the calm, to fling down its message at the foot of the cliff. Before the echoes had died into silence, a low and hoarse murmur began to come forth from the deepest centre, apparently, of the hitherto silent Oak. With a movement of nervous eagerness, Sir Norman again raised his head and strove to make his glance penetrate the obscurity. The murmur grew in loudness and volume, and the heavy foliage was tumultuously agitated, and anon waved forcibly to and fro, and the branches, though as stalwart, many of them, as ordinary trees, moved and groaned and laboured, as if battling against the onset of a gale. It was an appalling spectacle—this turbulent storm roaring in the dark circumference of the Oak while all the evening round about was still as death. Sir Norman stood there in a mood of mingled awe and exultation. He was beholding what no other living eye had beheld: what none living besides himself, perhaps, had ever dared believe in. The miracle of a century ago was true again to-day. The demon was awake once more and was training his myriad tongues to speech. Sir Norman listened, and his ears were filled with a sound that was, and yet was not, articulate utterance. It spoke to his thought; but then his thought laid hold of it and seemed to be itself the speaker, or at least the shaper, of the word. And when the stormy voice was at its loudest, suddenly it sank into broken whispers and sighings, and soon was altogether hushed. The message had been given. What that message was, Sir Norman only could know.
The adventure had left him excited and tremulous, and for several minutes after he was as one overawed and distraught. By degrees, however, his mind began to recover from the first poignancy of the impression that had been made upon it; and he questioned with himself whether the occurrence had really been as miraculous as at the moment it had appeared to be?—whether his own imagination, in combination with certain natural causes, had not been answerable for at least the greater part of it? But this was only the instinctive effort of the amazed reason to deliver itself from the thraldom of the inexplicable. Further and quieter consideration showed the Baronet that he could not have been mistaken; and that there was no alternative between regarding himself as utterly insane, and acknowledging the miracle of the Oak. He preferred the latter horn of the dilemma. This night, then, was to be a momentous one for him and for his fortunes. Sir Norman issued forth from beneath the shadow of the Oak, and looked westward. It was just past sunset. He strolled across the breadth of lawn towards the Tower. On passing round to the outer gate, he was surprised to see a horse standing there, saddled and bridled, and bearing evidences of having made a long journey.
He called out to the gardener, as a bent old pauper was entitled who pottered about the grounds for a certain number of ineffective hours every day, and asked him where the horse came from. The gardener replied that a few minutes previous a gentleman had ridden up to the gate, dismounted, and having thrown his rein over the gate-post, had gone into the house. He had seemed to be in a great hurry.
'What sort of a gentleman was he?'
'Tall: and face brown like my hand: and he looked an active body: and his eyes were blue and merry: and he had a beard.'
'Take the horse to the stable. I suppose there is some hay there: take off his saddle and rub him down. This must be——'
'I am Colonel Banyon: are you Sir Norman Kildhurm? Sir, I have to ask your pardon for my lack of ceremony. Seeing no one outside, I rushed upstairs unannounced to find my cousin and kiss her hand.'
'Colonel, my pleasure in meeting you is second only to Mrs. Chepstow's. We have heard many things about you from her; and you have been long and anxiously expected. But may I ask where you are going——'
'Only to the stable,' said the Colonel, laughing and showing a sparkle of white teeth through his brown beard. 'I always make a point of seeing to my horse myself. And as I must resume my journey in three hours' time, it is the more needful that he should be well cared for meanwhile.' So saying, the Colonel threw the rein over his arm, and led the steed to the stable door, which the old gardener was holding open.