CHAPTER XXI.
BLACKMARSH
A long way back among the Blackdown Hills, and in nobody knows what parish, the land breaks off into a barren stretch, uncouth, dark, and desolate. Being neither hill nor valley, slope nor plain, morass nor woodland, it has no lesson for the wanderer, except that the sooner he gets out of it the better. For there is nothing to gratify him if he be an artist, nothing to interest him if his tastes are antiquarian, nothing to arouse his ardour, even though he were that happy and most ardent creature, a naturalist free from rheumatism. And as for any honest fellow mainly concerned with bread and butter, his head will at once go round with fear and with looking over his shoulders. For it is a lonesome and gruesome place, where the weather makes no difference; where Nature has not put her hand, on this part or on that, to leave a mark or show a preference, but slurred the whole with one black frown of desolate monotony.
That being so, the few and simple dwellers on the moorland around, or in the lowland homesteads, might well be trusted to keep their distance from this dreary solitude. There were tales enough of hapless travellers last seen going in this direction, and never in any other; as well as of spectral forms, low groans, and nightly processions through the air.
Not more than a hundred years ago, there had been a wicked baronet, profane, rapacious, arrogant, blackhearted, foul, and impious. A blessed curate prayed him not to hunt on Holy Friday. He gave the blessed curate taste of whip-thong from his saddle; then blew seven blasts of his horn, to proclaim that he would hunt seven days in every week, put spurs to his black horse, and away. The fox, disturbed on Holy Friday, made for this "Forbidden land;" which no fox had ever done before. For his life he plunged into it, feeling for the moment that nothing could be worse than to be torn in pieces. The hounds stopped, as if they were turned to stone in the fury of their onslaught. The huntsman had been left far behind, having wife and family. But the wicked baronet cracked his whip, blew three blasts on his horn, leaned forward on his horse and gave him the rowel. The hounds in a frenzy threw up their sterns, and all plunged headlong into it. And ever since that, they may be seen (an hour after sun-down, on every Sunday of the season, and any Holy Friday) in full cry scouring through the air, with the wicked baronet after them, lashing his black horse, and blowing his horn, but with no fox in front to excuse them.
These facts have made the Forbidden land, or the Blackmarsh, as some call it, even less desirable than its own complexion shows it. And it is so far from Perlycross, that any man on foot is tired by the time he gets there, and feels that he has travelled far enough, and in common sense must go home again.
But there was one Perlycrucian now – by domicile, not nativity – of tireless feet, and reckless spirit, too young for family ties, and too impetuous for legends. By this time he was admitted to the freedom of every hedge and ditch in the parish, because he was too quick to be caught, and too young to be prosecuted. "Horatio Peckover" was his name, by usage cut short into "Hopper"; a lad in advance of his period, and the precursor of all "paper-chases."
Like many of those who are great in this line, he was not equally strong in the sedentary uses of that article. Mr. Penniloe found him so far behind, when pen and ink had to be dealt with, that he put him under the fine Roman hand of Sergeant Jakes, the schoolmaster. Jakes was not too richly endowed by a grateful country, for years of heroism; neither was his stipend very gorgeous, for swinging cane in lieu of gun. Sixpence an hour was his figure, for pen-drill of private pupils, and he gladly added Hopper to the meagre awkward-squad.
Soon an alliance of the closest kind was formed; the veteran taking warm interest in the spirited sallies of youth, and the youth with eager thirst imbibing the fine old Peninsular vintage of the brightest ruby, poured forth in the radiance of a yellow tallow candle. For the long school-room was cleared at night of coats, and hats, and green-baize bags, cracked slates, bead-slides, and spelling-books, and all the other accoutrements, and even toys of the youthful Muse; and at seven o'clock Horatio stepped across the road from the rectory, sat down at the master's high black desk, and shouldered arms for the copy-drill. The Sergeant was famed for his flourishes, chiefly of his own invention, and had promised to impart that higher finish, when the fancy capitals were mastered.
"What a whack of time it does take, Sergeant!" cried Hopper, as he dipped his pen, one Friday night. "Not half so bad as Latin though, and there is something to look at afterwards. Capitals almost captured now. Ah, you have taken the capitals of many a country, Sergeant. Halloa! 'Xerxes was conqueror at Marathon,' to-night! Sergeant, are you quite sure of that? I thought it was another fellow, with a longer name – Milly, Tilly, something."
"No, Master Hopper; if it had been, we must have passed him long ago, among the big M's."
"To be sure. What a muff I was, not to think of that! I beg your pardon, Sergeant. There's scarcely anything you don't know."
"I had that on the highest authority – right elbow more in to your side, sir, if you please – that Xerxes copy was always set by commanding officer at Turry Vardoes – could not tell what to do with the men at night – so many ordered to play at nine-pins, and so many told off to learn roundhand. If it had not been for that, sir, I should never have been equal to my present situation."
"Then it must have been Xerxes, Sergeant. And after all, how can it matter, when it happened so long ago? A blot again? D – n it."
"Master Hopper, I am very sorry, but it is my duty to reprimand you, for the use of profane language. Never permitted, sir, in school-hours. Would you do it, before Mr. Penniloe?"
"I should rather hope not. Wouldn't old Pen stare? And then he'd be down upon me, like the very – capital D. Sergeant, pray excuse me; I only thought of him, without any name. I suppose we may call him 'Old Nick' though, without having to go to him, for doing it. I never could see what the difference was. But, my eye, Sergeant, I expected to see the old chap yesterday, cloven hoof, tail, eyes of fire, and everything!"
"What do you mean, sir? Where was he? Not in Perlycross, I hope." Sergeant Jakes glanced down the long dark room, and then at the pegs where his French sword was hanging.
"No, not here. He daren't come so near the church. But in the place where he lives all day, according to the best authorities. You have heard of Blackmarsh, haven't you? No marsh at all – that's the joke of it – but the queerest place I ever saw in all my life. Criky jimminy, but it is a rum un!"
"You don't mean to say you were there, sir!" The Sergeant took his hand from Hopper's shoulder, and went round to see whether he was joking.
"To be sure I was, as large as life, and twice as natural! Had a holiday, as you know, and got leave off from dinner. Mother Muggridge gave me grub enough to go to Halifax. I had been meaning to go there ever so long, because everybody seems to funk it so. Why there's nothing there to be afraid of: though it makes you look about a bit. And you aren't sorry to come out of it."
"Did you tell Mr. Penniloe, you had been there, Master Hopper?"
"Sergeant, do you see any green in my eye?" Horatio dropped his pen, and enlarged the aperture of one eye, in a style very fashionable just then, but never very elegant.
"No sir, I can't answer fairly that I do. And I don't believe there ever was much, even when you was a babby."
"Mum's the word, you see then – even to old Muggridge, or she might be fool enough to let out. But I say, Sergeant, I've got a little job for you to do. Easy enough. I know you won't refuse me."
"No sir, that I won't. Anything whatever that lays in my power, Master Hopper."
"Well, it's only this – just to come with me to-morrow – half-holiday, you know, and I can get off, plum-duffs – always plum-duffs on a Saturday, and you should just see Pike pitching into them – and we'll give the afternoon to it, and examine Blackmarsh pretty thoroughly."
"Blackmarsh, Master Hopper! The Forbidden land – where Sir Robert upon his black horse, and forty hounds in full cry before him, may be seen and heard, sweeping through the air, like fiends!"
"Oh, that's all my eye, and Betty Martin! Nobody believes that, I should hope. Why Sergeant, a man who knows all about Xerxes, and has taken half the capitals in Europe – oh, I say, Sergeant, come, you are not afraid now, and a fellow of sixteen, like me, to go there all by myself, and stop – well, nearly half-an-hour!"
"Afraid! Not I. No certainly not, after mountains, and forests, and caverns, and deserts. But the distance, Master Hopper, for a man of my age, and troubled with rheumatism in the knee-joint."
"Oh, that's all right! I have planned out all that. Of course I don't expect you to go ten miles an hour. But Baker Channing's light cart goes, every other Saturday, to Crooked-post quarry, at the further end of Hagdon, to fetch back furze enough to keep his oven going, from a stack he bought there last summer. To-morrow is his day; and you have no school, you know, after half-past ten or eleven. You ride with old Tucker to the Crooked-post, and come back with him, when he is loaded up. It shan't cost you a farthing. I have got a shilling left, and he shall have it. It is only two miles, or so, from Crooked-post to this end of Blackmarsh; and there you will find me waiting. Come, you can't get out of that."
"But what do you want me there for, sir? Of course, I'd go anywhere you would venture, if I could see any good in it."
"Sergeant, I'll tell you what. You thought a great deal of Sir Thomas Waldron, didn't you?"
"More than of any man that ever lived, or ever will see the light of this wicked world."
"And you didn't like what was done to him, did you?"
"Master Hopper, I tell you what. I'd give ten years off my poor life, if I could find out who did it."
"Then I fancy I have found out something about it. Not much, mind; but still something, and may come to more if we follow it up. And if you come to-morrow, I'll show you what it is. You know that my eyes are pretty sharp, and that I wasn't born yesterday. You know who it was that found 'Little Billy.' And you know who wants to get Fox out of this scrape, because he is a Somerset man, and all that, and doesn't deserve this trouble. And still more, because – "
"Well, Master Hopper, still more, because of what?"
"I don't mind telling you something, Sergeant – you have seen a lot of the world, you know. Because Jemmy Fox has got a deuced pretty sister."
"Oh come, Master Hopper, at your time of life! And not even got into the flourishes!"
"It doesn't matter, Jakes. I may seem rather young to people who don't understand the question. But that is my own business, I should hope. Well, I shall look out for you to-morrow. Two o'clock at the latest."
"But why shouldn't we tell Dr. Fox himself, and get him to come with us? That seems the simplest thing."
"No. There are very good reasons against that. I have found this out; and I mean to stick to it. No one would have dreamed of it, except for me. And I won't have it spoiled, by every nincompoop poking his nose into it. Only if we find anything more, and you agree with me about it, we will tell old Pen, and go by his opinion."
"Very well, sir. It all belongs to you; as it did to me, when I was first after Soult's arrival to discover the advance of the French outposts. You shall have the credit, though I didn't. Anything more, sir? The candle is almost out."
"Sergeant, no more. Unless you could manage – I mean, unless you should think it wise to bring your fine old sword with you. You say there is no such piece of steel – "
"Master Hopper, there is no such piece, unless it was Lord Wellington's. They say he had one that he could lean on – not a dress-sword, not flummery, but a real workman – and although he was never a heavy man, a stone and a half less than I was then, it would make any figure of the multiplication-table that he chose to call for, under him. But I mustn't carry arms in these days, Master Hopper. I shall bring a bit of Spanish oak, and trust in the Lord."
On the following day, the sun was shining pretty well for the decrepitude of the year. There had been no frost to speak of, since that first sharp touch about three weeks back. The air was mild, and a westerly breeze played with the half ripe pods of gorse, and the brown welting of the heather. Hopper had brought a long wand of withy, from the bank of the last brook he had leaped, and he peeled it with his pocket-knife, and sat (which he seldom did when he could help it) on a tuft of rush, waiting for the Sergeant. He stretched his long wiry legs, and counted the brass buttons on his yellow leathern gaiters, which came nearly to his fork, and were made fast by narrow straps to his brace-buttons.
This young man – as he delighted to be called – had not many grievances, because he ran them off so fast; but the two he chiefly dwelt upon, in his few still moments, were the insufficiency of cash and calf. For the former he was chiefly indebted to himself, having never cultivated powers of retention; for the deficiency of calves, however, nature was to blame, although she might plead not unfairly that they were allowed no time to grow. He regarded them now with unmerited contempt, and slapped them in some indignation, with the supple willow wand. It might well be confessed that they were not very large, as is often the case with long-distance runners; but for all that they were as hard as nails, and endowed with knobs of muscle, tough and tense as coiled mainspring. In fact there was not a bit of flabby stuff about him; and his high clear colour, bright eyes, and ready aspect made him very pleasant to behold, though his nose was rather snubby, and his cheekbones high, and his mouth of too liberal aperture.
"Come along, Sergeant, what a precious time you have taken!" Hopper shouted, as the angular outline of the veteran appeared at last in a gap between two ridges. "Why, we shall scarcely have two hours of good daylight left. And how do you know that Tucker won't go home without you?"
"He knows a bit better than that," replied Jakes, smiling with dark significance. "Master Hopper, I've got three of Tucker's boys in Horseshoe. Tucker is bound to be uncommon civil."
Now the "Horseshoe" was a form in the school at Perlycross especially adapted for corporal applications, snug as a cockpit, and affording no possibility of escape. And what was still better, the boys of that class were in the very prime of age for attracting, as well as appreciating, healthy and vigorous chastisement; all of them big enough to stand it, none of them big enough to kick, and for the most part newly trouser'd into tempting chubbiness. Truly it might be said, that the parents of playful boys in the "Horseshoe" had given hostages to education.
"But bless my heart – what – what?" continued the ancient soldier, as he followed the rapid steps of Hopper, "why, I don't like the look of this place at all. It looks so weist – as we say about here, so unwholesome, and strange, and ungodly, and – and so timoursome."
"It is ever so much worse further on; and you can't tell where you are at all. But to make sure of our coming back, if – if there should be nothing to prevent us, I have got this white stick ready, and I am going to fix it on the top of that clump. There now, we shall be able to see that for miles."
"But we are not going miles I hope, Master Hopper. I'm a little too stiff for such a walk as that. You don't know what it is to have a pain in your knee."
"Oh don't I? I come down on it often enough. But I don't know exactly how far we are going. There is nothing to measure distance by. Come along, Sergeant! We'll be just like two flies going into one of your big ink-pots."
"Don't let me lose sight of you, Master Hopper. I mean, don't you lose sight of me. You might want somebody to stand by you. It is the darkest bit of God's earth I ever did see. And yet nothing overhead to darken it. Seems almost to make its own shadow. Good Lord! what was that came by me?"
"Oh, a bat, or an owl, or a big dor-beetle; or it might be a thunder-bolt – just the sort of place for them. But – what a bad place it is for finding things!"
There could scarcely have been a worse one, at least upon dry and unforested land. There was no marsh whatever, so far as they had come, but a dry uneven shingly surface, black as if fire had passed over it. There was no trace however of fire, neither any substance sufficient to hold it, beyond the mere passage of a shallow flame. The blackness that covered the face of the earth, and seemed to stain the air itself, and heavily dim the daylight, was of something unknown upon the breezy hills, or in the clear draught of a valley. It reflected no light, and received no shadow, but lay like the strewing of some approach to quarters undesirable. Probably from this (while unexamined by such men as we have now), the evil repute of the place had arisen, going down generations of mankind, while the stuff at the bottom renewed itself.
This stuff appeared to be the growth of some lanky trailing weed, perhaps some kind of Persicaria, but unusually dense and formless, resembling what may be seen sometimes, at the bottom of a dark watercourse, where the river slides without a wrinkle, and trees of thick foliage overhang it. And the same spread of life, that is more like death, may be seen where leagues of laver strew the foreshore of an Atlantic coast, when the spring-tides are out, and the winds gone low.
"By George, here we are at last. Thought I should never have made it out, in the thick of this blessed cobobbery," shouted Hopper, stopping short and beckoning; "now, Sergeant, what do you say to that? Queer thing, just here, isn't it?"
The veteran's eyes, confused and weary with the long monotony, were dazzled by sudden contrast. Hitherto the dreary surface, uniform and trackless, had offered only heavy plodding, jarred by the jerk of a hidden stone sometimes, but never elastic. All the boundary-beaters of the parish, or even a regiment of cavalry, might have passed throughout, and left no trace upon the padded cumber. But here a glaring stripe of silver sand broke through the blackness, intensely white by contrast, though not to be seen a few yards off, because sunk below the level. Like a crack of the ground from earthquake, it ran across from right to left, and beyond it all was black again.
The ancient soldier glanced around, to be sure that no surprise was meant; and then with his big stick tried the substance of the white material. With one long stride he could have reached the other side, but the caution of perilous days awoke.
"Oh there's nothing in that, and it is firm enough. But look here;" said his young companion, "this is what floors me altogether."
He pointed to a place where two deep tracks, as of narrow wheels, crossed the white opening; and between them were three little pits about the size and depth of a gallon saucepan. The wheel-tracks swerved to the left, as if with a jerk to get out of the sandy hollow, and one of the three footprints was deeper and larger than the other two.
"Truly this is the doing of the arch-enemy of mankind himself." Sergeant Jakes spoke solemnly, and yet not very slowly; for he longed to make off with promptitude.
"The doing, more likely, of those big thieves who couldn't let your Colonel rest in his grave. Do you mean to turn tail upon them, Sergeant Jakes?"
"May the Lord turn His back upon me, if I do!" The veteran's colour returned to his face, and all thoughts of flight departed. "I would go to the ends of the world, Master Hopper, after any living man; but not after Satan."
"The Devil was in them. No doubt about that. But he made them do it for Him. Does Old Nick carry whipcord? You see how that was, don't you?"
The youth leaped across, and brought back the lash of a whip which he had concealed there. "Plain as a pikestaff, Sergeant. When the wheels plunged into this soft stuff, the driver must have lashed like fury, to make him spring the cart out again. Off came the old lash, and here it is. But wait a minute. I've got something more to show you, that spots the villains pretty plain."
"Well, sir," said Jakes, regarding Hopper with no small admiration, "you deserve your stripes for this. Such a bright young gent shouldn't be thrown away in the Church. I was just going to say – 'how can we tell they did it?' Though none but thundering rogues would come here. Nothing can be clearer than that, I take it."
"Then you, and I, are thundering rogues. Got you there, Sergeant; by gum, I did! Now come on a few steps further."
They stepped out boldly, having far less fear of human than of superhuman agency; though better had they met Apollyon perhaps, than the wild men they were tracing. Within less than a furlong, they reached an opening where the smother of the black weeds fell away, and an open track was left once more. Here the cart-wheels could be traced distinctly, and at one spot something far more convincing. In the middle of the track a patch of firm blue clay arose above the surface, for a distance of perhaps some fifty yards; and on it were frequent impressions of the hoofs of a large horse, moving slowly. And of these impressions one (repeated four or five times, very clearly) was that of the near fore-foot, distinctly showing a broken shoe, and the very slope and jag of the fracture.
"What do you think of that now, Sergeant?" asked Hopper, as he danced in triumph, but took good care not to dance upon the clay. "They call me a hedger and ditcher, don't they? Well, I think I am a tracker too."
"Master Hopper, to my mind, you are an uncommonly remarkable young gent. The multiplication-table may not be strongly in your line, sir. But you can put two and two together, and no fear to jump on top of them."
"Oh, but the bad luck of it, Sergeant! The good luck for them, and the shocking luck for me. I never came to old Pen's shop, you see, till a day or two after that wicked job was over. And then it took me a fortnight, or more, to get up the lay of the country, and all that. And I was out of condition for three days, with a blessed example in the Eton Grammar. Percontatorem fugito, that frightened me no end, and threw me off the hooks. But I fancy, I am on the right hook now."
"That you are, sir, and no mistake. And a braver young man never came into a regiment, even in Sir Arthur's time. Sir, you must pitch away copy-books. Education is all very fine for those who can't do no better. But it spoils a young man, with higher gifts."
"Don't say a good word of me, till you know all," replied the candid Hopper. "I thought that I was a pretty plucky fellow, because I was all by myself, you understand, and I knew that no fellow could catch me, in a run across the open. But I'll show you where I was stodged off; and it has been on my conscience ever since. Just come to that place, where the ground breaks off."
He led the way along a gentle slope, while the light began to fail behind them, until they stood upon the brink of a steep descent, with a sharp rise upon the other side. It was like the back-way to the bottom of a lime-kiln, but there was no lime for many leagues around. The track of cart-wheels was very manifest, and the bottom was dark with the approach of night.
"My turn, Master Hopper, to go first now. No wife, or family, and nought to leave behind." With these words spoken in a whisper, the Sergeant (who had felt much self-reproach, at the superior courage of a peaceful generation) began to go stiffly down the dark incline, waving his hand for the other to wait there.
"In for a penny, in for a pound. I can kick like winkin', though I can't fight much." With these words, the gallant Hopper followed, slowing his quick steps to the heavier march in front.
When they came to the bottom, they found a level space, with room enough to turn a horse and cart. It was getting very dusky where they stood, with the grim sides gathering round them, and not a tree or bush to give any sign of life, but the fringe of the dominant black weed, like heavy brows, shagging the outlook. But on the left hand, where the steep fell back, was the mouth as of a cave scooped roughly. Within it, all was black with gloom, and the low narrow entrance showed little hospitality.
"I don't care a d – n," said Sergeant Jakes, forgetful of school discipline; "if there's any scoundrel there, I'll drag him out. If it's old Colonel's bones – well I'm not afraid of them." There remained just light enough to show that the cart had been backed up to the entrance.
"Where you go, I go;" replied the dauntless Hopper; and into it they plunged, with their hearts beating high, but their spirit on fire for anything.
The sound of their steps, as they passed into the darkness, echoed the emptiness of the place. There was nothing to be felt, except rugged flinty sides, and the damp chill which gathered in their hair; and in the middle, a slab of broken stone, over which they stumbled into one another's arms. They had no means of striking a light; but as their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they assured themselves that there was nothing more to learn, unless it might be from some small object on the floor. There seemed to be no shelves, no sort of fixture, no recesses; only the bare and unoccupied cave.
"I tell you what," said Sergeant Jakes, as they stood in the open air again; "this has been a smuggler's store in the war-time; a natural cave, improved no doubt. What we thought to find is gone further on, I fear. Too late, Master Hopper, to do any more to-day, and perhaps too late to do any more at all. But we must come again with a light, if possible on Monday."
"Well, one thing we have proved – that the villains, whoever they were, must have come from up the country; perhaps as far off as the Mendip Hills. But keep it to yourself, till we have settled what to do. Not a word to Tucker, or the news will be all over Perlycross to-night. Come back to the hoof-marks, and I'll take a copy. If we could only find the impressions of the men's feet too! You see after all, that Joe Crang spoke the truth. And it was the discovery of his 'Little Billy' that led me on in this direction."
There was light enough still, when they came back to the clay-patch, to make a rough tracing of the broken shoe, on the paper in which the youth had brought his bread and bacon; and even that great steeple-chaser was glad to go home in company, and upon a truss of furze, with a flour-sack to shield him from the stubs and prickles.