CHAPTER VII.
On hearing Lady Marion’s voice, Rees felt his heart stand still. It was by this time quite dark in the cavernous chamber, so that he could only guess that she must have been watching, unseen by him, for an hour or more. He had a few moments to consider what he should do, for at the first sound of her voice he had stepped back hastily into the black shadow of one of the corners of the chamber, from whence he could observe her figure as long as she remained with her back to the faint light at the entrance.
“I know you are here, Rees. What are you doing?” she repeated.
And she passed with careful feet through the doorway, and began to advance towards the middle of the vaulted room.
Rees, interrupted thus, as he believed, on the brink of an important discovery, and afraid every moment that Lady Marion’s feet would touch the iron grating he had just partly unearthed, felt that he could have killed her. But there was no time to be lost in explosions of resentment. The intruder had to be treated with, and at once. Throwing himself on his hands and knees, he crept hastily towards the doorway by which she had entered, while the slight noise he made in gliding over the rocky floor and the smooth-trodden earth which had in course of time accumulated over great part of it, was drowned by her own constant and excited calls to him by name. He slipped through the opening quickly, and ran up the rickety wooden steps which now connected these lower chambers of the ruins with those above.
A dozen steps more brought him to the open air, in the inner courtyard of the castle. Thence a little hazardous climbing enabled him to reach the outer wall, at a point immediately above the chamber in which he had been at work. Leaning over the ruined stonework so that his voice might penetrate through the embrasure of the great window below, he at last answered her repeated calls.
“Hallo!” he cried. “Hallo! Who’s that down there? Is it you, Mrs. Crow? Do you want to shut up early to-night, eh?”
“It is I, Lady Marion Cenarth,” answered a voice from the window below, tartly.
“You, Lady Marion, you!” cried Rees with well-acted astonishment. “Why, are you down in those dungeons? You’ll catch your death of cold.”
Rees would not have believed, ten minutes before, that he, the open-hearted, the recklessly sincere, could have assumed a sentiment he did not feel. But the hunger for hidden gold, the desire to keep his fancied discovery secret, had already done their work upon him.
“Can’t you find your way out? Shall I come down and help you out?”
No answer at first. But she had evidently heard him, for her cries ceased. Rees climbed down much more slowly than he had come up, went to the top of the wooden steps, and called again.
“Lady Marion, Lady Marion, are you still there? Shall I come down and help you?”
She was stumbling towards him over the uneven floor. He leapt down and offered the assistance of his hand. There was only just light enough for her to see it, and for the first moment she refused haughtily, shrinking back as if the very offer had been an insult. The next, she characteristically tried to atone for this conduct by excessive humility, and seized his arm with pathetic eagerness. Rees, impatient and annoyed, helped her up the shaking steps without another word, while she muttered lame apologies for troubling him to come to her.
When they reached the open air, however, and she was able to see his face, the suspicions which had brought her to the castle returned in full force.
“Rees,” she said, assuming an air of searching penetration, “it is of no use trying to deceive me. What makes you come here night after night? You do, I know, for I have just found it out from Mrs. Crow, and she says you never miss a single evening. And who is there about besides you? When I got down to that dungeon I distinctly heard somebody digging. The sound left off as soon as I called you, so I am certain there was some one.”
“Really, Lady Marion, I don’t think I am responsible for every noise heard in this old ruin, and don’t know why I should be put through a long catechism about my movements here, when the place is free to every rat and bird in the country!”
In her usual blundering, tactless way the girl continued:
“The rats and birds only come to find a shelter. I don’t see what a man should come here for late at night, unless he’s a thief.”
Of course this speech, according a little, as it did, with the feeling in his own conscience, maddened Rees.
“And, pray, is that the category in which you place me, your ladyship? Do you think I have formed a design for carrying off the castle, stone by stone, and building it up somewhere else?”
“No,” answered she, “of course not. But how about the treasure lost in the Civil War?”
“Treasure!” echoed Rees, with a long, loud laugh of scornful amusement, which his intense excitement enabled him to simulate quite naturally. “Oh, if you believe that story, of course you can believe anything. If you were to hear I was a murderer, you would take it for granted. I think you will feel easier if I relieve you of my presence. It’s not pleasant for a lady to be alone with a rogue so late in the evening.”
He raised his cap, and was hurrying in the direction of the principal gate, and had reached the outer court of the castle, when Lady Marion, always weak when she ought to have been strong, ran after him in the humblest of moods.
“Rees! Rees!” she cried, “I didn’t mean what I said. Come back! I’m going to Mrs. Crow for a candle, and I’m going to hunt through those rooms that we call the dungeons, for I’m sure I heard some one there. Won’t you help me?”
Rees grew hot with fright. How on earth was he to keep her from carrying out this fatal intention? Unluckily for him, she noticed his hesitation, and putting a shrewd interpretation upon it, she ran on past him, and had burst open the door of the custodian’s room before he could stop her.
Rees was beside himself. In his rage, impatience, and confusion, no plan for stopping her occurred to him, and he stood by the great gateway of the castle, kicking his heels against its huge beams in blank despair. As he did so, the gate, which alone was used now, creaked and slowly gave way behind him. He turned, and perceived that the big key of the gate had been left in the lock by Mrs. Crow when she admitted Lady Marion. He thrust it open, putting his shoulder against it impatiently, and found himself face to face with Amos Goodhare.
Rees uttered an exclamation of relief and joy. Here was advice and help.
“What am I to do?” he whispered hurriedly. “Lady Marion is here, suspects something, and insists on searching the place.”
“Make up to her, of course,” said Amos, who had very nearly added “you fool.” “Let her think you are crazy about her, and she’ll hold her tongue safe enough. Just the kind of girl—mad as a hatter and not too handsome; nothing like that sort to keep a man’s secret. Go in.”
Rees obeyed; indeed, Amos emphasized his injunction by a push which sent him staggering. But as the door was drawn softly to behind him, he felt his spirit rising in resentment at this change in the librarian’s manner towards him. For Amos had suddenly dropped his pedantic respectfulness, his gentle movements, had looked at him with fierce impatience, and had been both rough and rude.
“I shall just wash my hands of the whole thing, and go home,” he said to himself. But he hesitated, with his hand upon the gate. At that moment Lady Marion appeared at the door of the lodge, candle in hand, and with just a glance at him, made swiftly across the courtyard in the direction of the “dungeons,” as the vaulted apartments overlooking the river were called.
“You needn’t come with me, Mrs. Crow,” he heard her call out as she ran. Rees followed her, all his anxiety about the safety of his secret alive again. She flew over the grass, a great sparrow-legged girl, not yet grown out of immature gawkiness, and got down the wooden steps somehow in a wonderfully short space of time. But in her haste she let the candle fall, and the light went out. Rees, at the top of the steps, looked down into the black vault, where he heard her groping about, and conceived the project of passing her again in the darkness, finding his way into the next and lower apartment, in which he had discovered the grating, and flattening down the earth to cover the traces of his work.
At the doorway, however, were two steps; stumbling on the damp and slippery surface of the second, he made enough noise for her to find him.
“Rees,” she cried, “don’t go away. This is a horrid place; something flapped past me. I feel quite frightened. It is you there, isn’t it?”
Thinking that, by not answering, he should alarm her still more and induce her to find her way to the upper air, he was silent; and creeping away into a huge arched recess in the lower apartment, he leaned back and waited.
But Lady Marion, though susceptible to feminine fears, had some courage and more curiosity. She hunted about on her hands and knees in the outer room until she found her box of matches, struck one, discovered her candle, and relighting it, prepared for an exhaustive search.
He heard her manly footsteps—she and her sisters all wore flat-footed, “sensible” boots—tramping over the stones and the hard earth. He had just time to seize his pickaxe and spade, thrust them into a heap of loose rubble that filled one corner of the recess, and to kick a few spadefuls of earth over the uncovered grating, when she reappeared at the doorway.
Holding her candle high, she looked round the walls suspiciously, without condescending to take any notice of the young fellow’s presence. Then she advanced slowly into the middle of the floor, peering curiously at the ground beneath her feet as she did so.
Rees held his breath. The next moment, making up his mind that there was nothing else to be done, he sprang forward and flung his arms around her.
“Marion, Marion,” he cried, “it can’t be true that you care for me if you won’t so much as look at me.”
The ruse succeeded. Lady Marion, who, in spite of her affectation of mannishness, was at heart rather a limp, pliable, and easily dominated young woman, was taken aback.
“Oh!” she exclaimed faintly, with a feeble feint of disengaging herself.
“I suppose you don’t know—the earl won’t have let you know—that I proposed to him for you, and that he rejected me almost as if I had been a groom.”
“Don’t, don’t, Rees, I can’t bear it. I’ve been miserable ever since.”
“He told you then?”
“No, I guessed it from his manner, and when I found you didn’t come to Llancader, and then I spoke to mamma, and she told me, and said it was no use hoping. Oh, but Rees, I don’t think you can care as much as I do! You—you think more about getting this treasure than about me. I know you do. I know you were angry at my interrupting you. Yes, and I believe you were at work in here, and that it’s only to prevent my finding out something that you are so nice to me now.”
She thrust him away from her, noticed the roughness of the fresh-dug earth at her feet, and looked up at him with triumphant suspicion.
“Ah!” she cried in a whisper.
Rees was seized with a bold idea.
“Yes,” he said, “I have been digging here; I have been trying to find the treasure. For if I could show him the way to a little fortune, the earl could scarcely refuse to let me marry you.”
Lady Marion, fond of him as she was, had the sense to look doubtful.
“And Deborah? They say you like Deborah better than me!”
Rees was not past blushing, and he blushed now.
“Nonsense!” he said. “Look here, Marion.”
Stooping down, he scraped away the loose earth and discovered the grating on which he had built such high hopes.
“This is what I found to-night,” said he. “It may be only the covering of an old drain. But it may be something more. At any rate, that is my secret, which I have confided to nobody but you. Is that confidence enough? Now do you believe I care for you?”
It was a bold stroke, and he watched the effect in desperate excitement. Lady Marion’s sallow face lighted up with eagerness as great as his own as she looked down at the rusty grating, which, slightly displaced during Rees’s labours, shook under the tread.
“But did you do it for me, Rees—really for me?” she asked still half-doubtfully.
“If I had not, why should I confide in you? I did not want you to know my aims yet, certainly; I was too much humiliated by your father. But you have found me out, so you may as well know everything. Now, Marion, if ever I get your father to accept me for a son-in-law, will you have me?”
The poor affectionate girl was overjoyed. She hung about him, kissed his hands and his hair, and assured him that she would wait ten years for him if a prince were to woo her. She begged him to see her home as far as the park gates, as a compensation for the fact that they would have to be circumspect and content to see each other seldom. It was Rees who, impatient at her demonstrativeness, impressed this upon her.
“But I can come and see you at the same place to-morrow evening,” said she. “Mademoiselle de Laval always leaves us quite undisturbed in the evening, and thinks we are busy over our Greek. I can slip out without the least danger. I shall come; don’t be afraid.”
Rees was already wishing her or himself at the bottom of the sea. Overwhelmed with shame and anger at his own conduct, he bade her as hasty a farewell as she would allow, returning her passionate kisses with embraces so reluctant and perfunctory that if she had not been so infatuated they must have chilled her own warmth.
Then, when she had left him and disappeared through a little side-gate into the park, he crept, with slow feet and hanging head, towards Goodhare’s lodging.
The librarian was enjoying a frugal supper of a couple of poached eggs, a slice of bread and butter, and a glass of milk; and as he ate he studied a heavy, much-used volume of Cicero.
The young man shut up the book impetuously and flung himself into a chair opposite to Amos.
“I’ve found the entrance to the passage, I believe,” said he, “a wide grating under two feet of earth, with a couple of stone steps to be seen underneath.”
Amos started up with an exclamation of triumph.
“And I ought to be able to take full advantage of it, for I’m on my way to become a very finished scoundrel.”
He related the incidents of his discovery and of his interview with Lady Marion. Goodhare listened with the ugly look of covetousness in his eyes which had sometimes shocked Rees before now. When he had finished, Amos burst out into a laugh of hideous, satyr-like raillery.
“Don’t pretend to be ashamed of your conquest; that sort of modesty doesn’t deceive me. And I won’t distress you by asking for any details of the interview.”
Rees started up, his face flushed, his hair disordered, his whole bearing speaking of shame for himself, but also of indignation against his companion.
“You are making me a thief, Amos; you are making me a rascal; but you have not yet made me forget that I was born a gentleman,” said he.
The next moment, Amos meanwhile going on quietly with his poached eggs and bread and butter, the poor lad seemed to realize what an empty boast it was that he had uttered so proudly, and he sank down again in his chair and buried his face in his hands. But the fascination of the hidden treasure soon came over him again, driving out all other thoughts and feelings. Springing up once more, and leaning across the table to make his words more emphatic, he whispered:
“Goodhare, it’s all up with us. I left the grating exposed, and forgot to fill up the hole in the earth above it!”
Amos had the wit to hide part of what he felt; but he betrayed enough to show Rees a little more of the demoniacal side of his character.
The two men parted that night with hearts and minds burdened with the deepest anxiety. The poking about with a stick of a couple of Mrs. Crow’s children might reveal enough to set the neighborhood talking and prying, and then good-bye to visions of a golden independence.