CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE VOICE OF THE DEAD
The next moment a timid knock against the front door caused everyone tostart. A strange eerie feeling descended on the hearts of all, ofinnocent and of guilty, of accuser and of defender. The knock seemed tohave come from spectral hands, for 'twas followed by no further sound.
Then again the knock.
Lambert went to the door and opened it.
"Be the quality here?" queried a timid voice.
"Squire Boatfield is here and Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse," repliedLambert, "what is it, Mat? Come in."
The squire had risen at sound of his name, and now went to the door,glad enough to shake himself free from that awful oppression which hungon the cottage like a weight of evil.
"What is it, Mat?" he asked.
A man in rough shirt and coarse breeches and with high boots reaching upto the thigh was standing humbly in the doorway. He was bareheaded andhis lanky hair, wet with rain and glittering with icy moisture, wasblown about by the gale. At sight of the squire he touched his forelock.
"The hour is getting late, squire," he said hesitatingly, "we carriersbe ready.... 'Tis an hour or more down to Minster ... walking with aheavy burden I mean.... If your Honor would give the order, mayhap wemight nail down the coffin lid now and make a start."
Marmaduke de Chavasse, too, had turned towards the doorway. Both menlooked out on the little crowd which had congregated beyond the littlegate. It was long past three o'clock now, and the heavy snow cloudsoverhead obscured the scanty winter light, and precipitated the approachof evening. In the gray twilight, a group of men could be seen standingsomewhat apart from the others. All were bareheaded, and all wore roughshirts and breeches of coarse worsted, drab or brown in color, toning inwith the dull monochrome of the background.
Between them in the muddy road stood the long deal coffin. The sheetwhich covered it, rendered heavy with persistent wet, flapped dismallyagainst the wooden sides of the box. Overhead a group of rooks werecircling whilst uttering their monotonous call.
A few women had joined their men-folk, attracted by the novelty of theproceedings, yielding their momentary comfort to their feeling ofcuriosity. They had drawn their kirtles over their heads and looked likegigantic oval balls, gray or black, with small mud-stained feet peepingout below.
Sue had thrown an appealing look at Squire Boatfield, when she saw thatdismal cortege. Her husband, her prince! the descendant of the Bourbons,the regenerator of France lying there--unrecognizable, horrible andloathsome--in a rough wooden coffin hastily nailed together by a villagecarpenter.
She did not wish to look on him: and with mute eyes begged the squire tospare her and to spare the old woman, who, through the doorway hadcaught sight of the drabby little crowd, and of the deal box on theground.
Lambert, too, at sight of the cortege had gone to the Quakeress, thekind soul who had cared for him and his brother, two nameless lads,without home save the one she had provided for them. He trusted inSquire Boatfield's sense of humanity not to force this septuagenarian toan effort of nerve and will altogether beyond her powers.
Together the two young people were using gentle persuasion to get theold woman to the back room, whence she could not see the dreary scenenow or presently, the slow winding of the dismal little procession downthe road which leads to Minster, and whence she could not hear thatweird flapping of the wet sheet against the side of the coffin, an echoto the slow and muffled tolling of the church bell some little distanceaway.
But the old woman was obstinate. She struggled against the persuasion ofyoung arms. Things had been said in her cottage just now, which she musthear more distinctly: vague accusations had been framed, a cruel andsneering laugh had echoed through the house from whence one of herlads--Adam--was absent.
"No! no!" she said with quiet firmness, as Lambert urged her towithdraw, "let be, lad ... let be ... ye cannot deceive the old womanall of ye.... The Lord hath put wool in my ears, so I cannot hear ...but my eyes are good.... I can see your faces.... I can read them....Speak man!" she said, as she suddenly disengaged herself from Richard'srestraining arms and walked deliberately up to Marmaduke de Chavasse,"speak man.... Didst thou accuse Adam?"
An involuntary "No!" escaped from the squire's kindly heart and lips.But Sir Marmaduke shrugged his shoulders.
The crisis which by his own acts, by his own cowardice, he himself hadprecipitated, was here now. Fatality had overtaken him. Whether thewhole truth would come to light he did not know. Truly at this moment hehardly cared. He did not feel as if he were himself, but another beingbefore whom stood another Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse, on whom he--aspecter, a ghoul, a dream figure--was about to pass judgment.
He knew that he need do nothing now, for without his help or any efforton his part, that morbid curiosity which had racked his brain for twodays would be fully satisfied. He would know absolutely now, exactlywhat everyone thought of the mysterious French prince and of histerrible fate on Epple sands.
Thank Satan and all his hordes of devils that heavy chalk boulders haddone so complete a work of obliteration.
But whilst he looked down with complete indifference on the old woman,she looked about from one face to the other, trying to read what cruelthoughts of Adam lurked behind those obvious expressions of sympathy.
"So that foreign devil hath done mischief at last," she now said loudly,her tremulous voice gaining in strength as she spoke, "the Lord wouldnot allow him to do it living ... so the devil hath helped him to it nowthat he is dead.... But I tell you that Adam is innocent.... There wasno harm in the lad ... a little rough at times ... but no harm ... he'dno father to bring him up ... and his mother was a wanton ... so therewas only the foolish old woman to look after the boys ... but there's noharm in the lad ... there's no harm!"
Her voice broke down now in a sob, her throat seemed choked, but with aneffort which seemed indeed amazing in one of her years, she controlledher tears, and for a moment was silent. The gray twilight crept inthrough the door of the cottage, where Mat, bareheaded and humble, stillwaited for the order to go.
Sir Marmaduke would have interrupted the old woman's talk ere this, buthis limbs were now completely paralyzed: he might have been made ofstone, so rigid did he feel himself to be: a marble image, or else aspecter, a shadow-figure that existed yet could not move.
There was such passionate earnestness in the old woman's words thateveryone else remained dumb. Richard, whose heart was filled with dread,who had endured agonies of anxiety since the disappearance of hisbrother, had but one great desire, which was to spare to the kind soul aknowledge which would mean death or worse to her.
As for Editha de Chavasse, she was a mere spectator still: so puzzled,so bewildered that she was quite convinced at this moment, that she mustbe mad. She could not encounter Marmaduke's eyes, try how she might. Thelook in his face horrified her less than it mystified her. Shealone--save the murderer himself--knew that the man who lay in that dealcoffin out there was not the mysterious foreigner who had never existed.
But if not the stranger, then who was it, who was dead? and what hadAdam Lambert to do with the whole terrible deed?
Sue once more tried to lead Mistress Lambert gently away, but she pushedthe young girl aside quite firmly:
"Ye don't believe me?" she asked, looking from one face to the other,"ye don't believe me, yet I tell ye all that Adam is innocent ... andthat the Lord will not allow the innocent to be unjustly condemned....Aye! He will e'en let the dead arise, I say, and proclaim the innocenceof my lad!"
Her eyes--with dilated pupils and pale opaque rims--had the look of theseer in them now; she gazed straight out before her into the rain-ladenair, and it seemed almost as if in it she could perceive visions ofavenging swords, of defending angels and accusing ghouls, that she couldhear whisperings of muffled voices and feel beckoning hands guiding herto a world peopled by specters and evil beings that prey upon the dead.
"Let me pass!" she said with amazing
vigor, as Squire Boatfield, withkindly concern, tried to bar her exit through the door, "let me pass Isay! the dead and I have questions to ask of one another."
"This is madness!" broke in Marmaduke de Chavasse with an effort; "thatbody is not a fit sight for a woman to look upon."
He would have seized the Quakeress by the arm in order to force herback, but Richard Lambert already stood between her and him.
"Let no one dare to lay a hand on her," he said quietly.
And the old woman escaping from all those who would have restrained her,walked rapidly through the doorway and down the flagged path renderedslippery with the sleet. The gale caught the white wings of her coif,causing them to flutter about her ears, and freezing strands of her graylocks which stood out now all round her head like a grizzled halo.
She could scarcely advance, for the wind drove her kirtle about her leanthighs, and her feet with the heavy tan shoes sank ankle deep in thepuddles formed by the water in the interstices of the flagstones. Therain beat against her face, mingling with the tears which now flowedfreely down her cheeks. But she did not heed the discomfort nor yet thecold, and she would not be restrained.
The next moment she stood beside the rough wooden coffin and with asteady hand had lifted the wet sheet, which continued to flap with dull,mournful sound round the feet of the dead.
The Quakeress looked down upon the figure stretched out here indeath--neither majestic nor peaceful, but horrible and weirdlymysterious. She did not flinch at the sight. Resentment against theforeigner dimmed her sense of horror.
"So my fine prince," she said, whilst awed at the spectacle of this oldwoman parleying with the dead, carriers and mourners had instinctivelymoved a few steps away from her, "so thou wouldst harm my boy! ... Thoualways didst hate him ... thou with thy grand airs, and thy roughways.... Had the Lord allowed it, this hand of thine would ere now havebeen raised against him ... as it oft was raised against the old woman... whose infirmities should have rendered her sacred in thy sight."
She stooped, and deliberately raised the murdered man's hand in hers,and for one moment fixed her gaze upon it. For that one moment she wassilent, looking down at the rough fingers, the coarse nails, theblistered palm.
Then still holding the hand in hers, she looked up, then round at everyface which was turned fixedly upon her. Thus she encountered the eyes ofthe men and women, present here only to witness an unwonted spectacle,then those of the kindly squire, of Lady Sue, of Mistress de Chavasse,and of her other lad--Richard--all of whom had instinctively followedher down the short flagged path in the wake of her strange and propheticpilgrimage.
Lastly her eyes met those of Marmaduke de Chavasse. Then she spokeslowly in a low muffled voice, which gradually grew more loud and morefull of passionate strength.
"Aye! the Lord is just," she said, "the Lord is great! It is the deadwhich shall rise again and proclaim the innocence of the just, and theguilt of the wicked."
She paused a while, and stooped to kiss the marble-like hand which sheheld tightly grasped in hers.
"Adam!" she murmured, "Adam, my boy! ... my lad! ..."
The men and women looked on, stupidly staring, not understanding yet,what new tragedy had suddenly taken the place of the old.
"Aunt, aunt dear," whispered Lambert, who had pushed his way forward,and now put his arm round the old woman, for she had begun to sway,"what is the matter, dear?" he repeated anxiously, "what does it mean?"
And conquering his own sense of horror and repulsion, he tried todisengage the cold and rigid hand of the dead from the trembling graspof the Quakeress. But she would not relinquish her hold, only she turnedand looked steadily at the young lad, whilst her voice rose firm andharsh above the loud patter of the rain and the moaning of the windthrough the distant; trees.
"It means, my lad," she said, "it means all of you ... that what I saidwas true ... that Adam is innocent of crime ... for he lies here dead... and the Lord will see that his death shall not remain unavenged."
Once more she kissed the rough hand, beautiful now with that cold beautywhich the rigidity of death imparts; then she replaced it reverently,silently, and fell upon her knees in the wet mud, beside the coffin.
The Nest of the Sparrowhawk: A Romance of the XVIIth Century Page 38
