The Black Abbot
Chelford frowned at the sight of his brother.
“Really, Dick,” he said irritably, “I wish to heaven you wouldn’t loaf
about the place in shirt and breeches. It looks fearfully bad.”
“It feels fearfully cool,” said Dick, sitting down. “Will your nerves
sustain the smell of a bit of honest baccy?”
Lord Chelford moved uncomfortably in his chair. Then, reaching out his
hand, he snicked open a gold box and took out a cigarette.
“My pipe against your stinkers for a hundred pounds!” said Dick, with
a cheery smile. “Cigarettes I can stand, but scented cigarettes----”
“If you don’t like them, Dick, you can go out,” grumbled his lordship
fretfully. And then in his abrupt way: “Did you see this newspaper
cutting?”
He pulled the paper from under the crystal weight and Dick skimmed the
lines.
“We are getting into the public eye, Harry,” he said, “but there is
nothing about me--which is unkind.”
“Don’t be stupid. How did that get into the papers?”
“How does anything get into the papers?” asked Dick lazily. “Our spook
is almost as useful as a press agent.”
Harry snapped round on him.
“Can’t you take this seriously? Don’t you see that it is worrying me
to death? You know the state of my nerves--you have no sympathy, Dick,
you’re just as hard as rock! Everybody seems to hate the sight of
you.”
Dick pulled at his pipe glumly.
“That is my unfortunate character. I am afraid I am getting efficient.
That is the only way I can account for my unpopularity. It keeps me
awake at nights----”
“Don’t fool, for heaven’s sake!”
“I’m serious now,” murmured Dick, closing his eyes: “try me with a
hymn!”
Harry Chelford turned away with a gesture of utter weariness, fingered
the manuscript at his hand, and gazed from his brother to the door. It
was a gesture of dismissal and Dick rose.
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough work for to-night, Harry?” he
asked gently. “You look absolutely all in.”
“I never felt better in my life,” said the other emphatically.
Dick slewed round his head to read the printed page from which his
elder brother had been copying, and saw at once that his effort was in
vain; the book was written in Old German, and Dick’s linguistic
abilities ended at a mastery of restaurant French. Lord Chelford put
down the book with a sigh and sat back in his padded chair.
“I suppose you think I’m a fool wasting my time on this”--he raised
his hand toward the serried shelves--“when I could be having a very
amusing time with Leslie?”
Dick nodded.
“Yes, I think you might be more profitably employed out of doors.
Really, for a bridegroom-to-be, you’re the worst slacker I’ve ever
struck.”
There was a superiority in Harry Chelford’s smile.
“Happily, Leslie knows she is marrying a bookworm and not an athlete,”
he said, and, rising, walked over to where Dick was sitting and
dropped his hand on his shoulder. “What would you say if I told you
that I was halfway to discovering the real Chelford Treasure?”
Dick knew exactly what he would say, but replied diplomatically:
“I should say you were three parts on the way to discovering the
philosopher’s stone,” he said.
But his brother was serious. He paced up and down the long library,
his hands behind him, his chin on his breast.
“I expected you to say that,” he said. “I should have been rather
surprised if you hadn’t. But the Chelford Treasure has an existence,
Dick, and somewhere with it is the greatest treasure of all!”
His brother listened patiently. He knew by heart the story of the
thousand bars of pure gold, each bar weighing thirty-five pounds. The
legend of the Chelford treasure was inseparable from the Chelford
estate.
Harry walked quickly to his desk, pulled open a drawer and took out a
small vellum-covered book. The pages were yellow with age and covered
with writing that had faded to a pale green.
“Listen,” he said, and began reading:
“On the fifteenth of the month, the same being the feast day of St.
James, came Sir Walter Hythe, Kt., from his cruise in the Spanish
seas, for the cost of which I raised first three thousand eight
hundred pounds and eight thousand pounds from Bellitti the Lombard,
and Sir Walter Hythe brought with him on ten wagons one thousand
ingots of gold each of thirty-five pounds weight which he had taken
from the two Spanish ships _Esperanza_ and _Escurial_, and these
ingots he shall put away in the safe place if yet the weather be dry
and the drought continue, though rain is near at hand, to judge by the
portents, deeming it wise not to inform my lord Burleigh of the gold
because of the Queen’s Majesty and her covetousness. Also he brought
the crystal flask of Life Water which was given to Don Cortés by the
priest of the Aztec people, a drop of which upon the tongue will
revive even the dead, this being sworn to by Fra Pedro of Sevilla.
This I shall hide with great care in the secret place where the gold
will be stored. To Sir Walter Hythe, Kt., I had given permission that
he keep for himself one hundred bars of like weight and this he did,
thanking me civilly, and sailed off from Chichester in his ship the
_Good Father_ which ship was wrecked on the Kentish coast, Sir Walter
Hythe, his shipmaster, and all his company perishing. Such was his
terrible misfortune. As for myself, being in some danger because of
the part I have taken in promoting the welfare of my true sovereign
lady, Mary----”
Lord Chelford looked up and met the steady eyes of his brother.
“The writing ends there,” he said. “I am certain that he was not
interrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth’s soldiers to arrest him for
his share in the conspiracy to put Mary on the throne. He must have
had time to secrete the treasure. Where is the crystal flask?”
“Where rather is the gold?” asked the practical Dick. “If I know
anything about Queen Elizabeth, she bagged it! Nobody ever found
it--for four hundred years our respected forefathers have been
searching for this gold----”
Lord Chelford made an angry gesture.
“Gold--gold--gold! You think of nothing else! Curse the gold! Find it
and keep it. It is the flask I want!” His voice sank to a whisper, his
face had grown suddenly moist. “Dick, I’m afraid of death. God! You
don’t know how afraid! The fear of it haunts me day and night--I sit
here counting the hours, wondering at which my spirit will go from me!
You’ll laugh--at that--laugh, laugh!”
But Dick Alford’s face was set, unsmiling.
“I do not laugh--but can’t you see, Harry, that such a thing as an
elixir of life is preposterous?”
“Why?” Lord Chelford’s eyes were shining. “Why shouldn’t this
discovery have been made by the ancient civilizations? Why is it more
wonderful than wireless telegraphy or the disintegration of atoms?
Thirty years ago flying was regarded as a miracle. The flask--I want
the flask of Life Water! The gold--throw it into the road--let the
poor devils take it who want it. I want life--do you understand?--life
and the end of fear.”
He dropped heavily into his chair and wiped his streaming forehead.
“The end of fear!” he muttered.
Dick listened, his eyes never leaving his brother’s face. And this was
to be Leslie Gwyn’s husband. He shivered at the thought.
V
If the Honourable Richard Fallington Alford had been regarded by the
compilers of such volumes as being sufficiently important to have his
biography enshrined in a popular work of reference, his life’s work,
his hobby, and his recreation would be described as “looking after the
Chelford estates.” His bailiffs said he knew every blade of grass; the
tenant farmers swore he could price a standing crop to the last penny
of its worth. He knew Fossaway Manor, its strength and weakness,
better than the estate architect--could point out where the
foundations were scamped by the Elizabethan builders. He could trace
the walls of the old castle which Richard of York had burnt and razed,
beheading the fourth earl for his treachery under the great archway,
one crumbling pier of which still showed its gray and battered head
above the roses that now surrounded it. He gave to the broad lands of
Chelford a loyal and passionate devotion which any mistress might
envy.
In the chill of an autumnal morning, when mist blanketed the hollows
and a pale sun was struggling through thin clouds, he strolled across
the park toward the Abbey ruins. There was little of them left. A
truncated tower wrecked by lightning; a high, arched space where an
oriel window had once flamed; mounds of scattered stones left where
Cromwell’s soldiers had overturned them; and, under the carpet of
grass, a “feel” of solid pavement.
He drew at his pipe as he stepped out, and the tobacco smelt sweet and
wholesome in the cold air.
He was on his way to the home farm, and his errand was a prosaic one.
A cow had died in the night, and his cowman had reported symptoms of
cattle fever.
The familiar ruins showed up ahead, the half arch, like a huge
question mark, arrested his eye and raised again the well-argued
problem of restoration. Some day, when the Chelford ship came home,
when that coal vein was proved, or when Harry had a rich wife.…
This was an unpleasant thought. His lips curled in a grimace of
distaste.
He stopped suddenly.
A figure was walking amongst the ruins--a woman. Her back was toward
him and she was obviously unaware of his presence. Something about her
figure seemed familiar--Dick turned from the path and walked toward
her.
Evidently she did not hear him, for when he spoke she started, uttered
a little scream, and turned a frightened face to him.
“Good-morning, Miss Wenner,” he said politely. “You are up and about
very early.”
There was no need for him to wonder whether this girl had ever
forgiven him for the very painful interview that had preceded her
retirement. Recognizing him, her eyes blazed with hate.
“Good-morning, Mr. Alford.” She was civil enough. “I’m staying in the
village and I thought I would like to come up and see the old place.”
He nodded gravely.
“You had a similar thought yesterday,” he said, “and tried to see my
brother.”
“Well?” defiantly.
“I gave you to understand, Miss Wenner, that we should all be much
happier if you never again passed the lodge gates,” he said quietly.
“I hate saying this to any woman, but you ought to be the first to
recognize how very uncomfortable you make me feel. I thought you would
apprehend this.”
“Apprehend” was a stilted word, but he could think of no other.
“Is that so?” The colour had deepened in her face. “Is--that--so!”
“That is so,” he nodded.
She looked at him for a while and her lips curved.
“I’m sorry I’ve annoyed the family chaperon,” she sneered.
He could admire, in a detached way, her wholesome good looks; could
even admire her courage. Her wrathful eyes were fixed on his, the
break in her voice betrayed the fury she strove to conceal. As for
Dick Alford, he felt a brute.
“I’m extremely sorry if you don’t like my calling,” she said, her
voice razor-sharp and tremulous, “but I think the least Lord Chelford
could have done was to see me, considering I’ve worked for him for
three years and after all that has passed between us----”
“The only thing that passed between you, Miss Wenner, was your weekly
wages,” said Dick, with maddening calmness.
But now he had taxed her to the limit of endurance.
“He asked me to marry him and I _would_ have married him if you hadn’t
put your spoke in!” she said shrilly. “I could get thousands and
thousands out of him for breach of promise if I wasn’t a lady! You
second sons and hangers-on poisoned his mind against me! You ought to
be downright ashamed of yourself, you good-for-nothing, penniless
pauper!”
Dick was faintly amused at the redundancy.