I.
WITH the wearing on of the afternoon, the flat, treeless country to which for half a day I had steadily dropped had but increased in monotony, and long before nightfall I had begun to weary for other company than that of my own meditations. The road, of a reddish gravel, had begun to cross, by wooden bridges, innumerable drains and channels and narrow waterways; and that there was clay beneath it was evident no less from the wreaths and wisps of vapour that crept fantastically over carr and mere than from the sudden chills of the air, that seemed to stand in banks or to move in thick, idle currents. The clatter of the mare’s hoofs on the bridges flushed multitudes of waterfowl, that rose with harsh cries and beatings of wings; and from the number of gulls I had noticed among these while yet a little light remained, I had judged I could not be far from the sea.
How it came to pass that I, having had lands of my own, should find myself so circumstanced as to be fain to look after those of somebody else as factor or steward, is of no present moment; it is more to the point that, if this was the domain of the Master of Skelf, I liked it exceedingly little. The continual flurry and commotion of the waterfowl seemed to rouse in me a restlessness; and, remembering what Cardan had said of lands with a dark and fennish air, that they had the property of folding our thoughts back on themselves, I could only hope that I should not prove the worse bailiff for being acquainted with Cardan.
At first I mistook the man’s lantern for an ignis fatuus; but I heard a whistle and the panting of a dog, and he gave me good-evening. He was a tall fellow, with a sheepskin about him; he carried his lantern at the end of a long pole; and he told me, as he trotted by my side, that I was within the confines of Skelf Decoy. I eased the mare that he might keep pace with me.
“Ay, this is Skelf Decoy, and I tend it; they call me Ducky Watt, but they mean Decoy. It isn’t what it were, not for fish, sin’ they drained it, but there’s Friday-meat yet, and birds.... Ower th’ Wolds, are ye? Well, it’s a good air o’ th’ Wolds. They ha’ farmed part about here too, but it’s a black ear and thin crops; that’s th’ fogs.... Ay, we fish—hark! yon’s a pike—trout and eels and roach and pike—and tak’ birds for th’ markets. Ye’ll be a arable man; all’s carrs hereabouts; but I don’t doubt ye know all about Skelf-Mary.”
I told him that I had never been there before.
“Ay? H’m!... Ye’ll know nowt o’ th’ sea i’ these parts, then?”
I said that I did not.
“H’m!—well, this is how it is. Th’ sea’s taking it, as it’s ta’en Auburn and Hartburn and Ravenspur; and a two-three stops, but th’ most’s flitted months back; ye’ll see to-morrow.—Ye won’t ha’ heard o’ Buttevant-Mary neither: no. Well, they talk o’ bells chiming under th’ sea o’ still nights, and folks seen walking up and down th’ wharves and marts, and all that; I think them’s tales; but Kempery and Flaxton isn’t tales. Th’ Sheriff o’ Kingston, he’ll show ye th’ Court Rolls o’ Flaxton; and Kempery—I’ll show ye where Kempery is to-morrow, for ye’d best bide wi’ me to-night.—Ay, they took Flaxton Church to Windlesea i’ carts; and then there’s sea-marks....”
“In a word, the sea’s advancing?”
“Ay; sometimes just licking-like, and sometimes a dozen yards of a sudden; ye’ll see to-morrow.—And th’ sea doesn’t keep all it taks, neither. Ye’ll be a arable man, say; well, there’s a thousand acres o’ warp come up out o’ Humber, and wheat on it now; a foot-bridge joins it; but there’s men has seen deep keels, half a dozen on ’em, passing up yon same channel. That’s that side; and o’ this, as I tell ye, a farmer can go to bed i’ reaping-time and wake up wi’ a swath or two less to reap....”
He continued to tell me tales of lost villages, of broken houses with their chambers open to the winds, of wooden groynes that had been put up and abandoned, and a deal more well fitted to the hour and place. Suddenly I asked him about the Master of Skelf-Mary; and the light of the lantern shone on his knuckles as he thumbed his chin.
“Ay, ye’re th’ new steward.... What wad ye know o’ him?” he asked, slowly.
“Seeing I know nothing, you can’t get wrong.”
“And that’s providential—if it was true,” he retorted. “Well, sir, if ye can’t bide while morning, ye can put your questions now.”
But, though I interrogated him, he so fubbed me off with bland and wary answers that I was little the wiser by the time I desisted. The Master of Skelf-Mary, I gathered, was all but bed-ridden, and in very ill fame with such as read their Bibles (but that might have been because he had turned the chapel of the mansion into a library); but my friend was sensible, and careful to assign to others certain tales of devils and familiars and voices that servants, with their ears at the rosewood door of the library, had heard o’ nights. Nevertheless, his reluctance was evident, and by and by he pointed out a beam of light smothered in the fen-mists; that was his cottage.
I supped and lay that night in his hut; and by eight o’clock next morning he had conducted me to the village of Skelf-Mary. It was much as he had described it. One or two houses on the north side of the market-place, opposite an ancient butter-cross, appeared to be tenanted, as did also a row of very poor cottages that ran towards the sea; the rest was desolate, and already grass pushed between the cobbles. Two or three folk appeared at upper windows, hearing the sound of hoofs (having no business to take them abroad, I judged they were still abed); and as we left the cottages a couple of rabbits scampered across the street. Half a mile before us lay the church and hall, and beyond it the smooth sea, with a brig motionless far out.
“This road,” said the keeper, indicating a bridlepath to the right; but that was so plainly not the road that I answered shortly, “No, it isn’t,” and pushed forward towards the church. Five minutes brought me level with it; and then I stopped with an exclamation.
A few yards beyond a rail of hedge-stakes the road ended as suddenly as if it had been cut off with a knife. The fencing, that was continued on either hand, straggled to the north across the middle of the graveyard, and the marks of wheels in the red clay and the unsightly mounds in which they ended showed what had recently been done. Over the rails, hulks and shoulders of earth fouled the beach; and from the point to which, with a dreadful curiosity, I advanced I saw three square ends, ochrous with the clay, sticking out to the tide like “throughs” in a stone wall.
The keeper pointed to a three-inch fissure at my feet.
“That’s th’ next,” he said, gloomily; “th’ first heavy rain—a touch o’ frost—th’ sea eats it down there, and a touch o’ frost and rain.... Yonder’s Kempery.” ... He pointed to the motionless brig.
“Let’s get to the hall,” I said; and we did not speak further till we reached the mansion that had so gruesome a prospect to the north of it. It was of grey pebbles, set in a sort of mud-mortar, and was very ancient and handsome. The south lawn was overlooked by an octagonal bay-window, from the flat leads of which (so the keeper said) dead and gone lords of the manor and their chaplains had addressed the assembled tenantry; and this bay formed one end of a long western wing that I judged to be the chapel turned library. To the north lay the courtyard and outbuildings; and to the east, not twenty yards away, was the placid sea and the brig motionless over Kempery.