Читать книгу The Weird Sisters: A Romance. Volume 2 of 3 - Dowling Richard - Страница 2

The passenger steamboat Rodwell left Daneford on that evening of the 17th of August, 1866, at the usual time, with an average number of passengers for the season and her ordinary crew. She was a saloon boat, and licensed to carry three hundred and fifty passengers between Daneford and Seacliff. As a matter of fact she never, except on very rare occasions, had more than half that number on board. Her crew, all told, were fifteen; and on the evening of the 17th of August, 1866, she carried about one hundred and twenty passengers.

The saloon-deck was abaft the paddle-boxes, and after-deck passengers had access to the saloon and bridge as well as the after-deck; the fore-deck passengers were confined to the fore-deck and the fore-cabin, the latter being a dull, cheerless, dreary place, where no one ever thought of going, unless in bad weather.

Smoking was allowed on the fore-deck to the second-class passengers, but not in the fore-cabin. On neither the saloon-deck, nor in the saloon itself, was smoking permitted; but all smoking Daneford declared that, in the whole world, there could be found no place or circumstances under which a cigar might be tasted with such plenteous peace and enjoyment as upon the bridge of the Rodwell, while she steamed down the broad placid Weeslade of a fine summer's evening.

Although Daneford was not a straitlaced city, there was a good deal of solid propriety in the character of its people. Judged by criminal statistics, it was rather worse than the average city of its size; but if a little prodigal in its crimes, it was discreet and prudent in its sins. If it cheated, it cheated in a legitimate and business-like manner. If it got drunk, it did not brawl. Whatever wicked thing it did, it kept under the rose. So that it enjoyed the double advantage of being highly estimated for its virtue, without allowing itself the unpleasant deprivations which the pursuit of virtue requires.

As regards smoking, Daneford observed one rule in the year 1866, and of that rule a single breach could not be proved against a single resident of the city. The rule was that no man should, while walking through the streets of Daneford in company with a lady, give the death-blow to chivalry and light a cigar.

The mere fact that on the bridge of the Rodwell smoking was allowed secured it against the remotest chance of female incursion. The most respectable maiden ladies, who had ceased to be giddy with youth, made it a practice to look as little as possible at that bridge, and, if they could, to sit with their backs to it.

Just forward of the bridge, on the main deck, were the steward's pantry and the cook's galley. The passage between the forward house on deck and the paddle-boxes being very narrow, the view from the fore to the after deck was so much interrupted as practically to be cut off.

Under the bridge, amidships, were the engines; aft of the engines, the engine-room and stoke-hole, all in one; and farther aft still, the furnaces and boilers.

All first-class lady passengers, whether escorted by men or alone, confined themselves to the after-deck and the saloon.

The defect which had been discovered in the boiler had not become a matter of general knowledge. No one in either Daneford or Seacliff knew anything about it, except a few persons connected with the steamer and the company's office.

There was no railway from the city to the little town, but an omnibus and a coach went daily in and out, the distance between the two places being, by road, not half the distance by water.

The road was no longer a rival of the river as a highway between the two places; but if public faith got cool in the riverway, people might fall back upon the road, which of old had enjoyed the monopoly. Nothing could more effectually shake public faith in the water-way than a suspicion that weakness or defect existed in the steamer. Therefore the fact that the boilers of the Rodwell exhibited unfavourable symptoms had been kept a profound secret, and on the 17th of August no passenger on board the boat had the shadow of a suspicion anything was wrong.

Steadily the steamboat held her course down the Weeslade that lovely August evening.

A man with a fiddle at the bow struck up a lively air, and in a few minutes some of the younger and gayer of the forward passengers stood up and began to dance.

The men smoking on the bridge drew near the rail, and looked down with smiles of quiet cordiality upon the dancers.

Then a man with a large white hat, blackened face, huge white shirt-collar, blue-and-white calico coat, red waistcoat, and check-linen trousers approached the fiddler; and having whispered to the fiddler, the latter brought the dance-music to a stop, and the nigger minstrel stepped out into the open space just quitted by the dancers, and sang a pathetic song.

This won great applause, and caused some of the women to weep.

Then the fiddler changed the tune into one of sly and artful purport; and the nigger, assuming an attitude and a manner of audacious drollery, sang a song of such comical force that all the forward passengers greeted the end of each verse with roars of laughter, forgetting, in their own enjoyment, to applaud the singer: a form of commendation doing much more homage to the performer than all the cool and calculating approval that accepts and adopts the dry formula of hand smiting hand as a mark of satisfaction. So successful was this song that some of the critical loungers on the bridge turned to others and said, "Not half so bad," in a tone indicating the possession of responsible critical discernment and chivalric honour in the interests of truth.

Among the men on the bridge was a merchant of Daneford accompanied by a nephew, a young lad from the country who had come on a first visit to the city; to him the merchant was indicating the various objects of interest they passed on the way down.

"This," said the merchant, pointing, "is the Foundery. Although it is called the Foundery, it is in reality, as you see, a dockyard fer building iron steamers. The last one launched was 2,500 tons register.

"That is the Cove, and there bathing is allowed all day long. The water is not clear, and the bottom is very muddy; but in the hot weather city-folk of the lower order are not nice in such matters. We haven't any clear streams or mill-ponds such as you have in the country.

"That is the Glashouse over there, and this part of the river is called Glashouse Reach.

"Farther down you see a windmill on a headland; that headland is called Windmill Head, and that large white house in the glen there is Windmill Hall, the residence of Colonel Wood Maitland, who distinguished himself in the Crimean War. A Cossack thrust at Maitland's colonel, who was wounded and propped up against a dead trooper's dead horse. Captain Wood Maitland (he was only a captain then) lifted the Cossack's lance with an up-cut. The Cossack wheeled, thrust at the captain; the lance caught the captain in the left forearm, and the shaft being wounded by the up sword cut, broke off two feet from the head, and stuck in the captain's forearm. The captain was borne down. The Cossack wheeled again and drew. Captain Maitland had lost his sword in the fall. The Cossack rode up, brandishing his sword and making again for the wounded colonel, who lay helpless against the belly of the dead horse. Captain Maitland was now unarmed and wounded. A few paces in advance of the captain was a large fragment of a shell; he rose, picked this up, and, at the moment the Cossack was within a few yards of the wounded colonel, threw the piece of the shell with all his force, and struck the horse on the head, causing the horse to swerve and the rider to lose his cut. As the Cossack swept by Captain Maitland pulled the lance-head out of his left forearm, and thrust it through the bowels of the Cossack, who rode on a little and then tumbled out of his saddle. But that was only one of a dozen or more brave things Maitland did.

"That snug little cottage under the slope on the other shore is where Samuel Sholl, the richest merchant in Daneford, lives. He is a Quaker, and many men of five hundred a year have finer houses. But this one is the most beautifully kept in the neighbourhood.

"If you look right ahead now you will see the Island. Its name is Warfinger. On the top of the hill in the Island is the Castle. Sir Alexander Midharst lives there. He has a fine property, worth more than twenty thousand a year; but he is a miser, and saves up nineteen out of every twenty pounds of his income.

"Wat Grey, the banker, a very rich man too, takes care of all Sir Alexander's money. The Castle is old, as you see, and has a deserted, lonely look.

"Wat Grey lives at the Manor, in the Manor House, another queer house, and he has called the two houses the Weird Sisters. You see that round tower. Now you can see it better as we come in front of the archway to the Castle-yard, the western tower. Well, they used to say it was haunted by the ghost of one of the wives of the family which owned it before the Midharsts came into the property. There's a tower on the Manor also, and no doubt you have heard or read of places in the East – China, I think, or maybe Rangoon – where they put their dead on the top of towers, called the Towers of Silence. The carrion birds eat off the flesh, and the bones fall through a grating. Well, Wat Grey calls these two towers the Towers of Silence.

"That level plain of grass-land between the river and these hills is called the Plain of Spears. A great number of spear-heads have been found there from time to time, and until quite lately it was supposed a battle must have been fought there. But although bones of cows and sheep have been discovered, no human bones ever turn up, and no one has been able to account for the spear-heads. You shall see many of those spear-heads in the rooms of the Weeslade Scientific Institute to-morrow.

"In that little creek there, Glastenbury Cove, three boys were drowned last year. A boat capsized in a squall of wind, and none of the three boys could swim; so they were all drowned.

"That large yellow house at the top of the dip of land is the Hon. Skeldemere Istelshore's. He is the brother of an earl, and a violent Radical. He has a large property hereabouts, and farms two thousand acres himself.

"The sun is getting down now. Twilight is the pleasantest time on the river at this season. Now, if you look back, you will see as pretty a view as there is on the whole of the Weeslade, Don't the pasture and park lands look well with the hills behind them, and dead astern, in the throat of the river, Warfinger Island with its hill, and on the top of the hill the old Castle standing out sharp against the sky, with the Tower of Silence highest of all?

"By-the-way, in a moment you will see why people got a superstitious feeling about that tower. Right in our wake is the Castle, and we are steering right into the sun. We could not be better placed to see the witch's fire dance on the tower. The sun is just dipping. Now watch the tower. There! Did you see that? That flash on the top of the tower? That's what the people call the witch's fire. There it is again, now. I never saw it brighter – never. Look again. The boat is right in the track of the sun, and the wash of the paddles makes the light flicker. I never saw – "

At that instant he ceased to speak – for ever. An iron bar struck him at the throat, severing the head from the body, and killing also a man who stood behind him.

The after end of the bridge was flung upward, and all upon it, the living and the dead, were shot down upon the fore-deck.

Coal and planks and wreck of the saloon, and bodies of those who had been on the after-deck and in the saloon, toiled upward a moment in a dense cloud of steam and water, hung a moment suspended in air, while a dull groaning sound spread abroad from the steamer. Then all descended again, falling upon the ruined boat, upon the placid water, with thud and hiss and shriek.

For a second all was still.

Then a dull groan from those forward. Then screams and yells when it was plain the shell of the boat could not float more than a few seconds.

About fifty people were still alive.

The wreck made a drive astern. The water washed over the fore-deck, and, striking the forward bulwark, laid the steamer on an even keel for a breath's space.

Then the water rushed aft once more, and in a stern-board the stern went under water, the boat fell over to star-board, swung half-way back again, and then heeled steadily over and went down.

The boiler of the Rodwell had burst, and the steamer Rodwell had gone down before any one who still survived had had time to jump overboard.