Говард Пайл
Stolen Treasure
Having made fast his boat with a drunken gravity, the Collector walked directly, though with uncertain steps, up the steep and rugged path towards that mysterious illumination. Now and then he stumbled over the stones and cobbles that lay in his way, but he never quite lost his balance, neither did he for a moment remit his drunken gravity. So with a befuddled and obstinate perseverance he reached at last to the conclusion of his adventure and of his fate.
The old meeting-house was two stories in height, the lower story having been formerly used by the Free Grace Believers as a place wherein to celebrate certain obscure mysteries appertaining to their belief. The upper story, devoted to the more ordinary worship of their Sunday meetings, was reached by a tall, steep flight of steps that led from the ground to a covered porch which sheltered the doorway.
The Collector paused only long enough to observe that the shutters of the lower story were tight shut and barred, and that the dull and lurid light shone from the windows above. Then he directly mounted the steps with a courage and a perfect assurance that can only be entirely enjoyed by one in his peculiar condition of inebriety.
He paused to knock at the door, and it appeared to him that his knuckles had hardly fallen upon the panel before the valve was flung suddenly open. An indescribable and heavy odor fell upon him and for the moment overpowered his senses, and he found himself standing face to face with a figure prodigiously and portentously tall.
Even at this unexpected apparition the Collector lost possession of no part of his courage. Rather he stiffened himself to a more stubborn and obstinate resolution. Steadying himself for his address, "I know very well," quoth he, "who you are. You are the Divil, I dare say, but damme if you shall do business here without paying your duties to King George. I may drink a drop too much," he cried, "but I collect my duties – every farthing of 'em." Then drawing forth his snuffbox, he thrust it under the nose of the being to whom he spake. "Take a pinch and read that," he roared, "but don't handle it, for I wouldn't take all hell to let it out of my hand."
The being whom he addressed had stood for all this while as though bereft of speech and of movement, but at these last words he appeared to find his voice, for he gave forth a strident bellow of so dreadful and terrible a sort that the Collector, brave as he found himself, stepped back a pace or two before it. The next instant he was struck upon the wrist as though by a bolt of lightning, and the snuffbox, describing a yellow circle against the light of the door, disappeared into the darkness of the night beyond. Ere he could recover himself another blow smote him upon the breast, and he fell headlong from the platform, as through infinite space.
The next day the Collector did not present himself at the office at his accustomed hour, and the morning wore along without his appearing at his desk. By noon serious alarm began to take possession of the community, and about two o'clock, the tide being then set out pretty strong, Mr. Tompkins, the consumptive clerk, and two sailors from the Sarah Goodrich, then lying at Mr. Hoppins's wharf, went down in a yawl-boat to learn, if possible, what had befallen him. They coasted along the Point for above a half-hour before they discovered any vestige of the missing Collector. Then at last they saw him lying at a little distance upon a cobbled strip of beach, where, judging from his position and from the way he had composed himself to rest, he appeared to have been overcome by liquor.
At this place Mr. Tompkins put ashore, and making the best of his way over the slippery stones exposed at low water, came at last to where his chief was lying. The Collector was reposing with one arm over his eyes, as though to shelter them from the sun, but as soon as Mr. Tompkins had approached close enough to see his countenance, he uttered a great cry that was like a scream. For, by the blue and livid lips parted at the corners to show the yellow teeth, from the waxy whiteness of the fat and hairy hands – in short, from the appearance of the whole figure, he was aware in an instant that the Collector was dead.
His cry brought the two sailors running. They, with the utmost coolness imaginable, turned the Collector over, but discovered no marks of violence upon him, till of a sudden one of them called attention to the fact that his neck was broke. Upon this the other opined that he had fallen among the rocks and twisted his neck.
The two mariners then made an investigation of his pockets, the clerk standing by the while paralyzed with horror, his face the color of dough, his scalp creeping, and his hands and fingers twitching as though with the palsy. For there was something indescribably dreadful in the spectacle of those living hands searching into the dead's pockets, and he would freely have given a week's pay if he had never embarked upon the expedition for the recovery of his chief.
In the Collector's pockets they found a twist of tobacco, a red bandanna handkerchief of violent color, a purse meagrely filled with copper coins and silver pieces, a silver watch still ticking with a loud and insistent iteration, a piece of tarred string, and a clasp-knife.
The snuffbox which the Lieutenant had regarded with such prodigious pride as the one emblem of his otherwise dubious virtue was gone.
III
THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF QUALITY
The Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl of Clandennie, having won some six hundred pounds at écarté at a single sitting at Pintzennelli's, embarked with his two friends, Captain Blessington and Lord George Fitzhope, to conclude the night with a round of final dissipation in the more remote parts of London. Accordingly they embarked at York Stairs for the Three Cranes, ripe for any mischief. Upon the water the three young gentlemen amused themselves by shouting and singing, pausing only now and then to discharge a broadside of raillery at the occupants of some other and passing boat.
All went very well for a while, some of those in the passing boats laughing and railing in return, others shouting out angry replies. At last they fell in with a broad-beamed, flat-nosed, Dutch-appearing yawl-boat, pulling heavily up against the stream, and loaded with a crew of half-drunken sailors just come into port. In reply to the challenge of our young gentlemen, a man in the stern of the other boat, who appeared to be the captain of the crew – a fellow, as Dunburne could indefinitely perceive by the dim light of the lanthorn and the faint illumination of the misty half-moon, possessing a great, coarse red face and a bullet head surmounted by a mildewed and mangy fur cap – bawled out, in reply, that if they would only put their boat near enough for a minute or two he would give them a bellyful of something that would make them quiet for the rest of the night. He added that he would ask for nothing better than to have the opportunity of beating Dunburne's head to a pudding, and that he would give a crown to have the three of them within arm's-reach for a minute.
Upon this Captain Blessington swore that he should be immediately accommodated, and therewith delivered an order to that effect to the watermen. These obeyed so promptly that almost before Dunburne was aware of what had happened the two boats were side by side, with hardly a foot of space between the gunwales. Dunburne beheld one of the watermen of his own boat knock down one of the crew of the other with the blade of an oar, and then he himself was clutched by the collar in the grasp of the man with the fur cap. Him Dunburne struck twice in the face, and in the moonlight he saw that he had started the blood to running down from his assailant's nose. But his blows produced no other effect than to call forth a volley of the most horrible oaths that ever greeted his ears. Thereupon the boats drifted so far apart that our young gentleman was haled over the gunwale and soused in the cold water of the river. The next moment some one struck him upon the head with a belaying-pin or a billet of wood, a blow so crushing that the darkness seemed to split asunder with a prodigious flaming of lights and a myriad of circling stars, which presently disappeared into the profound and utter darkness of insensibility. How long this swoon continued our young gentleman could never tell, but when he regained so much of his consciousness as to be aware of the things about him, he beheld himself to be confined in a room, the walls whereof were yellow and greasy with dirt, he himself having been laid upon a bed so foul and so displeasing to his taste that he could not but regret the swoon from which he had emerged into consciousness. Looking down at his person, he beheld that his clothes had all been taken away from him, and that he was now clad in a shirt with only one sleeve, and a pair of breeches so tattered that they barely covered his nakedness. While he lay thus, dismally depressed by so sad a pickle as that into which he found himself plunged, he was strongly and painfully aware of an uproarious babble of loud and drunken voices and a continual clinking of glasses, which appeared to sound as from a tap-room beneath, these commingled now and then with oaths and scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, as though it would burst asunder, and he was possessed by a burning thirst that seemed to consume his very vitals. He called aloud, and in reply a fat, one-eyed woman came, fetching him something to drink in a cup. This he swallowed with avidity, and thereupon (the liquor perhaps having been drugged) he dropped off into unconsciousness once more.
When at last he emerged for a second time into the light of reason, it was to find himself aboard a brig – the Prophet Daniel, he discovered her name to be – bound for Baltimore, in the Americas, and then pitching and plunging upon a westerly running stern-sea, and before a strong wind that drove the vessel with enormous velocity upon its course for those remote and unknown countries for which it was bound. The land was still in sight both astern and abeam, but before him lay the boundless and tremendously infinite stretch of the ocean. Dunburne found himself still to be clad in the one-armed shirt and tattered breeches that had adorned him in the house of the crimp in which he had first awakened. Now, however, an old tattered hat with only a part of the crown had been added to his costume. As though to complete the sad disorder of his appearance, he discovered, upon passing his hand over his countenance, that his beard and hair had started a bristling growth, and that the lump on his crown – which was even yet as big as a walnut – was still patched with pieces of dirty sticking-plaster. Indeed, had he but known it, he presented as miserable an appearance as the most miserable of those wretches who were daily ravished from the slums and streets of the great cities to be shipped to the Americas. Nor was he a long time in discovering that he was now one of the several such indentured servants who, upon the conclusion of their voyage, were to be sold for their passage in the plantations of Maryland.
Having learned so much of his miserable fate, and being now able to make shift to walk (though with weak and stumbling steps), our young gentleman lost no time in seeking the Captain, to whom he endeavored to explain the several accidents that had befallen him, acknowledging that he was the second son of the Earl of Clandennie, and declaring that if he, the Captain, would put the Prophet Daniel back into some English port again, his lordship would make it well worth his while to lose so much time for the sake of one so dear as a second son. To this address the Captain, supposing him either to be drunk or disordered in his mind, made no other reply than to knock him incontinently down upon the deck, bidding him return forward where he belonged.
Thereafter poor Dunburne found himself enjoying the reputation of a harmless madman. The name of the Earl of Rags was bestowed upon him, and the miserable companions of his wretched plight were never tired of tempting him to recount his adventures, for the sake of entertaining themselves by teasing that which they supposed to be his hapless mania.
Nor is it easy to conceive of all the torments that those miserable, obscene wretches were able to inflict upon him. Under the teasing sting of his companions' malevolent pleasantries, there were times when Dunburne might, as he confessed to himself, have committed a murder with the greatest satisfaction in the world. However, he was endowed with no small command of self-restraint, so that he was still able to curb his passions within the bounds of reason and of policy. He was, fortunately, a complete master of the French and Italian languages, so that when the fury of his irritation would become too excessive for him to control, he would ease his spirits by castigating his tormentors with a consuming verbosity in those foreign tongues, which, had his companions understood a single word of that which he uttered, would have earned for him a beating that would have landed him within an inch of his life. However, they attributed all that he said to the irrational gibbering of a maniac.
About midway of their voyage the Prophet Daniel encountered a tremendous storm, which drove her so far out of the Captain's reckoning that when land was sighted, in the afternoon of a tempestuous day in the latter part of August, the first mate, who had been for some years in the New England trade, opined that it was the coast of Rhode Island, and that if the Captain chose to do so he might run into New Hope Harbor and lie there until the southeaster had blown itself out. This advice the Captain immediately put into execution, so that by nightfall they had dropped anchor in the comparative quiet of that excellent harbor.
Dunburne was a most excellent and practised swimmer. That evening, when the dusk had pretty well fallen, he jumped overboard, dived under the brig, and came up on the other side. Thus leaving all hands aboard looking for him or for his dead body at the starboard side of the Prophet Daniel, he himself swam slowly away to the larboard. Now partly under water, now floating on his back, he directed his course towards a point of land about a mile away, whereon, as he had observed before the dark had settled down, there stood an old wooden building resembling a church, and a great brick house with tall, lean chimneys at a little farther distance inland.
The intemperate cold of the water of those parts of America was so much more excessive than Dunburne had been used to swim in that when he dragged himself out upon the rocky, bowlder-strewn beach he lay for a considerable time more dead than alive. His limbs appeared to possess hardly any vitality, so benumbed were they by the icy chill that had entered into the very marrow of his bones. Nor did he for a long while recover from this excessive rigor; his limbs still continued at intervals to twitch and shudder as with a convulsion, nor could he at such times at all control their trembling. At last, however, with a huge sigh, he aroused himself to some perception of his surroundings, which he acknowledged were of as dispiriting a sort as he could well have conceived of. His recovering senses were distracted by a ceaseless watery din, for the breaking waves, rushing with a prodigious swiftness from the harbor to the shore before the driving wind, fell with uproarious crashing into white foam among the rocks. Above this watery tumult spread the wet gloom of the night, full of the blackness and pelting chill of a fine slanting rain.
Through this shroud of mist and gloom Dunburne at last distinguished a faint light, blurred by the sheets of rain and darkness, and shining as though from a considerable distance. Cheered by this nearer presence of human life, our young gentleman presently gathered his benumbed powers together, arose, and after a while began slowly and feebly to climb a stony hill that lay between the rocky beach and that faint but encouraging illumination.
So, sorely buffeted by the tempest, he at last reached the black, square form of that structure from which the light shone. The building he perceived to be a little wooden church of two stories in height. The shutters of the lower story were tight fastened, as though bolted from within. Those above were open, and from them issued the light that had guided him in his approach from the beach. A tall flight of wooden steps, wet in the rain, reached to a small, enclosed porch or vestibule, whence a door, now tight shut, gave ingress into the second story of the church.
Thence, as Dunburne stood without, he could now distinguish the dull muttering of a man's voice, which he opined might be that of the preacher. Our young gentleman, as may be supposed, was in a wretched plight. He was ragged and unshaven; his only clothing was the miserable shirt and bepatched breeches that had served him as shelter throughout the long voyage. These abominable garments were now wet to the skin, and so displeasing was his appearance that he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he did not possess enough of humility to avow so great a misery to the light and to the eyes of strangers. Accordingly, finding some shelter afforded by the vestibule of the church, he crouched there in a corner, huddling his rags about him, and finding a certain poor warmth in thus hiding away from the buffeting of the chill and penetrating wind. As he so crouched he presently became aware of the sound of many voices, dull and groaning, coming from within the edifice, and then – now and again – the clanking as of a multitude of chains. Then of a sudden, and unexpectedly, the door near him was flung wide open, and a faint glow of reddish light fell across the passage. Instantly the figure of a man came forth, and following him came, not a congregation, as Dunburne might have supposed, but a most dolorous company of nearly, or quite, naked men and women, outlined blackly, as they emerged, against the dull illumination from behind. These wretched beings, sighing and groaning most piteously, with a monotonous wailing of many voices, were chained by the wrist, two and two together, and as they passed by close to Dunburne, his nostrils were overpowered by a heavy and fetid odor that came partly from within the building, partly from the wretched creatures that passed him by.
As the last of these miserable beings came forth from the bowels of that dreadful place, a loud voice, so near to Dunburne as to startle his ears with its sudden exclamation, cried out, "Six-and-twenty, all told," and thereat instantly the dull light from within was quenched into darkness.
In the gloom and the silence that followed, Dunburne could hear for a while nothing but the dash of the rain upon the roof and the ceaseless drip and trickle of the water running from the eaves into the puddles beneath the building.
Then, as he stood, still marvelling at what he had seen, there suddenly came a loud and startling crash, as of a trap-door let fall into its place. A faint circle of light shone within the darkness of the building, as though from a lantern carried in a man's hands. There was a sound of jingling, as of keys, of approaching footsteps, and of voices talking together, and presently there came out into the vestibule the dark figures of two men, one of them carrying a ship's lantern. One of these figures closed and locked the door behind him, and then both were about to turn away without having observed Dunburne, when, of a sudden, a circle from the roof of the lantern lit up his pale and melancholy face, and he instantly became aware that his presence had been discovered.
The next moment the lantern was flung up almost into his eyes, and in the light he saw the sharp, round rim of a pistol-barrel directed immediately against his forehead.
In that moment our young gentleman's life hung as a hair in the balance. In the intense instant of expectancy his brain appeared to expand as a bubble, and his ears tingled and hummed as though a cloud of flies were buzzing therein. Then suddenly a voice smote like a blow upon the silence – "Who are you, and what d'ye want?"
"Indeed," said Dunburne, "I do not know."
"What do you do here?"
"Nor do I know that, either."
He who held the lantern lifted it so that the illumination fell still more fully upon Dunburne's face and person. Then his interlocutor demanded, "How did you come here?"
Upon the moment Dunburne determined to answer so much of the truth as the question required. "'Twas by no fault of my own," he cried. "I was knocked on the head and kidnapped in England, with the design of being sold in Baltimore. The vessel that fetched me put into the harbor over yonder to wait for good weather, and I jumped overboard and swam ashore, to stumble into the cursed pickle in which I now find myself."
"Have you, then, an education? To be sure, you talk so."
"Indeed I have," said Dunburne – "a decent enough education to fit me for a gentleman, if the opportunity offered. But what of that?" he exclaimed, desperately. "I might as well have no more learning than a beggar under the bush, for all the good it does me." The other once more flashed the light of his lantern over our young gentleman's miserable and barefoot figure. "I had a mind," says he, "to blow your brains out against the wall. I have a notion now, however, to turn you to some use instead, so I'll just spare your life for a little while, till I see how you behave."
He spoke with so much more of jocularity than he had heretofore used that Dunburne recovered in great part his dawning assurance. "I am infinitely obliged to you," he cried, "for sparing my brains; but I protest I doubt if you will ever find so good an opportunity again to murder me as you have just enjoyed."
This speech seemed to tickle the other prodigiously, for he burst into a loud and boisterous laugh, under cover of which he thrust his pistol back into his coat-pocket again. "Come with me, and I'll fit you with victuals and decent clothes, of both of which you appear to stand in no little need," he said. Thereupon, and without another word, he turned and quitted the place, accompanied by his companion, who for all this time had uttered not a single sound. A little way from the church these two parted company, with only a brief word spoken between them.
Dunburne's interlocutor, with our young gentleman following close behind him, led the way in silence for a considerable distance through the long, wet grass and the tempestuous darkness, until at last, still in unbroken silence, they reached the confines of an enclosure, and presently stood before a large and imposing house built of brick.
Dunburne's mysterious guide, still carrying the lantern, conducted him directly up a broad flight of steps, and opening the door, ushered him into a hallway of no inconsiderable pretensions. Thence he led the way to a dining-room beyond, where our young gentleman observed a long mahogany table, and a sideboard of carved mahogany illuminated by three or four candles. In answer to the call of his conductor, a negro servant appeared, whom the master of the house ordered to fetch some bread and cheese and a bottle of rum for his wretched guest. While the servant was gone to execute the commission the master seated himself at his ease and favored Dunburne with a long and most minute regard. Then he suddenly asked our young gentleman what was his name.
Upon the instant Dunburne did not offer a reply to this interrogation. He had been so miserably abused when he had told the truth upon the voyage that he knew not now whether to confess or deny his identity. He possessed no great aptitude at lying, so that it was with no little hesitation that he determined to maintain his incognito. Having reached this conclusion, he answered his host that his name was Tom Robinson. The other, however, appeared to notice neither his hesitation nor the name which he had seen fit to assume. Instead, he appeared to be lost in a reverie, which he broke only to bid our young gentleman to sit down and tell the story of the several adventures that had befallen him. He advised him to leave nothing untold, however shameful it might be. "Be assured," said he, "that no matter what crimes you may have committed, the more intolerable your wickedness, the better you will please me for the purpose I have in view."
Being thus encouraged, and having already embarked in disingenuosity, our young gentleman, desiring to please his host, began at random a tale composed in great part of what he recollected of the story of Colonel Jack, seasoned occasionally with extracts from Mr. Smollett's ingenious novel of Ferdinand, Count Fathom. There was hardly a petty crime or a mean action mentioned in either of these entertaining fictions that he was not willing to attribute to himself. Meanwhile he discovered, to his surprise, that lying was not really so difficult an art as he had supposed it to be. His host listened for a considerable while in silence, but at last he was obliged to call upon his penitent to stop. "To tell you the truth, Mr. What's-a-name," he cried, "I do not believe a single word you are telling me. However, I am satisfied that in you I have discovered, as I have every reason to hope, one of the most preposterous liars I have for a long time fell in with. Indeed, I protest that any one who can with so steady a countenance lie so tremendously as you have just done may be capable, if not of a great crime, at least of no inconsiderable deceit, and perhaps of treachery. If this be so, you will suit my purposes very well, though I would rather have had you an escaped criminal or a murderer or a thief."
"Sir," said Dunburne, very seriously, "I am sorry that I am not more to your mind. As you say, I can, I find, lie very easily, and if you will give me sufficient time, I dare say I can become sufficiently expert in other and more criminal matters to please even your fancy. I cannot, I fear, commit a murder, nor would I choose to embark upon an attempt at arson; but I could easily learn to cheat at cards; or I could, if it would please you better, make shift to forge your own name to a bill for a hundred pounds. I confess, however, I am entirely in the dark as to why you choose to have me enjoy so evil a reputation."
At these words the other burst into a great and vociferous laugh. "I protest," he cried, "you are the coolest rascal ever I fell in with. But come," he added, sobering suddenly, "what did you say was your name?"
"I declare, sir," said Dunburne, with the most ingenuous frankness, "I have clean forgot. Was it Tom or John Robinson?"
Again the other burst out laughing. "Well," he said, "what does it matter? Thomas or John – 'tis all one. I see that you are a ragged, lousy beggar, and I believe you to be a runaway servant. Even if that is the worst to be said of you, you will suit me very well. As for a name, I myself will fit you with one, and it shall be of the best. I will give you a home here in the house, and will for three months clothe you like a lord. You shall live upon the best, and shall meet plenty of the genteelest company the Colonies can afford. All that I demand of you is that you shall do exactly as I tell you for the three months that I so entertain you. Come. Is it a bargain?"
Dunburne sat for a while thinking very seriously. "First of all," said he, "I must know what is the name you have a mind to bestow upon me."
The other looked distrustfully at him for a time, and then, as though suddenly fetching up resolution, he cried out: "Well, what then? What of it? Why should I be afraid? I'll tell you. Your name shall be Frederick Dunburne, and you shall be the second son of the Earl of Clandennie."
Had a thunder-bolt fallen from heaven at Dunburne's feet he could not have been struck more entirely dumb than he was at those astounding words. He knew not for the moment where to look or what to think. At that instant the negro man came into the room, fetching the bottle of rum and the bread and cheese he had been sent for. As the sound of his entrance struck upon our young gentleman's senses he came to himself with the shock, and suddenly exploded into a burst of laughter so shrill and discordant that Captain Obadiah sat staring at him as though he believed his ragged beneficiary had gone clean out of his senses.
IV
A ROMANTIC EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A YOUNG LADY
Miss Belinda Belford, the daughter and only child of Colonel William Belford, was a young lady possessed of no small pretensions to personal charms of the most exalted order. Indeed, many excellent judges in such matters regarded her, without doubt, as the reigning belle of the Northern Colonies. Of a medium height, of a slight but generously rounded figure, she bore herself with an indescribable grace and dignity of carriage. Her hair, which was occasionally permitted to curl in ringlets upon her snowy neck, was of a brown so dark and so soft as at times to deceive the admiring observer into a belief that it was black. Her eyes, likewise of a dark-brown color, were of a most melting and liquid lustre; her nose, though slight, was sufficiently high, and modelled with so exquisite a delicacy as to lend an exceeding charm to her whole countenance. She was easily the belle of every assembly which she graced with her presence, and her name was the toast of every garrison town of the Northern provinces.
Madam Belford and her lovely daughter were engaged one pleasant morning in entertaining a number of friends, in the genteel English manner, with a dish of tea and a bit of gossip. Upon this charming company Colonel Belford suddenly intruded, his countenance displaying an excessive though not displeasing agitation.
