“Ay, if they dared. And knew where I hold it. Fearing me yet and not knowing. Will ye not stay?”
“And yet I’ll not stay in this house.”
He said heavily, but without anger, “You’re like your father in more than looks. I’d have you by me, till I die. You fear the dark and the sounds of the wind and sea. You’re young-what should you hear in the wind, or see moving in the dark? What should you see stepping over the floor, when the moon comes up? I fear nothing in the winds or the dark or the moon. Ay, and I’ve sailed in uncharted seas, and I’ll sail the sea that shall never have a chart. Not fearing! But I’d have you by me, till I embark.”
He fell to silence; awhile I sat and watched him. He said then, musing, “I’ve rotted in this accursed house, since I left the sea. The house with the green ivy webbed about it; I’ve a sense of being caught in the weed—held to die and rot. There’s talk among seamen of waters where the weed’s taken many a ship—I’m held so by the weed. Its roots ’ll strike into my heart. It battens on dead men.”
I knew his mind was decaying with the breaking body. I pitied remembering that he had loved my father. I knew now that, black with guilt, he feared the uncharted sea on which he must soon set sail. And I thought of the old rogues about him watching, waiting, until they feared no longer, and might take what long ago they would have taken, had they dared. Yet I think not pity, not the desire that all men have to be rich, would have prevailed against the terror of the house in the night—the doomed house. I think that I, being of his blood, was led by the spirit of adventure to stay by him. Adventure, and desire to see the play to its end.
“I’ll stay here, sir,” I said, “if you’ll have it so. On a condition—that I be free to go about and abroad as I will.”
“Ay, so long as you bear me company when I’ve need of you,” he answered, with a show of satisfaction.
Chapter XXIII. Dying Fires
My grandfather, pulling the bell-rope, summoned Thrale, and ordered curtly, “Send Barwise and her man to me!” As Thrale vanished, the old man said to me, “I’ve orders for ’em, John—orders. She’s housekeeper; he’s butler, and their son Nick’s groom. Rogues all!”
He chuckled, and sought his snuff-box; so he made play with it that I observed it cut from ebony, with a silver skull and bones patterned upon it. He ceased his senile chuckling at the rapping on the door; I saw him grip the arms of his chair and hold his head high, as if to make a show of strength and sanity before Barwise and his wife.