by Ashby, R. C.
Winifred was standing there, shading her eyes from the sun.
“Well, Ham!” was all she said.
“Well, Winifred!” said I.
I went into the house, and slung down my load, and stirred the peat-clods until the fire leapt out. It was very comfortable there. The men were away in the fields below the intakes.
“The Colonel?” she said at once.
“At Thorlwick,” I said, “and as well as can be. But how long is he going to stay there, Winifred?” I was thinking about what I’d just heard that morning.
“He must stay there,” she said at once. “You haven’t said anything to anybody?”
“Not a word,” I said, “but he can’t stay there for ever.”
“He’ll stay there,” she said, “as long as I say so.”
She was paler and thinner than when I saw her last; different somehow, as though she’d seen and heard things the memory of which would never let her be; like witches that they say ride on men’s backs, though you can’t believe all you hear.
“What happened,” I said, “afterwards?”
She knew what I meant. She drew in a long breath.
“Everything happened,” she said, “just like I thought it would. Just like I thought, Hamleth, only far, far worse than I ever thought. It was like a nightmare . . . so stealthy. From the first it began . . . little things you’d hardly notice. Then bigger things. There was a picture slashed to ribbons in the night. I fetched him—Mr. Mertoun, I mean. I thought, he shall see it for himself. He shall face it, as I’ve got to face it, day and night. He failed me, Ham. It’s no use telling you just how and why; perhaps you can guess. I blamed him at first, but I didn’t afterwards, for I don’t think he could help himself. The poison of that house had been breathed into his eyes and his brain. When I realized that, I longed for him to go before anything worse should happen, but he grew curious; he wanted to see things for himself. So he saw things. The stone in the cellar with the writing. It was there. Deeper and clearer. And then they had a sitting one night, with the mad doctor and some others and a medium to call up the spirits. They asked me to go down. I’d have died first! I crouched on the stairs, hardly daring to breathe, waiting to see where that devil would strike. He came—the Roman. He spoke to them, a terrible, shouting voice; and then there was a crash, and I rushed to the closed door, trembling so I could scarcely stand. The door flew open; it was all over. Nobody was hurt, but he’d thrown a knife and it was stuck in the wall above the mantel, high up out of reach. When that night was over I was not so frightened. I thought, he’s done his worst. But I didn’t dream what would happen. The awful thing, Ham, the awful thing . . . it came so suddenly . . .”
“I know,” I said. “James Blaik.”
She turned round to me with flames leaping in her eyes.
“You know! How can you know?”
“I went to the village,” I said. “I heard everything.”
“Who told you?”
“Lily,” I said. “Lily at the Red Buck.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That the fear of the Roman,” I said, “has got the whole village in thrall. Why should the fiend kill Blaik?”
“I don’t know!” she whispered, and hid her face in her shaking hands. “Ham! Ham! I was there when they brought the news . . .”
“And Mr. Mertoun,” I said with horrified curiosity. “He saw . . .”
“He saw,” she said very low, “what no man can see, and live. But he got away in time. He was saved.”
“He’s back again,” I said bluntly.
She dropped her hands and stared at me. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you know?” I said. “Lily told me that Mr. Mertoun and his friend had come up for some fishing. They’re staying at Palmer’s, over to Nunnwood, and what’s more I’ve seen them. Two gentlemen met me on the moor and asked me could I tell them where there was some good fishing. They asked me about the Strickan too; it may have been a guilty conscience, but I didn’t like it. I said as little as I could, and they went on, and I heard one call the other Mertoun . . . But go on telling me about the big house. How did they find out that the Colonel was gone?”
She wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying; I had to ask her again.
“They asked me what I’d done with him,” she said with a weary look in her eyes. “Mr. Barr was frantic. He said: ‘We must search the moor. We must get the police.’ I stopped all that. I said: ‘It’s no use. The Roman has taken him.’ Nobody could say anything after that.”
I stood gaping at her for a minute as the whole story grew clear in my mind. Then I laughed as though I should never stop, till she caught me by the ears and made me stop.
“Laughing!” she said. “How can you? How can you?”
I was sorry then, for she’d been through it and I hadn’t.
In the evening when the men were in the house she called me and said, “Come out into the yard. I want to say something to you.” I’d seen all day that her thoughts were far away. It was raining, and we climbed into the loft and crushed in among the stuffy hay.
“To-morrow morning you’re to start early,” she said, “and you’re to go to Palmers’ and ask to see the gentlemen who are staying there. Tell them you know all the fishing places about here and you’ll go with them and show them the best streams. Make them take you. If they offer you money, take it, or they’ll suspect you; but if they don’t want to engage a man, then say you’ll go for nothing for the sake of the sport. Then listen to all they talk about, and find out why they’re here. If they want to talk about ghosts, then talk about ghosts. If they ask you about the Roman, tell them all you know about the Roman and all you’ve ever heard. If they’ve come here hunting a ghost, Ham, we must make sure they don’t go back without one.”
I could see her eyes glinting at me in the dark.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “But if they begin asking me about the Strickan——”
“You’re not to talk about the Strickan. And they mustn’t know you’re my brother.”
I slid my feet over the slippery boards of the loft, and I heard a mouse go scuttering. “Hst!” I said. “The ghost! The ghost!”
She didn’t laugh. “Ah!” she said. “The murdering fiend!”
And the way she said it made my blood run cold.
April 24.
In the first place they don’t know anything about fishing. That Mr. Ahrman couldn’t so much as whip a hook to gut. I took them up to the Lewan Beck which was swollen nearly to the level of the bank, with great eddies swirling round the roots of the bushes and deep, still pools sucking at the hollows. They knew enough to sink their bait, and there they sat, the two of them on the puddly grass. Bottom-fishing. They sat two hours and Mr. Mertoun landed a half-pounder. I never heard such a lot of talk about anything in my life. Well, I knew then that they weren’t anglers and that that was just a blind. They’d come to our country for bigger game than trout, though they hadn’t said a word yet to make me prick up my ears. I couldn’t help bragging.
“You ought to come up here in the summer,” I said, “and see the men whip a stream when it’s clear, with a dry-fly. I favour a Red Spinner myself. I took out a three-pounder just where we’re standing one night last summer. I’ve been after pike too. That’s a tricky game. I knew a man play a pike all night, and then he got away. Strong, they are, and as savage as tigers. That’s what I call sport. And it’s grand too up here on a summer’s evening, with a soft green sky over you, and the green fields smelling so sweetly and the water singing its song. That’s the time to be catching fish.”
Mr. Ahrman laughed. “We’re beginners,” he said. “I can imagine that proficiency brings its own reward.”
I was tired of watching by
then and thought I’d show them a thing or two, so I baited a hook carefully and sank it just beside a tough, sunken root, and in a minute I took out a monster. As I was taking him off the pin Mr. Ahrman put down his rod, lit his pipe, and said: “I’ve been thinking, Mertoun, and I don’t advise you to make any further attempt to see Barr.”
I pretended to be having difficulty with my fish, and listened with all my ears.
Mr. Mertoun hesitated a moment, and then said: “I had seriously thought of forcing my way in to him, but if you think . . .”
“Don’t do it. He evidently doesn’t want to see anyone, so we’ll respect his wishes.”
“Yes . . . and one can understand it. He’s unnerved. And yet, Ahrman, the least I could do was to call. I hate to think of him a prisoner in his own house.”
“Perhaps it’s the best thing he can do.”
“To refuse to see anyone? Well, yes. But the sinister possibilities . . .”
Mr. Ahrman shrugged his shoulders, and asked me if we might move a little farther up the water. We went up, occasionally dropping our lines into a pool; but they weren’t biting. Mr. Ahrman said to me: “I suppose you’ve lived around here all your life?”
“I don’t live here at all,” I said. “I’m living at a farm eight miles from here.”
“Do you know a big house down by the sea called The Broch?” he said.
“You mean Colonel Barr’s place,” I said. “Yes, I know it.”
“Colonel Barr doesn’t live there now, does he?” he asked, as innocent as a calf.
“No,” I said. “He was much respected.”
“You don’t mean he’s dead?” he said.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” I said, “but he came to a bad end. All the Barrs do.”
He looked at me curiously. “That’s interesting,” he said, and his eyes slid up to mine in a questing way and said as plain as could be, “Tell me more!”
That was where I hung back. “It’s something I couldn’t bring myself to speak about,” I said. “Not if it was for gold and jewels.”
“What about this young Mr. Barr who’s living at The Broch?” went on Mr. Ahrman. “I suppose you know who I mean?”
“I know,” I said, or rather mumbled.
“Well, he’s a bit of a recluse, isn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” I said promptly. “I’ve never heard that he took more than a glass or two.”
Mr. Mertoun gave a laugh like a dog yapping.
“Touché!” he said. That’s French, and I know how to spell it. “I meant,” said Mr. Ahrman, talking to me very sweet and gentle, as to a little child, “I meant that Mr. Barr shuts himself up in the house more than you’d expect in a strong young fellow. You’d almost think he was frightened of something.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say he wasn’t,” said I, pretending to be giving just a little away.
“Frightened of something?”
“Something that you can’t touch with your hands nor see with your eyes,” I said.
“Oh, come!” said Mr. Ahrman. “You don’t mean ghosts?”
“And why not?” I said. “There’s things been done hereabouts that’d turn a man’s head about till he was looking down his backbone. There’s been so many men slain on these moors both before Flodden and after that if their wraiths do walk it’s a wonder there’s a sprig of heather left for living men to tread. See the red stones in yon beck? They’ve been red for many a hundred years, and it’s blood that set the stain in ’em.”
Mr. Ahrman’s jaw fell; and Mr. Mertoun said a piece out of Sir Walter Scott. “‘Scarcely Lord Marmion’s ear could brook the minstrel’s barbarous lay’” said he.
“That’s true,” I said, quite calm, “for the minstrel had been telling of the outlaws of the Border:
‘How the fierce Thirwalls and Ridleys all,
Stout Willimondswick, and Hardriding Dick,
And Hughie o’ Hawdon, and Will o’ the Wall
Have set on Sir Anthony Featherstonehaugh,
And taken his life at the Dead Man Shaw.’
True as history, it all was.”
Mr. Ahrman began to whistle something; and the other one said: “For cryin’ out loud, Ahrman! We’ve caught a Diogenes.”
“Him in the tub,” I said.
When I got home at night I told all this to Winifred, word for word, and she was so mad with me she could hardly find words.
“You great stupid!” she said. “I sent you there to keep mum and to listen; and instead of that you’ve no more sense than to make a fool of yourself by showing off how much you know. You great, gaumless thing! You’ve done for yourself now . . . and me too. And perhaps the Colonel.”
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “I’m going with them again, to-morrow.”
“They’ve asked you?
“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to Nome Crag to see the caves.”
That pacified her a bit. “Well, keep your mouth shut to-morrow,” she said, “except when you’re asked about ghosts, and then tell them as much as you think they ought to know. You see, they didn’t come for the fishing after all.”
About an hour later she came up to me with a letter, and it had Mr. Mertoun’s name on it in printed capitals.
“Take this,” she said, “and when Mr. Mertoun isn’t looking, slip it in his creel.”
“What for?” I said. “What is it?”
“You remember what I told you,” she said; “that he’d seen something that nobody can see, and live? This is to warn him, but he mustn’t know it’s from me.”
So I took the letter, and next morning before we started off from Palmer’s place I slipped it in Mr. Mertoun’s lunch-basket. This time it wasn’t only the three of us; the mad doctor went with us, and a girl. She was a pretty girl; reminded me of a yellowhammer, just a bonny bit of mischief, and Mr. Mertoun was in love with her. Anybody could see that.
We set off to Nome Crag and I went first, carrying two cameras and the young lady’s red mackintosh. It was a beautiful morning, and the whole earth was glittering in the sunshine and the birds singing fit to split their little throats. “Apr-rrrrrril! Apr-rrrrrril!” they were trilling away.
Mr. Mertoun and the young lady walked behind me, and I was sorry for him, I was indeed, because he wanted to walk along staidly and talk to her, and tell her, I guess, how beautiful she looked, and she was just like that tricky yellowhammer, darting from side to side of the track and twirling on her toes, and even running up to me to ask me to sing a song with her, some nonsense about all the King’s horses and all the King’s men.
I thought to myself, “The matter with Mr. Mertoun is that he doesn’t know how to manage women. I’d like to see my Lily leading me a dance like that!” You want to treat them rough; they like it. So after a while, when I was getting a bit sick of her, I said, “You’d better be getting back to your sweetheart, miss”; and she began to laugh, and ran back to Mr. Mertoun saying, “Did you hear that, Billy? He thinks you’re my sweetheart!” So then Mr. Mertoun went very red, and then very pale, and I pitied him more than words can say—though I’d done him a good turn really, as I’ll relate in due course.
Well, we got up to Nome Crag, and they talked about the view for about an hour before they thought of getting their lunch. I wanted to tell them the names of sixteen peaks you can see from there, but I remembered what Winifred said about showing off and I was as mum as a cold potato.
I didn’t dare look at Mr. Mertoun while he unpacked his basket, but I knew he must have found Winifred’s letter; and after lunch I overheard a bit. I was dipping the dishes in a spring, and Mr. Ahrman and Mr. Mertoun weren’t three yards away, talking. The mad doctor and the girl were hunting for an echo
in the caves.
Mr. Mertoun said: “I don’t think it is from an illiterate person. I believe the printed capitals are meant to disguise the writing.”
“Tell me again what it says,” said Mr. Ahrman. “I can’t read it without my other glasses.”
“It says, ‘DON’T GO NEAR THE BROCH AFTER DARK, FROM A FRIEND.’ Does the broch mean the house or the ruin, or both? The capitals don’t indicate. And who’s my well-wisher?”
“No idea. Somebody who had access to the lunch-basket.”
“That was hanging in Palmer’s hall all night. Anybody might have come. Ahrman! I wonder—oh, but it couldn’t!”
“Who are you thinking of?”
“I was wondering if it could be Charlie himself? If he had heard or seen anything . . .”
“I don’t think it could be Barr.”
“But he’s shut up in that house, and he knows I’m here. He may have had some awful warning . . . or he may be planning something . . .”
“Something?”
“I mean, he may be getting on the track of the . . . of V. G., as Ingram calls him . . . Oh, never mind! Forget it!”
“And shall you heed the warning?”
Mr. Mertoun laughed. “My dear man, not on your life, if I want to go!”
I decided not to tell Winifred that bit, and a few minutes later the mad doctor came up with that pretty yellowhammer dancing beside him, and they all began to take each other’s photographs. The girl ran up to me. “Come along, Mr. Guide!” she said. “You and I are going to be taken together, because I think you’re fearfully good-looking—quite the best-looking man I ever saw. . . . Now, Uncle Peter! You’re going to take this one.” So she wound herself round my arm, and there we stood up together facing the mad doctor to have our photographs taken, and of course, as usual, I forgot to be cautious and that the mad doctor had known me ever since I was at school. He clicked the camera, and then, sure enough, he looked hard at me.
