Читать книгу Lycanthrope: The Mystery of Sir William Wolf - Eden Phillpotts - Страница 10

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News of the betrothal created widespread interest through the little world of Stormbury and indeed beyond it. William's own circle of acquaintance from far and wide congratulated him upon his good fortune and he found the staff of the manor in great good spirits at his choice. Bob Meadows was able to explain the reason.

"They all know Miss Boyd for a proper good sort, Sir William," he said in private, "and couldn't wish for a kinder, more understanding lady, to reign over them. Butler and housekeeper's at one, and it ain't often you can say that. They were feared of their lives you'd pick some foreigner."

His aunt and cousin warmly supported the match and none pleased William in his praise of Alma so well as Telford, while Mrs. Wolf also extolled the vicar's daughter and declared her nephew to be a most fortunate man. She was genuinely delighted, while John Malfroy's bluff compliments also made appeal to both lovers.

"If ever a pair were built for double-harness, Alma," he told her, "it's you and Bill. You know a lot more about his downy tenants than he does, and I shall expect you to be on my side every time."

Mr. Boyd was well pleased, but he bargained for a long engagement.

"I decline to be left desolate," he assured William, "and you will need to exercise patience. There is none in our family to take Alma's place and I must have ample time to secure a female of mature age, Christian principles and ripe experience to watch over me. Until she is discovered I do not relinquish Alma."

But neither desired any haste and found their new relationship full of joy.

"We're quite happy enough to go on with," so Alma told her father. "It's lovely 'keeping company.' Bill's idea is to carry on till after the anniversary of his father's death, then marry and take me to Italy for ages."

"After Christmas I will begin my inquiries," promised the vicar, "and trust that Providence may smile upon the quest."

But many days were destined to pass before the reverend gentleman was troubled for himself. Fate brought a sudden glut of fantastic horrors into his peaceful existence and he was called to battle with evil beyond the power of religion to conquer, since the dreadful thing belonged apparently to a mind diseased and had no root in reality. It was Alma who undeceived him.

Meanwhile the lovers went their contented and busy way, wrestled with the library, rode together, sometimes alone and sometimes with Malfroy, and grew into a pure devotion which argued well for the future. Then fell a day when chance discovery of printed words threatened to part them for ever, and William, wandering in the forest as he was wont to do with book and pipe, emerged a haunted man.

Amid the low ranges of the Blackdown Hills, that extend from Eastern Devon northerly to Somersetshire, stood the mansion and estates of Stormbury, while to the north of the domain extended great hanging woods, that towered to the crest of the little elevation and ran for a mile beneath it. Through these oaken hangers extended a low cliff of ghost-grey shale that lit to rose and gold on a fine day-spring, or glimmered with fleeting silver in moonlight, but for the most part sulked austere and sad between its crown and footstool of ancient trees. Under this cliff, time-foundered woods spread out again until cultivated land hemmed in their vast borders.

A forest is always the altar of solemnities to a mind that can appreciate them; but there was something added in these dim legions of Stormbury. Beneath the great shelf and precipice of rock that clove their lichened ranks, an air mysterious and even sinister exerted some measure of influence on the least receptive spirit. Normal people found themselves uneasy in the atmosphere of such withered eld; while upon the more sensitive it exerted another challenge and either made them desire to be gone, or drew them against their own inclination by a force impossible to determine—the pull of repulsion. A woodman's path extended through the thickets beneath the cliff and the rocks were a haunt of fox and badger, rich in dens and holts. At one place a stream broke out of the boulders and babbled away to the river far beneath. Only at spring-time did a vernal wreath of golden green crown the hangers, and for a while it played its part in the pomp of the woods; but leaf fell early from these venerable giants; dead branches ascended above many of them thrusting nakedly upward, and when the boughs were bare, their formidable ranks revealed death battling in the grey army and felling tree after tree.

The spirit of ruin has always a melancholy effect upon any average human mind, and whether it be the works of man or nature, destruction displayed upon them chills our hearts. This dreary region with its strange echoes from the precipice, its sense of abstraction, its pervasive skeletons and decay, its shadows, silences and loneliness, suggested that Stormbury hurst must lie under some sort of spell and for generations the bodeful quality of all this innocent region had persisted. The wives of gamekeepers and woodmen would threaten naughty children with the perils of the hanger. Youth instinctively avoided the place and the nuts and blackberries of autumn, the blackthorn haunts of early winter and the wood strawberries of spring were left to bird and beast. An ancient legend still endured and none of the folk for a moment questioned it. Here, in this tough fastness, torn from its secret lair, the last wolf in England had most certainly been slain, and many peasants still handed down a tradition that the brute's huge pelt continued to adorn a wall in Stormbury Manor. Some jesting game-keeper of old had gulled the credulous with this tale and thus the legend grew, though never any shred of reality existed to support it.

Telford Wolf, while admitting the curious atmosphere of the hangers and the aversion they created, not only in bucolic minds, endeavoured to explain the reason.

"Nature is responsible," he said. "She presents us with an anomaly and our wits always resent that. By some freak the queer lights, hoary trees dripping with fern and moss, the fat, bulging fungus-growths on the dead timber, the general petrifaction and putrefaction, all convey a feeling that we are not on the earth at all, but rapt away into some other planet, or buried fathoms deep under a tideless ocean. The silence is submarine. One would not be surprised to see strange fishes nosing about among the boughs of the trees in the eternal mist that haunts the place, or imagine invisible, unfriendly, cold-blooded creatures watching us out of lidless eyes. The very oaks in their hideous old age seem to have animal rather than clean, arboreal qualities. One guesses they might stretch down their huge arms and snatch us up and make a meal of us if they were hungry. There must be something in it, for not we alone experience this loathing. Only beasts of the night and vermin ever crawl about here; honest wild things never come either on wing or pad. Game bars the place. In fact the hangers want burning down and replanting."

As in many of artistic temperament, the delights of sport were not shared by William and its dangers distasteful. He had willingly enough faced danger in a vital cause, but physical peril as a part of amusement made no appeal to him. Nor did he love the hunting and killing of unconscious animals—a prejudice that promised to limit his popularity with rich and poor alike, since hunting and shooting bring work and wages to many thousands of men who depend upon field sport for a living, as well as delight to thousands more who pursue it for their first pleasure.

Not through these channels did the young man seek to mend certain personal defects, or banish deeply rooted instincts which he deplored and strove to conceal. With intense attraction towards the supernatural aspects of life, there went morbidity, and the morbid are always lacking in nerve. William knew that he was timid and took secret pains to conquer so undignified a weakness. He was and always had been conscious that he shared the ignorant, local dread of the hangers, while his father's death under the trees did not lessen this irrational prejudice. He supposed that some nursemaid in his infancy had planted the seed of fear. For this reason he chose to combat such a disability with direct action and so conquer it. He had lately spent many a lonely hour in the hangers—visiting them at dawn and noon and in the winter twilights—as a tonic and corrective. He was pleased with himself after these vigils and felt a strengthening of moral fibre as a result. Indeed, he considered himself cured of his weakness now; but he had to deal with the ineradicable ingredients of his own nature for which as yet reason's self could offer no cure.

William's innate superstition was now destined to receive a sudden, terrible stimulus, for tendencies and occult menaces that meant nothing but laughter to the average man, bulked swiftly into formidable proportions for him. Native credulity made its stealthy contribution. His scale of values laid him open to every ghostly enemy and he recognized the possibility of such unconquerable foes. His attitude to the spirit world left him vulnerable. He believed in the existence of disembodied intelligences and knew that many of these beings were both potent and malignant; metamorphosis he regarded as proven and outside the domain of myth; panic terror he had known from personal experience as a power of evil and a terrible opponent of the soul.

Now, on a mild and sunlit afternoon of mid-February, William went his way to the woods. Alma was from home stopping with friends in London, and he felt lonely and lacking without her. At a little croft on the fringes of the hurst stood a shed. It was the dwelling of the big white hunter that had fallen with Sir Porteus and brought him death. The horse galloped to welcome the lumps of sugar William brought him, and he remembered how his father's favourite had mourned, gone off his food and doubtless wondered in his little mind why the master came to ride him no more.

"Perhaps the governor's ghost visits him sometimes and comforts him," thought William. "Just a sporting thing the kind old boy would do."

He settled into a familiar nook presently above the woodman's path through the forest, marked the low, mild sunshine bring paly gold to the cliffs and fret their frowning faces with a smile. Then he lighted his pipe, and brought a little book from the inside pocket of his overcoat. In the course of his explorations that morning he had come across it for the first time, and attracted by the title and challenge of age, brought it with him from his library. Worn calf-skin bound the little volume; it was called Blackdown Legends and the title page showed it to be more than a hundred and fifty years old. Book-worms had bored many pages, but the type was clear enough and William read some of the simple contents with interest; then came to a poem and he started to mark the odd name of it. 'Twilight of Wolf' it was called and it covered two pages of the book. Worms had eaten through them but left the letterpress unmarred.

Thus the student read, stared awhile motionless before him and then re-read.

TWILIGHT OF WOLF

Twain wolves they bear upon their Coat;

In Stormbury the last was slain;

Yet evening wolf is still their bane,

Summoned from phantom world remote

With steely fangs to tear that innocent scapegoat.

II

When red-polled son of Wolf shall reign,

Upon his carrot-fiery head

Old vengeance, due to evil dead,

With glut of terror, woe and pain

Must horribly descend in baleful hurricane.

III

Red-handed shall the red man be

With human blood upon his palm,

Wolf in his veins to breed alarm:

First portent of the mystery,

Propitiation dire, immutable decree.

IV

Through scent to sound destruction steals

Till, deep within the victim's ear,

Reverberate such notes of fear

His fainting, stricken spirit reels,

His heart knocks at his ribs; his blood to ice congeals.

V

Nearer and nearer, louder yet

Until there falls hibernal hour

When Death, at will of secret Power,

Descends to consummate the threat

And lupine teeth discharge that foul, ancestral debt.

VI

Wolf shall meet wolf on New Year's Night

In fatal tryst ordained of yore,

And phantom wolf from forest hoar

Incarnate leap with demon might

Red wolf to slay, and purge the land of that doomed weight.

For an hour William sat quite motionless in bewildered amazement at these cumbrous rhymes; and then the inevictable happened and he perceived their implication. Another sort of mind had laughed at the absurd coincidence, as Johnny presently did when he heard about it; but William Wolf knew far more of his family history than could Malfroy, and for him the ancient farrago became increasingly laden with mysterious and personal significance. Only to a man of his eerie bent had the prophecy, if such it was, brought anything save entertainment by its aptness; but for him a gathering horror, that reason was impotent to dispel, waxed in his spirit.

The sunlight had sped and the hurst was sinking into familiar mists before the reader leapt up and went his way. For him, under present stress, the hanger had lost its power to chill his heart or waken dread. The greater had destroyed the less, and the archaic verses in the little book already resounded with gloomy portent. They were taken as real and vital to himself alone; the powers that had inspired them, at the hand of some human being long dead, had bided their hour, awaited his appearance on the stage of life, and now, in his secure hour with utmost happiness at hand, had opened this mouldering page from a past under his eyes at the appointed time. So poor Sir William began to think and feel, appropriating the horror to himself; and then awakened a natural desire to share his find with a fellow-creature and learn how indifferent and unthreatened beings might regard it. But before he reached the manor another aspect of this challenge made him hesitate. To whom should he apply? Was it just or fair to reveal his discovery to others? Were it not more courageous and worthy of wisdom to conceal what he had read, face the future single-handed and dree his weird like a man? At least, William told himself that he might wait and watch awhile. The prediction was complicated and embraced various phenomena before its dreadful end. If none of the things foretold overtook him, the rhymes might after all be nonsense—a screed to spare those who cared about him. There came a revulsion of feeling at this point and common sense struggled with him. He resolved to burn the book and stamp its memory out of his mind. But the event turned out otherwise. His emotion had left radical impress on the young man's face and his friend was quick to mark it. Malfroy waited for him at the tea-table and noted his pallor and evident suppressed concern. His habit of frequenting the hanger was known to Johnny though not the reason. He guessed that William's affinity with the weird drew him thither and had observed the results of these excursions to be good rather than bad; but now he expostulated.

"Damn it, Bill, why will you haunt that beastly place? It's rank foolery and not decent if you ask me. What's the matter? You can't hide it from me! What's put the wind up?"

So he asked and William hesitated before answering, for it was true that he could never conceal a mood from the other and indeed, seldom attempted to do so. Pride has no place in heartwhole friendship and Johnny's blunt questions came as a relief to a troubled mind.

"I've come across a very disquieting and startling thing, old man," said William.

"My pigeon or your own?"

"Nothing to do with you, but emphatically 'my pigeon' if there is any meaning in printed words."

"Often there is none. What have you been reading now?"

William fetched Blackdown Legends, which he had left in his overcoat, turned the pages and found the poem.

"Read that carefully, John, and be rational about it. Don't laugh and rot. This is no laughing matter," he said.

The land agent lifted his eyebrows, finished a slice of hot buttered toast, wiped his fingers on a big handkerchief and took the book. For some minutes there was silence while Malfroy read and William drank a cup of strong, black tea without milk. At last John handed the little book to its owner and spoke.

"You tell me to be rational, Bill, though that's never your own strong suit as you know, because you always say, and no doubt believe, that human reason's a very doubtful guide. But at least you're sane. What the mischief is there in that drivel to make any sane man disquieted, or anything but bored?"

"Better read it again then, and perhaps you'll see the application. Strange that you should have missed it so completely, John. This prophecy must have been written more than a hundred and fifty years ago; but it abounds in the most massive evidence pointing to me."

"To you! This lump of horrors points to you! What on earth are you saying, or dreaming, Bill? For God's sake pull yourself together."

"I am quite composed and perfectly calm, old chap, and you must be the same," answered William.

"But where's the connection? How can this rhymer's nightmare have anything more to do with you, or be taken more seriously than any other trash in the book?"

"I asked myself that, but the verses answer the question themselves. They are crude and harsh, as prophecies often are, yet they are not ambiguous. They meant nothing until I came into the world, but now they do mean something—something pretty sinister too."

"Why? Only because you are a red man. There may have been dozens of your ancestors who had red hair."

"Not one. My coloring is unique in the family. I learned that from my father, who was well up in the Wolfs for centuries. He said that no red Wolf is recorded. No portrait of any red Wolf exists. He declared that I was a rara avis in this particular and didn't think any the better of me for it."

"He'd never heard of this nonsense, then, or he would have been sure to bring it to your notice? Sir Porteus loved a joke I remember."

"We may take it that he'd not heard of it certainly," admitted the other. "This little folio was never opened in his time I should imagine."

"Examine the beastly thing," suggested John patiently. "Con it over, Bill, and see what the deuce it amounts to."

He took the book again.

"First mention of your coat of arms."

"Two wolves passant on ground vert," said Sir William.

"So much for that then; and next an allusion to the old yarn, about the last wolf in England being slain in Stormbury woods. Then we're told that an evening wolf is still the bane of your family. Why an 'evening' wolf? Why not a morning wolf, or a midnight one?"

"I cannot tell—yet," answered the other. "I'm going to read up everything that's recorded about wolves."

"I shouldn't," begged his friend. "Don't let this twaddle detain you for an hour. Ignore it. I believe there's all sorts of folk-lore and tripe written about wolves. I've seen the real thing and smelt the beggars in Russia, where they get fierce and reckless when they're starving in winter-time. They're much the same as savage Alsatian hounds and cowardly at that. Wolves are like most men: only brave in packs."

He turned again to the narrative.

"The idea seems to be that your family have done something pretty dire in the past and Nemesis is coming, in the shape of a wolf, to right the wrong, when 'red-polled baronet shall reign.' So much for that prediction. But a lot has got to happen first apparently. It looks as though you must commit murder, old boy, before the prophecy begins to work. If the ass who wrote this stuff was still alive, I should say 'find him and murder him by all means,' but as he wrote, you say, nearly two hundred years ago I'm afraid he's safe. Do you contemplate the assassination of anybody else?"

"Don't chaff, Johnny," urged the other. "It doesn't strike me as a laughing matter. There's something serious here."

"All right. I'll damned soon admit it's no laughing matter if you're going to let it get on your nerves," replied Malfroy. "Let's push on with it. Human blood is upon your palm now and 'Wolf in your veins to breed alarm.' You share the blue blood of your venerable race all right, but it needn't put you into a blue funk, surely? Why should the wolf in your veins breed alarm, and be 'the first portent of the mystery and propitiation dire' and all the rest of it?"

"There is such a thing as lycanthropy," answered Sir William. "A doctor friend once told me a queer case in his knowledge. I don't want to make sense of this old rhyme, God knows; but I'm not going to assume there is no sense in it. My instinct assures me that there is."

The other shrugged his shoulders, but he began to show some anxiety.

"Let's try again then," he said. "What's the next part of the programme? This precious appeal is all to the senses you notice. First smell, then hearing. What you may expect to smell, or hear, exactly it doesn't say. You can't mistake the smell of a wolf anyway, and you can't mistake the howl of a wolf. Their queer ululation is like nothing else on earth. Dogs and foxes bark, but wolves howl. Anyway, you are not the man whose heart would knock at his ribs under any provocation I should hope, and I don't see your blood congealing to ice either."

"One can hardly imagine the terror that would rob one of action, or quell one's power of resistance," admitted William.

"I should think not. Before 'lupine teeth discharge your foul ancestral debt,' you'd have something to say about it, or I should."

"We must put the whole question on a spiritual basis and regard it so alone, my dear John. Something tells me that this is not a physical challenge. It belongs to the soul."

"It's pretty physical if you ask me," answered Malfroy. "Just a lot of ugly, silly, purely physical images that wouldn't terrify a modern ten-year-old. It's definite enough for anything. It even makes a 'date.' The end of the victim is timed for New Year's Night. Pity we don't know the year. Perhaps the fun's all over and this business happened centuries ago and the 'phantom wolf from forest hoar' polished off some unfortunate member of your family before you, or your father, or your grandfather was born?"

Sir William shook his head.

"Impossible. Such a thing would have been recorded. We have had industrious chroniclers in our family and our archives are pretty lengthy."

"Read 'em up then and see if they throw any light. Your cousin may know something."

"History doesn't interest him," answered the other, "but Aunt Daphne might have heard his father speak of the past. Uncle Thomas, the old bookman, may have been keen about the race."

Telford was in London making preparation for his 'one-man' show. He had written from time to time and reported the admiration declared by fellow-craftsmen for his achievements. 'They say the little tiara of seed pearls and emeralds is my masterpiece,' wrote Telford, 'and I hope you're going to buy it for Alma at your own price, Bill. But nobody should ever tell an artist that he has made his masterpiece. If we knew that we had done the best we ever can, or shall, then consider the flatness and fatuity of our future efforts! No—no, leave us our dreams and eternal hopes that the new creation is going to transcend all that went before. Let us handle our tools even after the hand is shaky and the eye grown dim, under undying conviction that the supreme thing is going to crown our work at last.'