The Solitary House (261 page)

It was just getting dark. The idea occurred to me that I might be followed again, and attacked on the high-road.

My walking-stick was a light one, of little or no use for purposes of defence. I stopped, before leaving Knowlesbury, and bought a stout country cudgel, short, and heavy at the head. With this homely weapon, if any one man tried to stop me, I was a match for him. If more than one attacked me, I could trust to my heels. In my
school-days, I had been a noted runner—and I had not wanted for practice since, in the later time of my experience in Central America.

I started from the town at a brisk pace, and kept the middle of the road. A small misty rain was falling; and it was impossible, for the first half of the way, to make sure whether I was followed or not. But at the last half of my journey, when I supposed myself to be about two miles from the church, I saw a man run by me in the rain—and then heard the gate of a field by the roadside shut to, sharply. I kept straight on, with my cudgel ready in my hand, my ears on the alert, and my eyes straining to see through the mist and the darkness. Before I had advanced a hundred yards, there was a rustling in the hedge on my right hand, and three men sprang out into the road.

I instantly drew aside to the footpath. The two foremost men were carried beyond me, before they could check themselves. The third was as quick as lightning. He stopped—half turned—and struck at me with his stick. The blow was aimed at hazard, and was not a severe one. It fell on my left shoulder. I returned it heavily on his head. He staggered back, and jostled his two companions, just as they were both rushing at me. This gave me a moment’s start. I slipped past them, and took to the middle of the road again, at the top of my speed.

The two unhurt men pursued me. They were both good runners; the road was smooth and level; and, for the first five minutes or more, I was conscious that I did not gain on them. It was perilous work to run for long in the darkness. I could barely see the dim black line of the hedges on either side; and any chance obstacle in the road would have thrown me down to a certainty. Ere long, I felt the ground changing: it descended from the level, at a turn, and then rose again beyond. Down-hill, the men rather gained on
me; but, up-hill, I began to distance them. The rapid, regular thump of their feet grew fainter on my ear; and I calculated by the sound that I was far enough in advance to take to the fields, with a good chance of their passing me in the darkness. Diverging to the footpath, I made for the first break that I could guess at, rather than see, in the hedge. It proved to be a closed gate. I vaulted over, and finding myself in a field, kept across it steadily, with my back to the road. I heard the men pass the gate, still running—then, in a minute more, heard one of them call to the other to come back. It was no matter what they did, now; I was out of their sight and out of their hearing. I kept straight across the field, and, when I had reached the further extremity of it, waited there for a minute to recover my breath.

It was impossible to venture back to the road; but I was determined, nevertheless, to get to Old Welmingham that evening.

Neither moon nor stars appeared to guide me. I only knew that I had kept the wind and rain at my back on leaving Knowlesbury—and if I now kept them at my back still, I might at least be certain of not advancing altogether in the wrong direction. Proceeding on this plan, I crossed the country—meeting with no worse obstacles than hedges, ditches, and thickets, which every now and then obliged me to alter my course for a little while—until I found myself on a hill-side, with the ground sloping away steeply before me. I descended to the bottom of the hollow, squeezed my way through a hedge, and got out into a lane. Having turned to the right on leaving the road, I now turned to the left, on the chance of returning to the line from which I had wandered. After following the muddy windings of the lane for ten minutes or more, I saw a cottage with a light in one of the windows. The garden gate
was open to the lane; and I went in at once to inquire my way.

Before I could knock at the door, it was suddenly opened, and a man came running out with a lighted lantern in his hand. He stopped and held it up at the sight of me. We both started as we saw each other. My wanderings had led me round the outskirts of the village, and had brought me out at the lower end of it. I was back at Old Welmingham; and the man with the lantern was no other than my acquaintance of the morning, the parish clerk.

His manner appeared to have altered strangely, in the interval since I had last seen him. He looked suspicious and confused; his ruddy cheeks were deeply flushed; and his first words, when he spoke, were quite unintelligible to me.

“Where are the keys?” he said. “Have you taken them?”

“What keys?” I asked. “I have only this moment come from Knowlesbury. What keys do you mean?”

“The keys of the vestry. Lord save us and help us! what shall I do? The keys are gone! Do you hear?” The old man shook the lantern at me in his agitation. “The keys are gone!”

“How? When? Who can have taken them?”

“I don’t know,” said the clerk, staring about him wildly in the darkness. “I’ve only just got back. I told you I had a long day’s work this morning—I locked the door, and shut the window down—it’s open now, the window’s open. Look! somebody has got in there, and taken the keys.”

He turned to the casement-window to show me that it was wide open. The door of the lantern came loose from its fastening as he swayed it round; and the wind blew the candle out.

“Get another light,” I said; “and let us both go to the vestry together. Quick! quick!”

I hurried him into the house. The treachery that I had
every reason to expect, the treachery that might deprive me of every advantage I had gained, was, at that moment, perhaps, in process of accomplishment. My impatience to reach the church was so great, that I could not remain inactive in the cottage while the clerk lit the lantern again. I walked out, down the garden path, into the lane.

Before I had advanced ten paces, a man approached me from the direction leading to the church. He spoke respectfully as we met. I could not see his face; but, judging by his voice only, he was a perfect stranger to me.

“I beg your pardon, Sir Percival——” he began.

I stopped him before he could say more.

“The darkness misleads you,” I said. “I am not Sir Percival.”

The man drew back directly.

“I thought it was my master,” he muttered, in a confused, doubtful way.

“You expected to meet your master here?”

“I was told to wait in the lane.”

With that answer, he retraced his steps. I looked back at the cottage, and saw the clerk coming out, with the lantern lighted once more. I took the old man’s arm to help him on the more quickly. We hastened along the lane, and passed the person who had accosted me. As well as I could see by the light of the lantern, he was a servant out of livery.

“Who’s that?” whispered the clerk. “Does he know anything about the keys?”

“We won’t wait to ask him,” I replied. “We will go on to the vestry first.”

The church was not visible, even by daytime, until the end of the lane was reached. As we mounted the rising ground which led to the building from that point, one of the village children—a boy—came up to us, attracted by the light we carried, and recognised the clerk.

“I say, measter,” said the boy, pulling officiously at the clerk’s coat, “there be summun up yander in the church. I heerd un lock the door on hisself—I heerd un strike a loight wi’ a match.”

The clerk trembled, and leaned against me heavily.

“Come! come!” I said, encouragingly. “We are not too late. We will catch the man, whoever he is. Keep the lantern, and follow me as fast as you can.”

I mounted the hill rapidly. The dark mass of the church-tower was the first object I discerned dimly against the night sky. As I turned aside to get round to the vestry, I heard heavy footsteps close to me. The servant had ascended to the church after us. “I don’t mean any harm,” he said, when I turned round on him; “I’m only looking for my master.” His tones betrayed unmistakable fear. I took no notice of him, and went on.

The instant I turned the corner, and came in view of the vestry, I saw the lantern-skylight on the roof brilliantly lit up from within. It shone out with dazzling brightness against the murky, starless sky.

I hurried through the churchyard to the door.

As I got near, there was a strange smell stealing out on the damp night air. I heard a snapping noise inside—I saw the light above grow brighter and brighter—a pane of the glass cracked—I ran to the door, and put my hand on it. The vestry was on fire!

Before I could move, before I could draw my breath, I was horror-struck by a heavy thump against the door, from the inside. I heard the key worked violently in the lock—I heard a man’s voice, behind the door, raised to a dreadful shrillness, screaming for help.

The servant, who had followed me, staggered back shuddering, and dropped to his knees. “Oh, my God!” he said; “it’s Sir Percival!”

As the words passed his lips, the clerk joined us—and, at the same moment, there was a last grating turn of the key in the lock.

“The Lord have mercy on his soul!” said the old man. “He is doomed and dead. He has hampered the lock.”

I rushed to the door. The one absorbing purpose that had filled all my thoughts, that had controlled all my actions, for weeks and weeks past, vanished in an instant from my mind. All remembrance of the heartless injury the man’s crimes had inflicted; of the love, the innocence, the happiness he had pitilessly laid waste; of the oath I had sworn in my own heart to summon him to the terrible reckoning that he deserved—passed from my memory like a dream. I remembered nothing but the horror of his situation. I felt nothing but the natural human impulse to save him from a frightful death.

“Try the other door!” I shouted. “Try the door into the church! The lock’s hampered. You’re a dead man if you waste another moment!”

There had been no renewed cry for help, when the key was turned for the last time. There was no sound, now, of any kind, to give token that he was still alive. I heard nothing but the quickening crackle of the flames, and the sharp snap of the glass in the skylight above.

I looked round at my two companions. The servant had risen to his feet: he had taken the lantern, and was holding it up vacantly at the door. Terror seemed to have struck him with downright idiocy—he waited at my heels, he followed me about when I moved, like a dog. The clerk sat crouched up on one of the tombstones, shivering, and moaning to himself. The one moment in which I looked at them was enough to show me that they were both helpless.

Hardly knowing what I did, acting desperately on the first impulse that occurred to me, I seized the servant and
pushed him against the vestry wall. “Stoop!” I said, “and hold by the stones. I am going to climb over you to the roof—I am going to break the skylight, and give him some air!” The man trembled from head to foot, but he held firm. I got on his back, with my cudgel in my mouth; seized the parapet with both hands; and was instantly on the roof. In the frantic hurry and agitation of the moment, it never struck me that I might let out the flame instead of letting in the air. I struck at the skylight, and battered in the cracked, loosened glass at a blow. The fire leaped out like a wild beast from its lair. If the wind had not chanced, in the position I occupied, to set it away from me, my exertions might have ended then and there. I crouched on the roof as the smoke poured out above me, with the flame. The gleams and flashes of the light showed me the servant’s face staring up vacantly under the wall; the clerk risen to his feet on the tombstone, wringing his hands in despair; and the scanty population of the village, haggard men and terrified women, clustered beyond in the churchyard—all appearing and disappearing, in the red of the dreadful glare, in the black of the choking smoke. And the man beneath my feet!—the man, suffocating, burning, dying so near us all, so utterly beyond our reach!

The thought half maddened me. I lowered myself from the roof, by my hands, and dropped to the ground.

“The key of the church!” I shouted to the clerk. “We must try it that way—we may save him yet if we can burst open the inner door.”

“No, no, no!” cried the old man. “No hope! the church key and the vestry key are on the same ring—both inside there! Oh, sir, he’s past saving—he’s dust and ashes by this time!”

“They’ll see the fire from the town,” said a voice from
among the men behind me. “There’s a ingine in the town. They’ll save the church.”

I called to that man—
he
had his wits about him—I called to him to come and speak to me. It would be a quarter of an hour at least before the town engine could reach us. The horror of remaining inactive, all that time, was more than I could face. In defiance of my own reason I persuaded myself that the doomed and lost wretch in the vestry might still be lying senseless on the floor, might not be dead yet. If we broke open the door, might we save him? I knew the strength of the heavy lock—I knew the thickness of the nailed oak—I knew the hopelessness of assailing the one and the other by ordinary means. But surely there were beams still left in the dismantled cottages near the church? What if we got one, and used it as a battering-ram against the door?

The thought leaped through me, like the fire leaping out of the shattered skylight. I appealed to the man who had spoken first of the fire-engine in the town. “Have you got your pickaxes handy?” Yes; they had. And a hatchet, and a saw, and a bit of rope? Yes! yes! yes! I ran down among the villagers, with the lantern in my hand. “Five shillings apiece to every man who helps me!” They started into life at the words. That ravenous second hunger of poverty—the hunger for money—roused them into tumult and activity in a moment. “Two of you for more lanterns if you have them! Two of you for the pickaxes and the tools! The rest after me to find the beam!” They cheered—with shrill starveling voices they cheered. The women and the children fled back on either side. We rushed in a body down the churchyard path to the first empty cottage. Not a man was left behind but the clerk—the poor old clerk standing on the flat tombstone sobbing and wailing over the church. The servant was still at my heels; his white, helpless, panic-stricken face
was close over my shoulder as we pushed into the cottage. There were rafters from the torn-down floor above, lying loose on the ground—but they were too light. A beam ran across over our heads, but not out of reach of our arms and our pickaxes—a beam fast at each end in the ruined wall, with ceiling and flooring all ripped away, and a great gap in the roof above, open to the sky. We attacked the beam at both ends at once. God! how it held—how the brick and mortar of the wall resisted us! We struck, and tugged, and tore. The beam gave at one end—it came down with a lump of brickwork after it. There was a scream from the women all huddled in the doorway to look at us—a shout from the men—two of them down, but not hurt. Another tug all together—and the beam was loose at both ends. We raised it, and gave the word to clear the doorway. Now for the work! now for the rush at the door! There is the fire streaming into the sky, streaming brighter than ever to light us! Steady, along the churchyard path—steady with the beam, for a rush at the door. One, two, three—and off. Out rings the cheering again, irrepressibly. We have shaken it already; the hinges must give, if the lock won’t. Another run with the beam! One, two, three—and off. It’s loose! the stealthy fire darts at us through the crevice all round it. Another, and a last rush! The door falls in with a crash. A great hush of awe, a stillness of breathless expectation, possesses every living soul of us. We look for the body. The scorching heat on our faces drives us back: we see nothing—above, below, all through the room, we see nothing but a sheet of living fire.