Volume Two—Chapter One.
The First Baronet’s Tomb.
As Horace North battled with his thoughts, Moredock chuckled and went on:
“They drinks it, doctor, the idiots, and all the time they say it’s horrid to eat a bit o’ churchyard mutton. Squire Luke didn’t care, though. He wouldn’t have said no to a bit o’ mutton ’cause it was pastured in the churchyard. But he has to send they sheep right t’other side o’ the county to sell ’em. Folks ’bout here wouldn’t touch a bit o’ churchyard mutton. Such stuff! Keeps the graves nibbled off clean and neat. Don’t hurt they. Mutton’s sweet enough, and so they goes on drinking the water all round the yard, as is piled up with dead folk as I’ve buried, and my father and grandfather before me. Ay, they drinks the water, but wouldn’t touch the mutton; they’d rather starve. Damp churchyard; and squire ’ll lay snug on his dry shelf, and me—some day—in the cold, wet ground.”
“It all comes to the same thing, Moredock,” said the doctor, rousing himself.
“May be, doctor: may be as you’re right,” said the old man, shaking his head solemnly—“‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;’ but there’s a deal o’ differ, and it takes a deal longer to come to that. I say, doctor, ’member what I said to you ’bout squire drinking himself to death?” said the old man, stooping to pick up a crowbar that he had let fall a few minutes before.
“Yes,” said North, gazing thoughtfully at the old man, and hardly realising what he said.
“More strange things happen than what I told you. I knowed it wouldn’t be long before he drank himself to death.”
“The squire died from an accident, Moredock,” said the doctor sternly.
“Ay, but what made the accident?” said the old man, with a chuckle. “Was it steps, was it bottles, was it corks? Nay, it were something inside the bottle. Drop o’ brandy’s good, but when you gets too much, it’s poison.”
The doctor did not speak, only stood just inside the chancel door, gazing fixedly at the old man, with his thoughts wandering from the mausoleum built by the vestry, to the squire’s remains lying up at the Hall, and his strange schemes, by which humanity might, perhaps, be spared much pain and care.
“I’ve took the last o’ that there physic, doctor.”
“Perhaps be of incalculable benefit to coming generations,” mused the doctor, as he went on dreaming, standing there with one hand resting on the tomb rail, and seeming to look through the present in the shape of the crabbed and gnarled old sexton to a future where all was health and strength.
“It was rare stuff, doctor,” continued old Moredock, with a chuckle, as he glanced sidewise at the dreaming man. “Mussy me! a drop o’ that allus seemed to make my toes tingle, and it went right up into the roots of my hair.”
“Why not—why not try?” It seemed a great experiment, but how little as compared with what had been done of old! “Why not—why not try?”
“You’ll let me have another bottle, doctor. It does me a sight of good.”
“I must. It seems like fate urging me on. It is for her—to do something to distinguish myself. Here is the opportunity, and I hesitate.”
“One day I took a dose, doctor, and I thought it was trubble nasty, but five minutes after I said to myself, this beats brandy from the inn. They sperrets don’t make your fingers go cricking and your toes tingle. Rare stuff, doctor. What’s he gone to sleep?”
“Yes, I will do it; but how? No; it is impossible.”
“You’ll let me have another bottle o’ that there physic, doctor, won’t yer?”
“Physic, Moredock? Physic?” said the doctor, starting. “You don’t require more now.”
“Ah! but I do. See what a lot o’ good last lot did me. I’m a deal stronger than I used to were. You’ll let me have another bottle, doctor?”
“Well, well, I’ll see. Terrible job this, Moredock.”
“Ay, it be trubble job, doctor. I’m going to open the morslem. Say, doctor, ’member what I said ’bout my Dally. Be strange thing if she got to be missus up at Hall now. Why, he be dreaming like again,” he added to himself.
“Remember what?” said the doctor. “Your Dally—the Rectory maid?”
“Ay, doctor; seems as if them as is maids may be missuses. Who knows, eh?”
“Who knows, you old wretch!” cried the doctor angrily. “You look sharply after your grandchild, for fear trouble should come.”
“All right, doctor, I will. I’ll look out, and I’m not going to quarrel with you. I arn’t forgot what you did when I cut my hand with the spade.”
“And suffered from blood poisoning, eh? Ah! I saved your life then, Moredock.”
“And you will again, won’t you, doctor?” said the old man smoothly; “for I’ve a deal to do yet. Don’t be jealous, doctor. If my gal gets to be my lady you shall ’tend her. You’re a clever one, doctor; but there, I must go on, for I’ve a deal to do.”
The old man gave the doctor a ghoul-like smile, and went off to busy himself, doing nothing apparently, though he was busier than might have been supposed; while, as if unable to tear himself away, Horace North stood holding on to the railing of the tomb in the chancel—the tomb where the founder of the family lay—the next in descent of the line of baronets having preferred to build the noble mausoleum on the opposite side, where it looked like a handsome chapel of the fine old ecclesiastical structure; and it would be there that the last dead baronet would in a few days lie.
North gazed straight before him, as he held on by that metal rail of the Candlish tomb, with a dark plunge before him, and beyond that, after battling with the waters of discovery, a wonderland opening out, wherein he was about to explore, to find fame and win the woman he told himself he loved, and who, he believed, loved him as dearly in return. And yet all the while, as, from time to time, Moredock looked in with a smile, after pottering about the entrance to the mausoleum, whose keys he held, the doctor seemed to be staring at the Candlish tomb, which took up so much of the chancel, just as its occupant had taken up space when he was alive.
It was a curious structure, that tomb, curious as the railings which the doctor held. The edifice resembled nothing so much as an ornamental, extremely cramped, four-post bedstead, built in marble, with the palisade to keep the vulgar from coming too close to the stony effigy of the great Sir Wyckeley Candlish, Baronet, of the days of good King James; the more especially that, in company with his wife, Dame Candlish, he had apparently gone to bed with all his clothes on. He had been, unless the sculptor’s chisel had lied, a man like a bull-headed butcher who had married a cook, and she was represented in her puffs and furbelows, and he in his stuffed breeches and rosetted shoes, feathered cap, and short cape. His feet had the appearance of ornaments, not members for use; and his lady’s hands, joined in prayer, were like small gloves, as they lay there side by side. A pair of ornaments upon which their posterity might gaze what time they came to read the eulogy in Latin carved in a panel of the stone bedstead, with arms and escutcheons, and mottoes and puffs that were not true, after the fashion of the time.
It was a curious specimen of old-world vanity, so large that it seemed as if it were the principal object of the place—an idol altar, with its gods, about which the chancel had been built for protection.
“What trash!” exclaimed North, when he suddenly seemed to awaken to the object at which he gazed, “as if a Candlish was ever of any value in this world—ever did one good or virtuous act.”
“Any good in this world? Why not at last. Everything seems to point to it. Even the worst of the race might do some good. I’ll hesitate no longer. He can’t refuse me.”
“Doctor! Been asleep?”
“Asleep, man? No. Never more thoroughly awake.”
“I asked you to let me have another bottle of that—the tingling stuff. It done me a mort o’ good.”
“Yes, yes,” said North huskily. “You shall have some more, old man!”
“Ay; that’s right,” said the old fellow, giving his hands a rub. “Couldn’t tell me what it is, could you, so as I might get some of it myself without troubling you?”
“What is it? One of my secrets, Moredock, just as you have yours. Trust me, and you shall have as much as is for your good.”
“Hah! that’s right, doctor; that’s right,” chuckled the old fellow horribly. “I mean to live a long time yet, and may as well do it comfortably. I’ll come round to your surgery to-night, and—hist!” he whispered; “is there anything I can bring?”
“No—no,” said the doctor hastily; “but, Moredock, I do want you to do something for me.”
“Eh? I do something for you, doctor? It isn’t money, is it?”
“Money, man? No; I’ll tell you what I want.”
“Hist! parson!” said the old man, giving him a nudge, as a familiar step was heard upon the gravel path of the churchyard; and, directly after, the tall figure of the curate darkened the door.
“Ah! North; you here? Having a look round?”
“Yes,” said the doctor; “and a chat with my old patient.”
“Ah!” said the curate, shaking his head at the sexton.
“Doctor’s going to let me have another bottle of the stuff as I told you ’bout, sir.”
“Indeed!” said Salis, rather gruffly. “I wish you could do without so many bottles of stuff, Moredock. But, there, I wanted to see you about the preparations.”
“Don’t you trouble yourself about that, sir,” grumbled the old fellow. “It ain’t the first time a Candlish has died, and I’ve put things ready. That’ll be all right, sir. That’s my business. You shan’t have no cause to complain.”
“Be a little extra particular about the church and the yard, Moredock; and, above all, have those sheep out. Mr May writes me word that he shall come down from town on purpose to read the service over Sir Luke, and he hates to see sheep in the churchyard.”
“’Member what I said, doctor?” chuckled the old man. “But what am I to do, sir? Churchwarden Sir Luke had ’em put there; who’s to order ’em to be took away?”
“I will!” said the curate sharply. “There, that will do.”
Moredock trudged away.
“I’m afraid I have a morbid antipathy to that old man,” said the curate.
“Ah, he’s a character.”
“Yes, and a bad one, too: I’m glad we have his grandchild away from him.”
“So am I, and if I were you, Salis, I’d keep a sharp look-out on the girl.”
“Yes, of course!” said the curate impatiently. “But you heard what I said about May coming down?”
“Yes; but what does that matter?”
“Only a long series of lectures to me, which makes my blood boil. I’ve had another unpleasantly, too. I went up to the Hall to see—Sir Thomas—I suppose I must call him now, and he sent me out an insolent message; at least, I thought it so.”
“Never mind, old fellow; we all have our troubles.”
“Not going to trouble,” said the curate quietly. “Coming my way?”
“No. I want another word with Moredock, and then I’m going home.”
“Ah, he’s a queer old fellow,” said the curate, glancing towards the sexton as he went round the chancel with a crowbar over his shoulder, the old man turning to give both a cunning, magpie-like look, as he went out of sight.
The two friends parted, and then North followed the sexton.
“I don’t like it,” he muttered. “Salis would be horrified; he would never forgive me; and yet to win the sister’s, I am risking the brother’s love. Oh, but it is more than that,” he said excitedly; “far more than that. It is in the service of science and of humanity at large. I can’t help it. I must—I will!”
There was tremendous emphasis on that “I will!” and, as if now fully resolved, he went to where the old sexton was scraping and chopping about the entrance of the mausoleum, and sometimes stooping to drag out a luxuriant weed.
“Ah, doctor,” he said; “back again? Parson’s a bit hard on me. I hope he hasn’t been running me down.”
“Nonsense! No. Look here, Moredock, you have always expressed a desire to serve me?”
“Yes, doctor; of course.”
“Then, look here,” said North, bending down towards the old man. “I want you to—”
He finished his speech in a low voice by the old man’s ear.
“You want what?” was the reply.
The doctor whispered to him again more earnestly than before.
The old man let the crowbar fall to his side, his jaw dropped, and he stood in a stooping position, staring.
“You want me to do that, doctor?” he whispered, with a tremble in his voice.
“Yes, I want your help in this.”
“No, no, doctor; I couldn’t indeed!”
“You could, Moredock; and you will!”
The old man shivered.
“I’ve done a deal,” he whispered; “and I’ve seen a deal; but oh, doctor! don’t ask me to do this.”
“I don’t ask you,” said the doctor sternly. “I only say you must—you shall!”