King of the Castle

by George Manville Fenn

It was Isaac Woodham’s never-failing theme—his hatred of his master, whom he looked upon with the bitter, narrow-minded envy of his nature. Every sharp word was magnified, every business order was looked upon as an insulting piece of tyranny, and after obeying in a morose, sulky way, he took his revenge by pitying the owner of the quarry, and praying that he might repent and become a better man.

This went on for years, during which Norman Gartram did not repent after his servant’s ideas of repentance; and had he known the circumstances, he would have said he had nothing to repent of, which, as far as his men were concerned, was perfectly just—his greatest sins being the insistence upon receiving a fair return for the wages he paid, and a rather stern way of giving his orders to all, Woodham being the most trusted for his sterling honesty, albeit Gartram sneered at him as being full of cant.

Then came the catastrophe, with Sarah, the newly-made widow, in her bereavement, feeling that in her hard way she had dearly loved the cold, stern man who had been her husband those last few years; and then she shivered as she thought of the oath he had exacted from her, and felt that it was an order from the unseen world.

Her husband had nursed indifference into hatred, till she was as bitter against Gartram as he was himself; and years passed as the sharer of his troubles had made her so much akin that, like her husband, she was full of the bitter letter of the old Scriptures, without the under-current of the spirit of forgiveness and love.

And so it was that she sat there low in spirit, thinking of the few short hours that would elapse before friends would come and bear away the cold, stern-faced form of him who had been her all, straight to the little chapel-yard, with its rough granite walls, beyond the quarry, where he would be laid to rest, well within hearing of the waves, which would lull him in his long sleep, and near to where all day long rang out the crack of the heavy stone hammers, the ring of the tamping irons, and from time to time the sharp report and the following roar of some charge when a mass of the titanic granite was laid low.

Only a few days could elapse, she thought, before, in obedience to the new orders of a cruel master, she would have to leave the carefully kept cottage which had been her pride—the only pride to which she gave harbour in her breast.

And it would be better so, she thought. The sooner Gartram bade her turn out homeless, almost penniless in the world, the easier would be her task. It would give her fresh cause for hatred, a new stimulus for destroying the man who had caused her husband’s death.

It was hour by hour, with the dead lying so near, becoming easier to her to think of Gartram as her husband’s murderer. Isaac had with his dying lips insisted upon it that this was so, and he could not lie. The seed he had planted then was rapidly growing into a tree, and, accepting the task, she brooded over the deed she was to do, telling herself that it was to give immortal rest to him who was gone before; and once the task was accomplished, she prayed that she might soon rejoin him in the realms of bliss, and look him again in the eyes and say—“It is done.”

How was it to be?

She sat there, with a strange, lurid light in her dark eyes, thinking over the vengeance and of those of whom she had read; of how Jael slew Sisera with the hammer and nail—that deadly enemy of the chosen race. Then of Judith; and a strange exultation filled her breast, and in her weak, ignorant way she began to feel herself more and more as one selected to become the instrument of Heavens punishment upon one accursed.