CHAPTER VIII.
On the following morning Amos Goodhare, for the first time since his dismissal, visited Llancader Castle. He asked modestly whether he could see Mademoiselle de Laval, having, from his knowledge of the habits of the place, been able to choose the hour when she was resting in her own sitting-room before beginning the day’s labors.
He was shown up to this apartment, where the lady received him very graciously. Amos took care to let her think that his visit was prompted by an overwhelming wish to know whether the recent damp weather had affected her rheumatism, and it was not until he had listened sympathetically to an exhaustive list of her “symptoms,” that he enquired after the family. Then he asked, confidentially, whether there was any truth in a report he had heard that Lady Marion was engaged to the eldest son of the late Captain Pennant. To this, Mademoiselle de Laval replied with horror on her face that the very mention of his name was forbidden in the household.
Amos Goodhare’s face immediately underwent a change, and expressed the deepest anxiety. In answer to her questions he then very reluctantly confessed that Lady Marion and Rees Pennant were in the habit of meeting late in the evening. Mademoiselle was much alarmed, but at first inclined to be incredulous.
“Very well,” said Amos quietly. “I would not take the trouble to prove what I say if I did not feel so much admiration for you and so much grateful interest in his lordship’s family. But find out whether Lady Marion was in the house last night between eight and nine. What would happen to you if anything were to go wrong with one of the young ladies? It goes to my heart to think of the cruel injustice which might be done to a lady of such talents and accomplishments as yourself.”
He did not prolong the interview after that; for he had succeeded in thoroughly alarming her, and he felt sure that in future Rees would be able to pursue his researches without interruption from Lady Marion.
Rees went to the old castle very early that morning. It was a pouring wet day, and he had to tell the custodian that he had left something in the ruins the evening before in order to account for his appearance there in weather which no sane person, without some strong reason, would have chosen for a ramble among the mouldering stones.
Breathless with anxiety, he crossed the two courts, and entered the vault with streams of water pouring down his mackintosh. The rain had done him good service; not only had it prevented Mrs. Crow’s boys from wandering among the ruins, but it washed down in torrents from the upper chambers, and rushing through the exposed grating, carried with it a quantity of the earth which had accumulated above. Rees could see the stone steps underneath, and with fiery energy he dug away spadeful after spadeful, until at last the grating, loosened in its place, shook under his feet. A few more frenzied efforts, and he was able to raise it half a dozen inches. He could scarcely restrain a cry of joy, which, however, speedily changed to a groan of disappointment.
The grating was kept down by no hinges; it was more than two feet wide, of clumsy, old-fashioned workmanship, though of much later date than the last rebuilding of the castle in the fourteenth century. With great difficulty Rees raised it, tearing the flesh off his hands as he did so on the iron bars, which were caked with a hard deposit of rust. He had taken the precaution of bringing in his pocket a candle and matches. Striking a light he descended about a dozen rough and much worn stone steps in a sort of well hewn out of the solid rock. He had to move very carefully, as the steps were steep and unevenly covered with earth which the late rains had converted into mud; while the rude walls were too slimy with damp for the irregularities of their surface to afford him any hold.
The air down here was cold; it chilled his heated body and made his teeth chatter. Taking a couple of steps rather more quickly than the rest in his excitement and impatience, his right foot suddenly splashed into water. Drawing it back hastily, he peered into the darkness at his feet, and saw that what he had taken for the entrance to a subterranean passage was apparently nothing more nor less than an old, long disused well.
With a moan of anger and bitter disappointment, he sat down, with his feet on the lowest dry step, while a cold perspiration made him shiver from head to foot, and at the same time his forehead burned, and his mouth was so parched that, as he drew breath, he emitted a choking cough. He felt as if the hidden gold had been wrenched out of his eagerly clutching fingers, the gold which was to have supported his mother, showered presents on Deborah, restored his prestige as the genius of his family, and perhaps made him an earl’s son-in-law—for somehow that first idea of making known the discovery to the earl had, under the fire of Goodhare’s discourses, melted quite away.
He had brought his spade with him, and he sat holding it idly in his hand, and not heeding the fact that the rain-water from above was all the while trickling down the steps, making his seat not only damp but dangerous. Suddenly he slipped, and the spade in his hand scraped the ground at the bottom of the water.
It could not be very deep then! Perhaps it was not a well at all!
His excitement returning, he drew the spade slowly and carefully from left to right, stirring the foul mud at the bottom of the stagnant water, and causing noxious odours to rise from it. The water was not more than a foot and a half deep. The evil smells were so overpowering that he felt himself turn sick, and had to go back up a half a dozen steps to get fresh air and to recover himself.
When he redescended he found that the water had gone down a little. At first he thought this might only be his fancy, so by the faint light of his dwindling candle-end he watched. Surely enough, the water-line on the shiny wall seemed to emerge higher and higher above the foul black liquid, and Rees could hear the quick drip drip of water below him. Again he sounded with his spade even more carefully than before. Close under the bottom step one corner of the implement got caught in a hole, which proved to be round and about seven inches in diameter. As Rees passed the spade backwards and forwards, he heard a rushing sound, and the water began to go down much more rapidly. This small hole, he thought, must be the top of a drain-pipe which had become choked with obstacles which the spade removed.
He glanced at his candle—there was not half an inch of it left. Would that water never go down? With frantic impatience he dragged his spade to and fro from wall to wall. Work as hard as he would, he had not time. The candle-end, which he held in his left hand and glanced at anxiously, grew hot between his fingers; then the wick fell over, burning him so that he had to shake it off hastily on to the wet step, where it went out with a faint little hiss and splutter.
“Hang it!” almost shouted Rees, forgetting his caution, forgetting everything in his frantic impatience.
“Hallo!” cried a voice above, which sounded hollow in the rocky cavity.
Rees could have bitten his tongue out. He leaned against the uneven and slippery wall, shivering with alarm and disappointment. Had he fatally betrayed himself? Who was the intruder? All that he could tell as yet was that it was the voice of a young man. Rees kept quite still and silent, hoping against hope that the man would not see the opening in the floor of the vaulted chamber. The day was so dark that this was just possible. But the hope was vain. Rees heard footsteps, and then another exclamation as the tiny light of a match appeared for a few moments at the opening in the floor above him and then went out.
At that moment his foot slipped, making a slight noise.
“Who’s there?” cried the voice above. “Not Rees, not Rees Pennant? For God’s sake, answer?”
Rees recognised the voice by this time. It was that of Sep Jocelyn, one of his most devoted admirers and friends.
This Sep was a short and rather thick-set fair man, without hair on his face, who was five-and-thirty, but looked ten years younger until you examined quite closely the little thread-like wrinkles which crossed and recrossed his face in all directions, and the white streaks in his thick fair hair. While still very young, he had been left an orphan with command of money; as usual in such cases, he had been ruined in character and fortune in the most commonplace way—by bad women, worse men, and drink. At three-and-thirty he had been discovered in abject circumstances by an old aunt, the widow of an admiral, who had carried him off with her to her house in Carstow, where she could still keep up some show of state on an extremely limited income.
Here she tried hard to regenerate him, and as far as that could be done, she succeeded. That is to say, he became entirely respectable, lived soberly, went to church, and was a most submissive, affectionate, and good-humored companion to his aunt, of pleasant, if somewhat effeminate manners. But at heart he was blasé and cynical, with a surprised feeling that any one could be so misguided as to bestow on him so much attention and kindness, which he certainly was not worth. And yet he was grateful, in a certain way, making due allowance for the facts that his aunt had wanted a companion, and that she belonged to the sex which has a fondness for the reclamation of ne’er-do-weels. Belonging to that class of men who, incapable of leading, have an instinct of attaching themselves where they will be led, he had become the devoted satellite of Rees Pennant, whose handsome face and dashing manner fascinated and enchained him.
Rees, who made the not unnatural mistake of rating Sep’s devotion higher than it was worth, felt intensely relieved on learning who his discoverer was. In an instant he made up his mind to confide in him. Knowing, as he did, that he must have help to prosecute his researches further, it seemed, indeed, that no better assistant could be obtained.
“S-h!” he hissed, and creeping up three or four of the rough steps as quickly and quietly as he could, he asked in an eager whisper, “Who is with you?”
“Little Jack, Mrs. Crow’s boy. He’s outside. I told him not to come down; the room above us is ankle deep in mud. What are you doing down there? What a pickle you’re in!”
“I’m clean to what I shall be before I’ve done,” said he, in a low voice, as he crept up the remaining steps, replaced the grating with Sep’s help, and taking off his waistcoat, laid it upon the bars and shovelled a layer of earth on to it.
Then, silencing all his companion’s questions until they should be above ground, he seized his arm and hurried him upstairs, where they found little Jack making mud-pies in the outer doorway. In a few words, and with an air of the deepest confidence, Rees then told Sep the story of the MS., the supposed lost treasure, of his discoveries and his hopes. Sep was desperately interested, ready to hazard his own limbs, if needful, to help his friend’s researches, although he knew by this confidence Rees was only making a virtue of necessity.
They decided that, as Sep had not the same right of entry as Rees, some way must be found to draw him up over the castle walls. Sep, who, on hearing his friend had gone into the castle, had braved torrents of rain and huge stretches of mud to meet him, was ready to submit even to this.
They left the ruins together, and meeting Goodhare, who was, as usual, on the watch outside, Rees introduced him as a confidant, and related his discoveries. Amos could scarcely conceal his rage and disappointment—rage that a new hand should be engaged in the work, to take his share of the hoped-for spoil; disappointment at the result of the discovery on which Rees counted so much.
“What on earth possesses you, Pennant, to imagine that any good can come of your finding an old blocked-up drain?” he asked scornfully.
Rees, exhausted by excitement and manual labour of an unaccustomed kind, and flushed by a sense of achievement, was incensed by the question and by this familiar manner of address.
“The feeling which possesses me,” he answered promptly, “is indignation that I should associate myself in any work with an impudent and lazy rascal, who waits outside for the result of other people’s labor.”
Instead of resenting this insolence, Goodhare listened with his head bent down, as if with remorse, and made full and ample apology for his impatience.
But when he had turned to go back to his library, after a most affectionate and respectful farewell to Rees, and a cordial one to the new associate in the enterprise, Sep linked his arm within that of his friend, and suggested, in his mincing voice and manner:
“I say, Rees, you made a mistake with that old boy just now. You didn’t notice his face as he hung his head down. Now, if you were to call me a humbug, a liar, and a thief, I should forget it, knowing that we’re friends for all that. But this old fox remembers. I know he hates me, but through thick and thin I’m going to treat him like a brother.”
“Well, I don’t pretend I can hide my feelings,” said Rees, in a tone of large generosity.
“It’s necessary, though, when one’s not quite acting on the square.”
“What do you mean, Sep?” and Rees turned on him quite fiercely. “Do you think I’m such a skunk as not to give Lord St. Austell what belongs to him, shamefully as he has treated me?”
“Oh, no, no, Rees, I forgot for the moment,” answered Sep.
And he looked up into his friend’s handsome face with amused curiosity. Did Rees really believe in his own integrity still?