Volume Two—Chapter Nine.
Watchers.
The old church at Duke’s Hampton, a fine old structure, built in the latter part of the thirteenth century, stood calm and still upon its eminence that dark night. The older folks at the village said it was terribly haunted “arter dark,” and the younger believed. Strange sights and sounds were said to have been seen and heard. Ghostly forms glided on silent wing round the tower and swept low amongst the tombs, uttering weird shrieks. Curious mutterings and croaks were heard on high among the corbels and demoniacal gargoyles, the holes in the tower among the ivy, and low moans often proceeded from the shuttered windows where the big bells hung.
All true, for down there in leafy Warwickshire there were plenty of owls, daws, starlings, and pigeons to make the old ivy-clothed building a bird sanctuary where they were never touched. They seemed to belong to “my church;” to Moredock; and he never took nest or destroyed their young.
On the night when Dally Watlock took upon herself to watch, high up in the rood-loft, steps approached the church from the back, about half an hour later, and a dark figure entered the churchyard, to walk cautiously and silently up towards the outer door of the vestry.
As it silently crossed the yard, a head slowly appeared above the wall, and watched the tall dark figure for a few minutes, as it seemed to glide in and out among the tombstones, and then fade completely away.
The watcher held on by the churchyard wall for a few minutes, rigid and paralysed. There was a faint sound of breathing heard, but it was catching and spasmodic, as if the watcher were in pain. But at last, after gazing in the direction where the dark figure had disappeared, with starting eyes, and a sensation on the top of the head as if the cap there was being softly lifted, the gentleman of inquiring mind tried to wrench his hands from where they clutched the top of the wall.
It was a momentary act, resulting in his grasping the coping-stone more tightly, and uttering the words:
“Ha’ mussy upon us!” For Joe Chegg felt his legs give way at the knees, and that he was bathed in a cold perspiration.
“If I can only get back safe home again,” he moaned to himself, “never no more—never no more!”
He felt that he had gazed for the first time at one of the peripatetic horrors of which he had heard since he was a child, and in which he had always religiously believed. In fact, he would never have ventured to the churchyard at midnight had he not been moved by one of the strongest passions of our nature. He had gone there most fully convinced that somewhere about he would encounter the gentleman who met Dally Watlock; and to emphasise their meeting, he had brought his smallest mallet from his tool-basket, as being a handy kind of tool.
But he had not reckoned upon seeing a tall dark figure draped in a long black cloak glide silently by him, growing taller and taller as it disappeared, leaving him with his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth, and without the wit to consider that where he stood in the meadow he was in the dry ditch, that the churchyard wall formed a kind of haha at that spot by the rise of the earth resulting from centuries of interments; and that, in addition, there was a steep slope up to the church, sufficient to make any one standing by the vestry door ten feet above his head.
But Joe Chegg would not have believed these simple physical facts had they been explained to him. He had seen a veritable spirit that might mean his own “fetch.” Whether or no, he wanted to go home and keep his own counsel, mentally vowing—as he at last wrenched himself away, and ran as hard as he could over the dewy grass—that, come what might, he would, if he were spared, never run such a risk again.
He was in the act of dragging himself away, thankful that he was on the meadow-side of the wall, when a low muttering moan rose upon the night air, from the direction in which the monstrous figure had disappeared; and that moan acted as a spur to the frightened man.
It was simple enough, as simple as the explanation of other supernatural sounds, for as the dark figure stood close to the vestry door for a few moments and at last uttered an impatient “tut-tut-tut,” there was a grumbling, muttering sound from a horizontal stone, and Moredock rose, saying in a low voice:
“All right, doctor—all right. I was half asleep, and didn’t hear you come.”
The next moment they had entered the Candlish vault, and the door was closed, Moredock directly after proceeding to strike a match.
“How much longer’s this a-going on?” he grumbled.
“Till I have finished,” said the doctor sternly; but there was a strange intonation of the voice—a peculiar manner—which made the sexton, as he struck the light and held it to the candle in his lanthorn, gaze sharply at the speaker.
“All right, doctor. I don’t grumble; you’ll give me my dose again—seems to settle and comfort a man while he’s waiting.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said North hastily.
“You can rouse me up if I drop off to sleep, doctor. Couldn’t get my nap i’ the chair ’safternoon, and it makes a man a bit drowsy.”
North lit his lamp, which stood ready upon the stone table, and the yellow light filled the grim place with its soft glow once more—a pleasantly subdued light which displayed the surrounding niches and the empty coffin of the late squire, and shone softly upon gilt plate, handle, and tarnished nail, but lay in an intense ring of brightness upon the table that bore it and the sawdust around.
The customary portion from the flask was poured out, and swallowed by the old sexton with a satisfied smack of the lips before he set down the glass upon a coffin-lid.
“Ha! that’s fine, doctor,” he said with a loud laugh, as his countenance puckered into a goblin grin. “Cordial that is. Goes down into a man’s toes and the tips of his fingers, and makes his heart beat. You’re a clever one, doctor—a clever one, that you are. Rouse me up if you want me. I may go to sleep again—I may go to sleep.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll call you,” said North, as the old man seated himself once more in his corner with head against the wall, while before the doctor had settled the shade of his lamp to his satisfaction, a stertorous snore came from Moredock’s corner, accompanied at intervals by a low moaning gasp.
“How easy to produce death!” said North, in a low voice. “Science gives us the power to cause that and sleep, which is its semblance, at our will. Why should it be more difficult to produce life?”
“How many nights is this?” he continued. “Ten, and I seem no nearer—nay, further away, for—ah!” he ejaculated savagely, “there is that wretched coward shrinking again.”
He shivered and looked hastily round as he drew in his breath hard and with a curious catch.
“Good heavens! of what am I afraid? The first amputator, the first explorer into Nature’s hidden paths, where she guards her secrets so religiously—they only felt the same. Have I gone so far only to hesitate to go further?”
He stood shrinking, with his hand clutching the white cloth spread over the table, and his eyes fixed on vacancy.
“Am I—an experienced medical man—to be frightened by a shadow? I say that there is nothing wrong in my researches,” he cried passionately, as if addressing some one in the corner of the vault. “It is for the benefit of posterity. My experiments upon this vile body here are right.
“And yet I feel as if I cannot go further,” he muttered, with the same abject shiver attacking him again; “as if I dared not—as if I must pause, and I have learned so much. I dare not! It is as if the hand of one’s guardian angel were laid upon my breast, and a voice whispered—‘Rash man, pause before it is too late!’”
He caught at the nearest object for support, for he was weak with excitement, and his face looked ghastly in the gloom, as he stood there trembling till he realised what he, the living, had seized to sustain him—a coffin handle—and snatched his fingers away with a cry of horror, to shrink back and rest against the further side of the vault, but only to start away again, for his shoulder was against another coffin.
He glanced at Moredock, but the old man was sleeping heavily, and once more he looked wildly round the vault.
“I cannot go on,” he groaned; “it is too horrible. There is a terror beyond that dark veil which seems to hold me back. I’ll wake him up. This night shall end it all, and I’ll rest in peace, contented with what I know. I dare go no further.”
He drew a long breath, as if relieved, and felt stimulated by his thoughts. It was all so simple to try and leave everything as nearly as possible in its old state, generously recompense the old sexton, and return to his regular course. The proceedings of the past would be the joint secret of Moredock and himself.
“I’ve done,” he said. “I’ll be satisfied. It is too horrible to go on.”
He crossed to the old man, who was now sleeping quite peacefully, and had raised his hand to shake him and bid him rise and help, but his hand stopped within a few inches of the old sexton’s shoulder, and he stepped back with an ejaculation full of anger.
“Coward! idiot!” he exclaimed. “That ignorant old boor sleeps as calmly as a child among these grisly relics of mortality, and you, enlightened by science, educated, a seeker after wisdom, shrink and shiver and dare do no more.
“No,” he added, after a pause; “it is too horrible. There is a something holds me back.
“And fame—the praise of men? And love? The kisses of Leo? Her bright looks—her pride in the man she will call husband? Horace North, are you going mad? Pause? Now? When there is triumph waiting, and a little further research will teach me all I want—maybe give me the great success?
“No; not if fifty guardian angels barred my way. I will win now in spite of all.”
The coward fit of shrinking had gone, and, with a laugh full of contempt for himself, he took a step to the table and snatched the white cloth from the great stone slab.