XXXVIII
John Gore had grim things on his mind that night, and a task before him that he did not wish to come to Barbara’s knowledge. She, poor child, with Mrs. Winnie’s food in her lap—food such as she had not touched for many a day—would have had no heart to eat and drink had she known of the dead on those dark stairs. He wished to spare her the horror of it, for the night had been gross and violent enough, and after all the suffering she had borne he was afraid for her in body and mind.
Taking the lantern, he made his way to the tower, closing the door in the passage that led from the kitchen into the ruined hall. Nance Pinniger lay dead upon the stairs, her mouth open and her hands clinched over the place where the sword had entered, and John Gore shuddered as he looked at her, wishing, for the sake of her womanhood, that he had held his hand. He went higher to where the man lay half doubled against the wall, the cloth that covered his face caught between his teeth in the death spasm. The fellow’s bulk seemed a veritable barrier against burial, and John Gore, hardened as he had been to the rough life of the sea, felt a vital horror of this huddled mass that seemed gross and gluttonous even in death.
Remembering the open pit, he went and held the lantern over the black hole in the floor, but was still unable to fathom its depth. Here was a ready vault if he could but get the dead to it—a pit that seemed to scoff with open mouth at those whom Fate had cheated.
To make short work of a grisly business, even as John Gore did, he took one of the sheets from Barbara’s room, and knotting it about the dead man’s ankles, contrived, thanks to his great strength, to draw the body to the edge of the pit. Unknotting the sheet, he turned Simon Pinniger down into the darkness, handling him daintily so as not to foul his own clothes. For the woman he underwent a like labor, letting the bloody sheet slip after her, and turning the flag down into its place. He had the feelings of a man who had played scavenger to a headsman upon a scaffold, and he still seemed to hear the soughing rush of wind from the pit as those dead things went to their last resting-place in the secret depths of Thorn.
When he had drawn the rope up from the window, unknotted and coiled it, and gathered tools, pistols, and his broken sword, he searched for and found Barbara’s red Bible, and retreated, with all his gear, out of the tower. The memory of the place made his gorge rise, and he was glad of the night air and the light of the moon. He drove his feet through some clumps of grass and weeds, yearning to wipe off every stain of the place before taking this child out into the world.
In the kitchen he found Barbara warming herself before the fire, and the spirit of maidenhood in her, the smooth, virginal contours of her face and figure, filled him with a sense of freshness and of awe. He saw the play and counterplay of shadow and light within her eyes, and held it to be witchcraft miraculously pure and sweet, bringing down God to him, and beauty, and clean living. Somehow he felt that night that he could not go close to her, that he had a butcher’s hands, and that it would be impiety to touch a thing so goodly. Moreover, there was a delight in holding a little aloof from her, in watching all her half-coy sweetness, so fresh and new to him in her altered womanhood. He could mark the shade and sunlight in her glances, the passing gleams of color on her face, the birth of that dear consciousness that strove to smother that which could not be wholly hid.
“How long you have been, John!”
“I had dropped some of my things and had to hunt for them. I found your book.”
He gave it to her, and, throwing the ropes and tools upon the table, he busied himself with reloading the pistol that had sent its lead into Simon Pinniger’s body, having a small ivory powder-horn and a bag of bullets with him.
“I heard such strange sounds, John, while you were away!”
“Oh!” And he seemed intent on ramming home the charge.
“It was like something falling in a cellar under the house.”
“Old houses are full of such sounds,” he said, looking up at her suddenly. “Thorn sheds bricks and plaster most nights in the year, with the ivy working its way everywhere.”
He made so little of it that Barbara did not press him further, for she had no knowledge of the pit that had been opened for her, with its well-like shoot cut in the thickness of the tower wall. John Gore began to gather up all that belonged to him, and, finding a sack in one of the cupboards, he tumbled the tools and rope into it, tying the mouth of the sack with a strip of stuff torn from the quilt of the couch. His own sword was broken in its scabbard, so he took the hanger down that hung over the fireplace, and also the long carbine that had a strap for slinging across the back.
John Gore had brought his horseman’s cloak with him from under the thorn-tree, and he took it and laid it upon Barbara’s shoulders. Moreover, Mrs. Winnie had lent him a woollen scarf and some gloves, which he had stowed away at the bottom of his holsters, and he knew that the girl would need them because of the keen wind.
“I have left the horse in the woods, Barbe. What sort of shoes are you wearing?”
She showed him them, and he did not commend their flimsiness.
“You must let me carry you, child, or you will have your stockings soaked in those boggy meadows, and we shall be somewhile on the road.”
She glanced at the table where the sack and the arms lay, and then gave him an unequivocal smile.
“And you think you can carry me as well as all that, John?”
“It can be done.”
“I am not so selfish as that. I have stolen your cloak already.”
“There is another on the horse.”
“Instead of carrying me, John, give me something to carry.”
He looked at the thin hands she held out to him.
“There is your book.”
“Yes, but I can take more than that.”
“As for that, we will see what the grass is like when we get over the moat.”
They went out together into the court-yard, where the moonlight came down upon the checker of stones outlined and interlaced with grass and weeds. Above them rose the black tower, dark as with mystery, while on every hand dim, silvery hills rose toward the frosty curtain of the sky.
“I had forgotten the dog.”
The mastiff had come out from the old cask that served him as a kennel, and was clanking his chain over the stones and growling.
“Some one will find him, John; they may come back when we have gone.”
But John Gore knew better.
He did not like the thought of leaving the beast chained there to starve, and he was debating whether a pistol bullet would not be the kinder end, when something far more hazardous challenged his attention. The wind was beating about Thorn, shaking the ivy on the walls, while the clank of the dog’s chain had a suggestive ghostliness. Yet beyond these sounds came the dull, rhythmic thud of a horse trotting over stiffening turf, the muffled cadence coming down upon the wind as they stood in the court of Thorn and listened.
“Quick, dear, we must play at hide-and-seek. It is that fellow Grylls riding back again.”
They were close to the open gate at the moment, and John Gore took Barbara by the hand and drew her aside along the wall to where a stunted bush had made roots and grown despite the stones. He pressed Barbara back within its shadow, and stood covering her, a pistol ready and the hanger at his belt should he need cold steel.
“Not a sound, Barbe; be ready to slip away when I take your hand.”
They could hear the steady thud of hoofs over the grass, and even the heavy breathing of the beast, as though he had been pushed and bustled by the spur. John Gore guessed that his rider was skirting along the moat. Then came the sharper clatter of the iron shoes upon the timbers of the bridge. The dog set up a savage barking, and in the moonlight they saw a man ride into the court of Thorn, steam rising from his horse like smoke, so that the beast looked huge and spectral. The man himself, though outlined against the moon, showed nothing but the sweep of a cloak and the droop of a black beaver.
He sat motionless a moment in the saddle, and then, dismounting, led his horse by the bridle toward the mist of light that came from the archway leading into the kitchen. John Gore felt for Barbara’s hand, and they glided along the wall toward the gate, for the man’s back was toward them, while the barking of the dog and his grinding against the chain drowned the sound of their footsteps utterly. They made the gate, and went out hand in hand over the bridge and away over the moonlit grass-land, with the barking of the dog dying down into a hoarse whimper. John Gore had thrust the pistol in his belt and swung the sack over his left shoulder. He put his right arm about Barbara’s body and swept her along by main strength toward the towering beech-trees that shone in the moonlight while the seal of silence seemed over Thorn.