Part 3, Chapter IX
The Arch-Fear
One sunny afternoon towards the end of August, Florella was sitting on the wall of old Peggy Outhwaite’s garden, sketching a tuft of house-leek that adorned the roof of the ancient and ill-kept cottage. This little homestead, which was Peggy’s own, and had belonged to her fathers before her, was tucked into a corner of the wood above the Flete, through which the footpath led up to the Hall; the cottage was reached from that side by a little side-track.
The like of Florella had never come into Peggy’s life before, and she took to this new kind of creature very kindly, finding her a most attentive listener to Waynflete traditions.
Whether in old Peggy, inglorious, though not mute, there rested the soul of a romance writer, or whether, as she herself averred, the Outhwaites knew a deal, she told “Miss Flowra,” as she called Florella, more about “t’ owd Guy” than any one had ever heard before. She was a true reciter; and while Florella sketched, she would stand before her, and describe the passage of the Flete on that awful night when Waynflete was lost, as if she herself had been standing by. She told her the original legend of the traitor who had betrayed his friend’s life, and therefore had “walked” ever since. She mentioned his appearances, and talked about him with a kind of grotesque familiarity as if “t’ owd gen’leman” had been in the habit of taking constitutionals about the valley. But now and then her tone deepened.
“Eh, my dear,” she said, “ye mun look on’t aright. A poor lost soul does na’ coom back to tempt, but to warn – to warn us fra’ sin, Missy. He’s boun’ to coom, though happen the devil drives ’un. But ’tisna a’ can see. T’ owd Guy may walk oop till most on us, and we be noon wiser. There’s my Jem, puir lad, sees ’un, he do, and Mr Guy, he knaws ’un well.”
“Did he ever tell you so?” said Florella.
“Eh, d’ye think I need tellin’? Eh, there a be. Good day to ye, sir.”
Florella’s palette fell out of her hand before this friendly greeting revealed to her that it was not the old, but the young Guy, who stood at the garden gate.
He had not been at Waynflete since his return, and now came forward with outstretched hand, while Jem appeared behind him like his shadow.
“Godfrey has been away,” he said, “and I couldn’t get over before. I have come to the Vicarage for a week. There are a good many arrangements to make, and I want to ask Mrs John Palmer a favour. I should like – it’s an odd fancy – but I should like old Miss Maxwell, the Stauntons’ cousin, to come to the church opening. You saw her, I think. I know Mrs Palmer is going kindly to do the entertaining.”
“Oh yes,” said Florella. “I had thought of her. But she’d like you to ask her yourself.”
“So I know,” he said; “I shall ride over. Staunton says he won’t come in the character of an hereditary foe; but I shall get him somehow.”
“We asked Violet,” said Florella, “and she says that ancestors are such a novelty that she is delighted to have even a villain.”
Guy and Florella had a laugh in common as he turned and spoke to Peggy, and she gathered up her sketching things.
“Eh,” said the old woman, as they went out at the gate together, “t’ owd Guy winna mak’ an end yet o’ Waynfletes!”
When old Miss Maxwell, picking York and Lancaster roses in her little garden, looked down the bleak grey street of Ouselwell, and beheld a stranger riding up, she felt, as she said afterwards, a presentiment of something unusual, which, as strange and striking young men were not common in Ouselwell, was perhaps not surprising. But it was fulfilled when the stranger left his horse at the inn, and walking up to her gate, bowed politely, and introduced himself as Guy Waynflete, a friend of her cousin, Mr Cuthbert Staunton.
Miss Maxwell made him a formal bow and led him into her little drawing-room, and the little old maid and the tall young man sat down opposite to each other, and Guy said quite simply —
“Miss Maxwell, we have been restoring Waynflete Church. It is to be opened on Michaelmas Day, and my brother and I wish very much that you should be with us on the occasion. We have to thank you for the family papers which you allowed us to have.”
“You do me a great honour, Mr Waynflete,” said the old lady, formally. “It is long since I was so far from home; but I should, I assure you, be glad to share in the rejoicing. Although the relations between our families were not as happy as could be wished, yet somehow, sir, any connection so long ago creates an interest.”
“Yes,” said Guy; “that is just my feeling.”
Then she gave Guy bread and salt in the shape of tea and hot cakes, and lapsed into more friendly chat, shaking hands tenderly with him when he took leave, and the interview, a somewhat quaint one for the end of the nineteenth century, concluded.
“A most distinguished young man,” as she wrote to Kitty Staunton; “but I fear he has the look of a doom upon him.”
“Which only means that he looks delicate,” said Constancy, when this cheerful sentence found its way to Waynflete.
For Constancy was there, having finished her trip, and having assured herself that Godfrey was pretty well tied to Ingleby. The world was going well. The old incapable tenant of Upper Flete, the only farm on the estate of any value, died, and was succeeded by a nephew, with more education and capital, who came to terms with Godfrey as to needful improvements, and rented some more land. A purchaser was found for the copse-wood, which had not been cut for many years, who bought it standing, and undertook all the expenses of cutting and carriage. A great change would therefore soon be seen in the whole aspect of the valley, and, as for the house, Mrs John Palmer’s fancy for it continued, and she thought of taking it, as she could well afford to do, for a summer residence; in which case, she would, no doubt, prove a good friend to the village.
Godfrey came forward and made all the arrangements without any apparent reluctance; but a queer little smile, not unlike his brother’s, came over his face when he was questioned by the neighbouring squires on his views on preserving or politics, and he would not commit himself as to the future.
All this was satisfactory to Guy, and so, in another way, was his “reconciliation” with the last of the Maxwells of Ouseley. Matters seemed to be drawing towards a point of success, of which the coming gathering was a kind of symbol. As he was returning from a ride in the broad, spreading sunlight of an August afternoon, he thought of all that the past year had brought to him. It was but a year since he had shown Florella the picture in the octagon-room, and her words had roused him to make a fight for his freedom. Till she touched his spirit, he had been tossed and driven in helpless and hopeless bondage to fear, his one notion of fortitude, concealment, his one refuge, a remedy worse than the disease. That danger he recognised with critical self-knowledge, had, in his case, been born of fear, and was itself something of a spectre of his fancy. Apart from maddening terror, he would never “take to drink.” And, after this year of stern and steady conflict, it did not seem to him that any bewilderment of the senses could ever again terrify him beyond the power of self-control. While, as for that inward sense of possession, that presence, which for him lay behind all else, if that should spring into consciousness again, after its long sleep, he was prepared to face it. There was another force, deeper and stronger still, which, in dim and awful glory, had made itself felt within him.
Guy believed that his soul was saved. There are no other words for it, though these may convey a hundred other meanings. But there was “more to come.” Whether this conviction was well-founded, or whether, as Cuthbert would have told him, it sprang from the depression of exhausted nerves and spirits; from the melancholy too often associated with trials such as his, it equally proved that he was not free as other men were for the sweetness of life and love.
As other men? Were other men free? “The drink” might have been a bugbear to him, but it was an awful fact to thousands of those others. How many devils had possessed his rough ancestors, whose clutch had not closed on him, because the one great gain of old Margaret’s courage had been that he and his brother began life on a higher level? How did this poor Jem Outhwaite, who burlesqued and caricatured his own grim experiences, come to be what he was? As this thought occurred to him, Jem himself started out of a gateway beside him, and, after a grin and nod of greeting, picked up Rawdie, and carried him over a muddy piece of ground, through which he himself humbly shambled beside Guy’s horse. The royal favourite should not needlessly wet his feet.
Jem was a conversational person, and fired off short remarks at intervals.
“Owd Cowperthwaite says Waynfletes’ll tak’ t’ bread out o’s mouth.”
“Old Cowperthwaite’s a scoundrel,” said Guy.
“Ay, sir,” said Jem, cheerfully. Then, after a pause, “I see twa rabbits over Flete Edge. Mr Godfrey can shoot ’em.”
“Ay, I dare say he will.”
“I see t’ owd gen’leman by t’ brig on Friday,” said Jem, in the same contented treble.
“Nay, Jem, I don’t think you did,” said Guy, didactically.
“I see Miss Flowra,” said Jem, in the same tone of cheerful indifference.
Guy sprang from his horse, and Jem, setting Rawdie delicately down on a bit of turf, grinned, nodded, shambled away across a field towards the river, and was out of sight in a minute.
“Oh,” said Florella, as she came up, “I hope Jem will go straight home, he has been about all day. Old Peggy is really ill. She got a chill the other day waiting for him at the bridge in the rain. You know he stops at the Dragon, and the doctor says he must be found quick, or it may go hard with her.”
“I know,” said Guy, briefly. “I’ll just go and put my horse up, and then go and fetch him. He’ll come with me. He was here this minute.”
“You know,” said Florella, in a half-whisper, “that he says t’ owd Guy stops him.”
“I know,” said Guy. “But don’t listen to stories about him. You mustn’t get to fancy the place is haunted.”
“I am not afraid,” she said, and there was a touch of reproach in her voice. Guy paused a moment, then spoke in another tone.
“I think I have been wrong,” he said. “I wanted you to forget what you had done for me, for fear the least influence from which you have saved me should breathe on your spirit. But you ought to know that you have saved me. You have led me to that saving Presence of which you spoke. Whatever may come, whatever it may cost, yet the snare is broken, and I am delivered.”
She looked at him without a word.
He went on in the same steady, controlled tones. “Now you see there’s another. Will you help that poor lad through the next hour, I think he’ll be hard pressed? Good-bye, he shall come to his mother. He shan’t be too late.” He took her hands, and bent as if to kiss them. A little sob broke from her, and in a moment the kiss was on her lips.
He was gone before the blood had time to burn up in her cheek, and she broke into a passion of tears, while formless and awful, all the terror that he might be going to meet, rushed over her spirit. She felt helpless, powerless, certain of evil. Her soul was full of mist and cloud. All she could do was, like a child, to follow his behest, and pray for Jem.
Guy, thrilled with a new and high excitement, put up his horse, and with Rawdie still at his heels, pursued his way towards the Dragon, intending to call Jem away from its enticing attractions, and to escort him over the old footbridge back to his mother. A simple thing to do, but he had only crossed that bridge once before.
The hot bright sunlight had thickened into a thundery mist, and the light rapidly faded. Guy was not tired now, he walked easily enough, nor did any perplexing thoughts beset him. He saw – no more than usual. He felt no inward horror. But upon his rapturous mood there fell as strong a conviction that he was going to dare his fate as if he had gone to pick up a bomb of dynamite. He felt as if the very air was a resisting force as he pushed on through it. He went on, and a deep sadness came upon him, and all in a moment, as he came to the top of the hollow, he knew that it was the expectation of death. He stopped and looked down into the mist. He could not see across the valley, and he could not see across that expectation. He could not think of any definite danger. He stood still with his eyes on the ground; upon the mist the spectral shape that went before him, showed out sharp and clear. Words came into his mind. “Fear not him that can kill the body.” But “the body” meant life and work, and love and joy. It meant Florella. Perhaps his body was the price that had to be paid for his soul. And when the end was past? What did death mean? When the spirit was free from the flesh, would the spiritual foes be gone? Or would the last veil be withdrawn from their terrible faces? What would await him in the world where the other Guy had gone before?
Guy went on down the hill till into the misty air gleamed the paraffin lamps of the Dragon public, and into his misty thoughts came the need of sharp and prompt action.
He stepped inside the door, and called out, “Is Jem Outhwaite here? I want him.”
Two or three men were standing about, in the bar. They looked at Guy, and fell back before him with surprising readiness.
“Here a be, sir,” said one, pushing Jem’s reluctant figure forward, as he tried to slink behind them.
“Come Jem,” said Guy; “your mother’s bad, and I’m going to take you back to her across the bridge. Come along with me.”
He laid his hand on Jem’s arm, and with a short “Good evening,” pulled him out of the cheerful circle, into the foggy dusk. Jem, who followed him usually like a dog, now hung back, and dragged against his hold, trembling and reluctant; not drunk, he thought, but manifestly dazed with fear. He was tall and big, and perhaps it was the dead weight of his resistance that made Guy feel as if the very mist oppressed him, and forced him back. Against himself, against his poor companion, against uncomprehended forces he struggled on.
“Sithee, there a be. We canna get by. He’ll get me!” gasped Jem, as he struggled.
“Jem,” said Guy, “I have got past him, though I was just as much afraid as you. And I am not going to let him stop you. He can’t do it, Jem. Say your prayers your mother taught you, and come on. He can’t stop you.”
“Eh, but he can – but he can! He’s a coomin’; he’s a gripped me!” gasped Jem, flinging his arms round Guy, and dragging him back, then shrinking behind him.
“No, he hasn’t, Jem,” said Guy, in clear, firm tones. “I’m going first over the bridge; so if he gets either of us, he’ll have me. You come after, like a man, and God have mercy on us both!”
Guy pushed forward. Surely the poor fellow would follow now! But again Jem held him back.
“Naw, sir,” said the poor half-wit, in his cracking treble, “I’ll gang ower first, and yo’ coom arter,” and with a quick, unsteady run, he shambled on to the bridge.
Part 3, Chapter X
Two, or Three?
Godfrey had come to Waynflete Vicarage for a couple of nights, to make his final arrangements as to the timber. He was walking along the lane at the top of Flete Wood, in the dusk of this misty evening, when he heard an angry bark, and then a howl as of a dog in distress.
“That’s surely Rawdie,” he thought. “What can bring Guy down there?”
He hurried on to a point in the lane, where the fall of the ground made the river and the bridge visible, and looked down through the gathering dusk.
He saw figures on the bridge; whose, and how many he could not tell; but there was evidently a struggle in the middle. Was it a fight – or was one dragging or guiding the other? Were there two – or three? He gazed for a moment, puzzled and uncertain, then the bridge and the figures swung and reeled before his eyes, there was a noise of crashing timber, then a tremendous splash, and bridge and figures disappeared into the water.
Godfrey gave a great shout and call, as he sprang over the wall, and dashed headlong down the slope, over rock and wood and thicket, till he came to the edge of the river.
The great pool under the bridge was all stirred and seething with broken timber. Godfrey could see nothing else at first; but in a moment he caught sight of something like a human form. He jumped into the water. It was hardly out of his depth; but the floating, cracking timber made the greatest caution needful, and it was a minute or two before he could grip the collar of the man seen, and drag him towards the shore. It was Jem Outhwaite, dripping, shaking, choking with water, not absolutely senseless, but quite unable to help himself, as only by the exertion of all his great strength, the powerful Godfrey managed to tug him towards a shallow place, and pull him ashore.
“Who else – who else?” gasped Godfrey, breathlessly; but Jem was quite incapable of speech, and only cried feebly.
Godfrey pushed him on to a safe place, and stepped again into the pool. The water was very cold, and the planks and rails of the bridge were drifting and knocking about in the current, so that Godfrey had to be most careful in the uncertain light to feel his way among the timbers as he waded through the water. As it was, he tore his clothes and bruised his shoulders. He turned towards the relics of the bridge, and there, caught in the timbers, lay Guy, face upwards, swaying with the swaying piles.
Godfrey pushed his way near, and got his arms round him; but he was afraid of bringing down the whole fabric by one incautious movement. He raised Guy’s head against his shoulder, when a voice close above him said, clearly —
“I think I can help you. This first piece of plank is firm. Can we lift him on to it?”
He looked up. Constancy was standing on the planks of the broken bridge. Her steady eyes were looking down, her firm hand was stretched out.
Godfrey leant his shoulder against the still standing stake, and held Guy more firmly.
“No,” he said, steadily. “I can’t lift him from below, and you couldn’t do it. Listen. Go back to the shore, cross over the pebbles where the water is shallow above, then run to the Dragon and get help.”
She went without an instant’s delay, calling in loud clear tones as she went, tones that echoed through the wood and penetrated to the garden gate of old Peggy’s cottage, where Florella stood straining her eyes into the darkness. The next thing for her, when Guy left her, had been to go back to the old woman, to tell her cheerfully that Mr Guy was going to see Jem home, so that there was no need to worry herself about him.
“Eh then, hinny,” groaned Peggy, “bide till they coom, and mak yersell a coop a tay, for it’s weary wark waiting, though they’ll noan be lang getting ower t’ brig.”
Florella – such is life – looked at her watch to see how much time there remained before dinner, and, finding that she had an hour to spare, proceeded to boil the kettle and make the tea, while Peggy praised her handiness, and took her tea with pleasure, as she sat in her old wooden chair by the fire. She looked quite cheerful and absorbed in the present; while on Florella’s mind pressed a weight of fear. Her hands were cold, she could not swallow the tea. Yet what was there to be afraid of?
“Eh,” said Peggy, with a chuckle, “t’ owd gen’leman’ll meet his match wi’ twa on em. Gae oot till t’ gate, honey, and see if they’re coomin’ up t’ path.”
Florella went gladly. She stood at the gate, and strained her ears and eyes. Surely the water rushed noisily below, surely there were sounds of – something. Suddenly there was a loud, clear call, in a woman’s voice.
“Cooey – cooey.”
No one in Waynflete but Constancy could have uttered that call, and Florella answered it with another, then flew down the path towards the bridge, just as a man ran down the field from the opposite side. She saw this man plunge into the water, and fight his way towards the ruin of the bridge. Then in the dusk she saw him reach another figure staggering under a weight. Slowly and with difficulty they reached the shore, and laid their heavy burden down.
“Eh!” cried the new-comer; “Eh – Lord a’ mercy on us. Eh! It’s Mr Guy, drooned dead!”
Then Florella knew of what she had been afraid.
She could never clearly recall what next happened. The news of the catastrophe suddenly spread, so that, as it seemed, a crowd came up. Constancy’s clear voice, self-possessed and resolute, sounded through the confusion.
“He had better be carried to the Hall; it is much nearer than the Vicarage, and I will run on and make ready.”
Rougher tones close by, as some one shook poor Jem by the shoulder.
“Coom, man, coom; coom till mither. Nay, tha bain’t droonded yet.”
Then Constancy again, as she went away.
“Flo, you had better run on first, and prepare the poor old woman.”
They had lifted Guy up, and were carrying him away, and the fleet-footed Constancy was far ahead, before her words had penetrated Florella’s brain. Then she climbed up the hill to the cottage, where she found neighbours gathering, and close behind her came Jem, hauled along by a friend, dripping and scared, but alive, and able to swallow, as a friendly neighbour poured hot drink down his throat.
“T’ owd gen’leman’d a thrawed me in t’ watter, but Mr Guy thrawed ’un in instead, and t’ brig smashed,” was his story.
“Eh, eh!” said Peggy; “he’s got ’is death, and Mr Guy, too. Eh! they can baith lig in t’ new kirkyard, and me alongside on ’em.”
There was nothing for Florella to do, and she fled from this grotesque presentment of the mystic horror that haunted her. As she came up to the Hall, the doctor tore past her in his gig, having happily been caught close at hand. Guy had been carried upstairs, and Mrs John Palmer, flurried, but full of kindness, was saying —
“Oh yes, Cosy; yes, you were quite right, my dear. So much more appropriate that he should die under this roof.”
Florella came in, and sat down in the lamp-lit drawing-room.
“Is he dead?” she said, in a slow, dull voice.
“They don’t know,” said Constancy. “We’d better see that they have plenty of hot blankets, and what’s wanted.”
She went off to the kitchen; but Florella sat, stupid and helpless, it seemed to her, for hours.
Then there were voices in the hall, and then the sound of the gig driving off at full speed. Still Florella never moved, till Mrs Palmer came in.
“The vicar’s gone in the gig to get dry things for Godfrey; he won’t leave his brother.”
“Then Guy isn’t dead?” said Florella, composedly.
“No; just breathing. He was caught in the timber so that his head was above water. It’s the shock to the heart that has done it. But he isn’t gone – yet.”
Then Florella came to herself with a shock that was like the stab of a knife. The room swayed and darkened, and she barely kept her senses; but in a moment the life forces seemed to come back again with pain and anguish, but clear and ready for action.
“I’ll go and help Cosy,” she said.
Mrs Palmer had an effective maid, who was able to carry out the doctor’s directions, and the other women prepared what was needed, till the news came downstairs that the long fainting-fit had yielded at last, and Guy was able to swallow, and had moved and opened his eyes, though without any sign of recognition.
“The doctor would stay for the night, and every one not wanted had better go to bed.”
“Godfrey sits there, at the foot of the bed, like a big dog,” said the vicar, as he came downstairs. “He’s no earthly good, but he won’t stir.”
When Godfrey, pale with that long, mute watch, and not daring to take hope from the mere fact that his brother still lived, at last went down to breakfast, there by the table sat Constancy, holding Rawdie on her knee, and feeding him with bits of chicken.
“Oh,” she said, “this poor little darling must have been in the wood all night. See, his paw is hurt; he came crying to the door this morning.”
“Let me take him to Guy,” said Godfrey, eagerly. “He might notice him – he has never come to himself.”
“Not till you have had some breakfast,” said Cosy, with brisk decision. “The first principle of nursing is to take care of yourself.”
Godfrey was not capable just then of going back to first principles; but to be taken care of by Constancy was something new, and his spirit revived as she poured out coffee for him, and cut bread, and insisted on his eating his breakfast. Presently the others came down, and the vicar, who had been out, came back, and the story of the accident was pieced together.
Florella had to tell how Guy had gone to fetch Jem Outhwaite back to his mother.
“So good-natured of him,” said Mrs Palmer.
Godfrey had heard Rawdie howl before anything had happened, and Constancy, being out in the wood, had heard his shout for help when he came down to the river.
“Old Cowperthwaite’s in a fright,” said the vicar. “He confesses that he had been used to keep ‘t’ owd brig’ repaired for his customers; but that since his notice, he’d let it alone. But I don’t see now why it smashed so completely.”
“Nor I,” said Godfrey. “I looked, and saw two or three figures – I couldn’t count in the mist – struggling. Of course it was Guy dragging Jem over. But I thought I saw three.”
“Jem is wandering, and off his head,” said the vicar. “He says ‘t’ owd Guy’ tried to throw him in.”
Godfrey looked very much startled; his colour changed, but he did not speak; and soon the question rose as to what next.
He must telegraph at once to Ingleby, and also he said, faltering, “If – if Guy – he would want Cuthbert Staunton.”
Mrs Palmer begged him to telegraph at once, and the doctor’s view was that they had better wait a few hours, and – see how things went, before doing anything more.
Florella heard, as in a dream. A numb dullness was on her spirit. Constancy came and told how Rawdie had been taken upstairs, and that Godfrey thought Guy had moved and touched him.
“Poor little dog!” said Florella.
Then Constancy, with unwonted confidence, told, in hushed accents, the story of her escape at Zwei-brücken, of her sense of the finality of death, and of Guy’s words, “There is something beyond.”
“He knew it,” Constancy said, in her strong, emphatic tones.
But even this did not stir Florella’s soul; she wanted something now.
Late in the evening, Cuthbert Staunton arrived, full of anxious concern, and it fell to Florella to give him supper, and to answer his questions as to what had happened. She went through it all, in a matter-of-fact voice; but she knew that Cuthbert knew what it all implied.
There was a little silence, and then she suddenly said —
“It has been all in vain!”
Then Cuthbert leant over the corner of the table, and laid his hand on hers; she seemed to him so young and lonely in her despair.
“My dear,” he said, in his kind voice, “he would not think so Very strange things have passed; but though I don’t see them quite as he does, he has made as noble a struggle as man ever made. And he has conquered. He has mastered his weakness, and risen above it. It is a thing never to be forgotten. Even if we lose him – as may be – as may be – I cannot think – I cannot think, Florella, that he will lose himself. And – I think you must not fail him now. The conditions of the fight are very mysterious, and I could not say that our courage may make no difference to him. His perceptions are keener than ours.”
“I’ll not fail him,” said Florella, with a light in her eyes. “I’ll fight it out too.”
She went up to her room, and knelt down by the bed, and fought as hard a fight with her own soul as ever Guy had waged with his.
If her thoughts could affect his, if her will could share in the struggle, she must not will for him a lesser thing than he had willed for himself. She would not pray only that Guy might live and not die; but that, at all costs, his work might be carried through, his victory completed. She must give him as he gave himself. She prayed the prayer of faith with all her waking will; but when at last, exhausted, she fell asleep, in her dreams she prayed that he might be given back to life.