Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, page 380
‘No, sir; to mention a circumstance. On the morning in question, your son, Mr. Richard Naseby—’
‘I do not permit his name to be mentioned.’
‘You will, however, permit me,’ replied the Editor.
‘You are cruel,’ said the Squire. He was right, he was a broken man.
Then the Editor described Dick’s warning visit; and how he had seen in the lad’s eye that there was a thrashing in the wind, and had escaped through pity only — so the Editor put it— ‘through pity only sir. And oh, sir,’ he went on, ‘if you had seen him speaking up for you, I am sure you would have been proud of your son. I know I admired the lad myself, and indeed that’s what brings me here.’
‘I have misjudged him,’ said the Squire. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Yes, sir, he lies sick at Thymebury.’
‘You can take me to him?’
‘I can.’
‘I pray God he may forgive me,’ said the father.
And he and the Editor made post-haste for the country town.
Next day the report went abroad that Mr. Richard was reconciled to his father and had been taken home to Naseby House. He was still ailing, it was said, and the Squire nursed him like the proverbial woman. Rumour, in this instance, did no more than justice to the truth; and over the sickbed many confidences were exchanged, and clouds that had been growing for years passed away in a few hours, and as fond mankind loves to hope, for ever. Many long talks had been fruitless in external action, though fruitful for the understanding of the pair; but at last, one showery Tuesday, the Squire might have been observed upon his way to the cottage in the lane.
The old gentleman had arranged his features with a view to self-command, rather than external cheerfulness; and he entered the cottage on his visit of conciliation with the bearing of a clergyman come to announce a death.
The Admiral and his daughter were both within, and both looked upon their visitor with more surprise than favour.
‘Sir,’ said he to Van Tromp, ‘I am told I have done you much injustice.’
There came a little sound in Esther’s throat, and she put her hand suddenly to her heart.
‘You have, sir; and the acknowledgment suffices,’ replied the Admiral. ‘I am prepared, sir, to be easy with you, since I hear you have made it up with my friend Dick. But let me remind you that you owe some apologies to this young lady also.’
‘I shall have the temerity to ask for more than her forgiveness,’ said the Squire. ‘Miss Van Tromp,’ he continued, ‘once I was in great distress, and knew nothing of you or your character; but I believe you will pardon a few rough words to an old man who asks forgiveness from his heart. I have heard much of you since then; for you have a fervent advocate in my house. I believe you will understand that I speak of my son. He is, I regret to say, very far from well; he does not pick up as the doctors had expected; he has a great deal upon his mind, and, to tell you the truth, my girl, if you won’t help us, I am afraid I shall lose him. Come now, forgive him! I was angry with him once myself, and I found I was in the wrong. This is only a misunderstanding, like the other, believe me; and with one kind movement, you may give happiness to him, and to me, and to yourself.’
Esther made a movement towards the door, but long before she reached it she had broken forth sobbing.
‘It is all right,’ said the Admiral; ‘I understand the sex. Let me make you my compliments, Mr. Naseby.’
The Squire was too much relieved to be angry.
‘My dear,’ said he to Esther, ‘you must not agitate yourself.’
‘She had better go up and see him right away,’ suggested Van Tromp.
‘I had not ventured to propose it,’ replied the Squire. ‘Les convenances, I believe—’
‘Je m’en fiche,’ cried the Admiral, snapping his fingers. ‘She shall go and see my friend Dick. Run and get ready, Esther.’
Esther obeyed.
‘She has not — has not run away again?’ inquired Mr. Naseby, as soon as she was gone.
‘No,’ said Van Tromp, ‘not again. She is a devilish odd girl though, mind you that.’
‘But I cannot stomach the man with the carbuncles,’ thought the Squire.
And this is why there is a new household and a brand-new baby in Naseby Dower House; and why the great Van Tromp lives in pleasant style upon the shores of England; and why twenty-six individual copies of the Thymebury Star are received daily at the door of Naseby House.
UNCOLLECTED STORIES
CONTENTS
THE PLAGUE-CELLAR
WHEN THE DEVIL WAS WELL
EDIFYING LETTERS OF THE RUTHERFORD FAMILY
AN OLD SONG
DIOGENES
THE ENCHANTRESS
THE WAIF WOMAN
THE PLAGUE-CELLAR
The wind howled chilly and with a mournful cadence through the funnel-like closes, up the winding high street and round the castle rock, raising wavelets on the dull Nor’ Loch and shaking from the creaking trees such withered leaves as autumn had not taken long before. The filmy clouds that drifted across the crescent moon, now hid her in their dark embrace, now let a glimmering beam fall with a ghastly pallor on the quaint old town. It was freezing pretty hard; and all the streets were slippery; and the more sheltered comers of the Loch had curdled into watery ice, in spite of the gale. There was good promise of snow, before the dawn.
Therefore it was with little satisfaction that Master Ephraim Martext, outed Minister of the Gospel, drew his door shut after him, and strode down the close. There, he was sheltered; but, next moment, as he entered the Grassmarket, the wind nearly bowled him off his feet, by twitching his cloaking round his sturdy shanks. Master Ephraim drew his refractory garment tighter round his frame, and leant against the blast. At the same moment the moon cleared a cloud, only indeed to pass beneath another; but there was time for one pale and uncertain beam to fall upon that scaffold, which had been stained the day before with the blood of five of the Pentland insurgents.
Master Ephraim’s brow darkened. ‘An evil night,’ he muttered: ‘Oh Lord! how long wilt thou delay the day of thy vengeance!’
A few minutes’ walk, and he entered the indicated wynd, and stopped at the door. Drawing for the key which had been enclosed in the letter, he inserted it into the lock. With a groan the bolt fell back: with a shriek, the door revolved upon its hinges. Carefully the divine closed it after him; and, then, he turned to examine the scene. A wide lobby, and a princely staircase lay exposed to his eyes, the one paved with large flags, the other bordered with carved oak balustrades, and both begrimed with dirt, draped with cobwebs, and carpetted with dust. For a small space round the door, the air and the entry of persons had cleared away the dust; but Martext could see the prints of ascending feet, faithfully preserved in the covering of the stairs. The whole scene was exhibitted by the yellow radiance of an oil preserved from strong draughts in a stable lantern, and set upon the first landing. A chill smote on the minister’s heart. The wind was rough, and the frost nipped his face and hands shrewdly; but he wished himself out again. ‘Poor lad!’ he thought. ‘It would be a shame to leave him. Who have a better right to my assistance and ministration than those who have fought for my church. Nevertheless this is an eerie place, and the air is wondrous unwholesome.’
Then, he gathered courage and hurried up four flights of steps, to where an open door let a beam of flickering red light fall out upon the topmost landing. He entered. The room was long, low, uncarpetted, unfurnished. At one end there lay a heap of discoloured, bemired, and blood-stained cloaks, with a brace of pistols, a drawn sabre, and a Bible with a black bullet hole right through the middle of it. Close by, a great wood fire smouldered with a dull red glow, and leapt occasionally into flickering tongues of flame, in a fire-place lined with blue Dutch picture tiles; and even as the flames leapt up, Moses would strike the rock with his uplifted rod, and the fire would curl round the Hebrew boys and their divine companion in the furnace heated seven times, and the imps that circled St Anthony would toss their deformed arms about and wax and wane changing from squat little Pucks, to colossal Apollyons; and then the flames sank back; and the pictures became stiff tiles again. In front of the fire stood a tall thin sallow man, of some seven and twenty years of age. His face was worn and haggard; his brow was tied up in a bloodstained napkin; and his eye gleamed with a cold, fierce, feverish light. His clothes were tom, disordered, and muddy. Very strange did he look beside the solid, sensible face and black and seemly garments of the worthy divine.
I shall pass over the first greetings which were like most other first greetings. When he was standing before the fire warming his frost-pained fingers, Master Ephraim began: ‘Well, Master Ravenswood, and what made you summon me hither? It is a bitter night and a tempestuous: besides it is no great recommendation to the Council to be found with a bluidy rebel and sacrilegious murderer — for so they call you, Master Ravenswood.’
‘Do you grudge coming?’ inquired Ravenswood, in a surly tone. ‘There is yet time to go.’
‘Nay, nay, you mistake me,’ returned Martext, warmly. ‘It would not be seemly for an uncle to desert a nephew, nor a minister, one of the defenders of his faith: I only meant to hurry you; for my absence must not be noticed.’
‘I have more need of you than you think, perhaps. Sometimes, I think I shall go mad, sitting up here alone in the old empty house. Last night man Corsack sat opposite me for an hour with his living eyes glaring strangely from his dead face; and he spoke — he said — Bah! Mister Martext, I wish you to pray with me.’
It was an age of superstition: Martext was interested in what he heard. ‘What did he say — what did he say, Ravenswood?’ he asked, in a hoarse whisper.
‘It is strange,’ said the other. ‘To tell you what he said, I got poor Donald to take the letter to you; and now, when you are here, I dare not speak. I will constrain myself. Listen: you know well enough that my family were among the first to be stricken down by the plague of 1661. My sister, Janet, went into the secret closet on the stair. How she found the spring, Heaven only knows; for when we found her lying, plague stricken, upon the steps without she was only able to say that she had entered the cellar. That night she died. My father determined to penetrate the mystery. With his own hand, he burst the panel in and entered; and, two hours after, an old servant found him lying with the plague mark on him, on the landing at the top of a narrow flight of stairs. Both of them died that evening. Everyone, too, who passed the fatal door, were stricken like those who entered. In alarm, my mother sent for workmen to board the entrance up. The carpenters met the same fate as all the others.’
‘I have heard all this before, my young friend,’ said Master Ephraim, observing that the narrator paused; ‘nor is it altogether without parallel. The Lord had permitted, in his wisdom, that there should be several of these noctious receptacles of Death. In part of this city, there are more than one, whereof the neighbours live in wholesome dread. But what is all this, Master Ravenswood, to the words of Nielson’s ghost?’
‘He said words which I may not mention; but he told me to essay the entrance of the Plague-Cellar.’
‘God forbid!’
‘I have had other augery,’ returned Ravenswood, in sepulchral tones, his eyes gleaming with a still wilder fire; ‘and besides, it is in a glorious cause. He told me, sir, as plainly as a living man could speak that he who entered the Plague-Cellar should save our Church from it’s present wretched state.’
Any unbiased spectator could have seen that the words of Ravenswood took their birth from fever. The baleful fire in his eyes, the shaking of his emaciated hands, the volubility and wildness of his words all tended to prove the same fact. But in matters of superstition, men gave up their prerogative of common sense in the year 1667. Besides, who is so deaf as he that will not hear. Master Martext wished to believe in the possible renovation of his oppressed Church, and the physical impossibility of the matter did not stick much in his throat.
‘A glorious aim, as you say, kinsman,’ he replied— ‘a glorious aim. What is the other augery?’
‘It is more certain still. You see here my Bible pierced by the bullet of an erastian dragoon. After the vision, I opened it to seek for some divine command. Spared by a miracle from the course of the ball, I found the command: Seek and ye shall find!’
For a long time, the preacher sat brooding over the strange revelations of his companion. At last, he raised his head. ‘And will you dare?’ he asked.
‘Dare!’ was the only answer: but it was made in a tone so firm and so enthusiastic, that all doubt was stilled in Master Ephraim’s mind.
‘The Lord God of Isaac and of Israel guide and assist you! I myself will wait on the landing above to catch what you may say, if you are too suddenly smitten. I suppose I also must die; but essay, my son, to close the door when you come out, lest when I pass, I should be rendered incapable of spreading the secret.’ The minister’s heavy face was idealized by his noble determination.
Both rose without a word. Ravenswood went first, his eyes scintillating, his cheeks glowing with a hectic flush. As they passed down the stair, Ravenswood said something so incoherent, that Martext supposed he had not heard distinctly: he was too much excited to think of asking into it’s meaning.
At last the minister paused on the landing, whence he could see distinctly a portion of wainscot where some boards less time-stained than the others led him to believe that the cellar door existed.
Ravenswood continued his descent to a corner of the stair where a large axe was propped against a wall. Three vigorous strokes on the crunching boards, burst in the patched-up entrance. Martext was so pleased that he could not see into the space that lay beyond: he heard Ravenswood give a strange, wild, falsetto laugh which rang hideously through the echoing stair: the sound smote him to the heart: he felt very cold. Ravenswood descended the stair, picked up the lantern, and plunged into the mysterious passage.
For a space all was terribly still. The light, which fell across the stair from the ragged entrance, grew fainter and fainter. Martext, in an agony of fear and excitement, craned forward over the shaking balustrade, the dim light falling with strange effect, on his wrought and eager visage.
Suddenly, that hateful laugh burst forth again louder, wilder, higher, more utterly appalling than before. ‘Ha-ah!’ he yelled. ‘See! the plague-spots! for the Church! Glory!’ And again, the demon laugh echoed strangely out into the stair.
Next instant, a bright light arose in the passage: something highly inflamable, had been lit. The figure of Ravenswood appeared at the entrance, standing out against the light behind. The wild words, the fiendish laugh, the sudden conflagration had all terrified the divine; yet he did not forget his duty to his church.
‘Speak,’ he articulated. ‘Speak! What have you heard?’
‘Ha! Ha! I know you!’ replied the madman. ‘You are Sharpe — Sharpe the apostate! Do you think I will tell you! Glory! Glory! Ah! apostate, murderer! Where is the pardon! Five men died yesterday! Give me the King’s letter of mercy! Give it me!’
And he rushed up towards the other. Martext was rooted to the ground with horror: with eyes protruded, he stood waiting the madman. Then with a long drawn breath, he turned and fled. Up the stair they ran, the dust rising in clouds, the empty vault of the stair echoing to the maniac’s howls. Master Ephraim plunged desperately into an open door: the room was pitch dark; he flattened himself against the wall. His pursuer almost touched him, as he passed, feeling in every corner. The moment that the way was clear, Martext dashed forth and ran down the stairs again. He did not know what he was doing: his only object was to escape from the touch of his miserable nephew.
The combustibles in the Plague-Cellar had been exceedingly dry surely; for, when Master Ephraim reached that part of the stair in his downward flight, great tongues of flame leapt across the whole path, and curled round the balustrade; while the whole entrance was obscured by pitchy smoke. At no other time would the minister have dared to pass such a barrier. But now, goaded by despair, he plunged through the fire, leapt the remainder of the steps, and fell, half dead with terror, against the massive door.
Recovering his presence of mind and remembering that every minute he might be overtaken and seized, he strove to withdraw the bolt of the lock. What seemed a century elapsed. At last the lock opened. He looked back: Ravenswood, terrified by the flames, was halting irresolutely on the farther side. With a cry of wild joy, Martext rushed out and pulled the great door to behind him, with a loud crash.
The wind blew bitingly up the close: the snow fell thickly around. Through the great fan light over the door shone the red and flickering glow of the conflagration within. The divine fell on his knees on the powdered pavement and thanked God for his escape.
We are glad that we can supplement the above (drawn from the rev gentleman’s own account) with the following particulars from contemporaneous documents.
We find (in Dr Zophar Cant’s ‘Special Judgements and Providences’) that, that vessel of God, Ephraim Martext, did linger long in a sore fever, raving much and saying that he was plague stricken in his delirium.
Farther, we read in a personal narrative, that the mansion of the Ravenswoods was reduced on that night to four black and tottering walls. So the mystery of the Plague-Cellar was never solved.
WHEN THE DEVIL WAS WELL
When Duke Orsino had finally worn out the endurance of his young wife Ippolita, he made no opposition to her departure from the palace, and even had her escorted with all honour to the nunnery among the hills, which she had chosen for her retreat. Here, the good soul began to heal herself of all the slights that had been put upon her in these last years; and day by day, she grew to a greater quietness of spirit, and a more deep contentment in the little sunshiny, placid ways of convent life; until it seemed to her as if all the din and passion, all the smoke and stir of that dim spot that men call earth, had passed too far away from her to move her any more. It seemed as if life were quite ended for her, and yet, in a new sense, beginning. As day followed day, without violence, without distrust, without the poor falsehood or the poor pomp of a court life she seemed to breathe in renovation, and grow ever stronger and ever the more peaceful at heart. And yet the third year had not come to an end, before this peace was overthrown. For about that time it chanced that there was a new great altar-piece needed for the convent chapel; and so the authorities sent for a young sculptor, who (as was possible in these grand days) was a bit of a painter also, and a bit of an architect too, for the matter of that, and, for that matter, he could turn a sonnet as well as another, or touch a lute. One morning, after Sanazarro (for that was the sculptor’s name) had been the matter of a week about his picture, he chanced to look out of his window in the early morning, while Ippolita went to and fro in the garden reading. He looked at her carelessly enough at first; but he was so taken, before she left the garden, with the dignity and delicacy of her shape, and a certain large and tranquil sorrow in her face, that he made an oath to himself inwardly not to leave the convent until he had seen more of this sweet nun. And so that day nothing would go right with his altar-piece, it seemed. He painted in and painted out, till it was hard to divine what he was after; and by evening, the canvas looked altogether different, and there was a great bald space now, where before there had been much finished work. You see, he had to change his whole composition, before he could make room for another full-length figure.
