The Black Abbot
“The elixir!” he croaked. “The Life Water! Oh, God be thanked!”
She tried to take it from him, but he snarled round on her like an
angry dog.
“You devil!” he screamed. “You’re in league with Dick! You’re trying
to rob me of life! But you sha’n’t, you sha’n’t!”
The flask was corked with a piece of wood that had swollen. He dragged
at it with his teeth and presently extracted the stopper.
“I shall live eternally! But you shall die! He shall find you here
dead, and realize…”
He put the flask to his lips and drank. She covered her eyes with her
hands, then, as he moved, gripped the knife.
And then she heard something drop with a heavy crash to the floor and
looked. The shingle was still sliding down like sand in an hourglass,
but now something big and heavy thudded to the ground. It looked
ludicrously like a yellow candle, but its weight was such that the
first bar struck the pavement and the impact bent it hook-shape.
Another followed. She watched, fascinated, as they came, first slowly,
then in a stream, from the triangular space in the roof--scores,
hundreds of yellow candles thundering down in twos and threes amidst
the flow of shingle.
“The gold, the gold!” screamed Harry. “But he shall never have it!”
He lifted the lamp, but as his arm rose she stooped swiftly. The crash
of the lamp as it struck the wall came to her and she crouched back
toward the wishing well. She heard a loud crash in the chamber; a
sector of the roof had given under the strain, and now, with a hiss
and a rush, shingle and ingot were falling until they almost filled
the room. They flowed about her feet like a heavy stream. She
struggled to get it underfoot and became more and more engulfed.
“Dick, Dick!” she screamed, but he did not hear her.
He had reached the broken roof of the Cold Room and was slipping and
sliding down the heap of shingle under which lay a man who was dead
before the torrent of stone was loosened. Later they found him,
gripping a crystal flask in his hand. What it had contained, no man
ever knew.
LXV
When Leslie Gwyn woke, the sunlight was peeping round the edges of
the drawn blinds. She sat up suddenly and her head went round and
round. And then she remembered and her eyes closed, as if to shut out
some horrible sight.
“Oh, you _are_ awake?” said Mary Wenner, bustling in. “Dick sent me up
to see how you were. Everybody’s most fearfully anxious about
you--even Fabe, though I’m not of a jealous disposition, as everybody
knows.”
“What is the time?”
Then, with a shiver, she remembered that somebody else had asked her
that. How long ago? An eternity!
“Twelve thirty-five,” said Miss Wenner, consulting her watch. “I’ve
been out looking at the workmen. Really, my dear, it’s more like a
Desirable Residential Estate than the grounds of Fossaway Manor.
Wheelbarrows and navvies and goodness knows what! They say it’s cost
his lordship twenty thousand pounds.”
Leslie looked at her in wonder.
“His lordship?” she said in a hushed voice.
“I mean Dick,” said the calm Miss Wenner. “The King is dead, long live
the King! That’s my motto every time.” And then, in a more sober tone;
and rather ashamed of herself for her heartlessness: “Poor boy! It was
a mercy for him. Fabe’s gone back to London.”
“Who is Fabe? Oh, Mr. Gilder!” said the girl, smiling faintly.
Miss Wenner dropped her eyes modestly.
“We are engaged. It was all his idea, because, as you know, Leslie
darling, I’m not the sort of girl to throw herself at any man’s head.
But he’s persuaded me.” She sighed heavily. “I suppose I’d better. I’m
getting on in years, and a girl can’t always be pretty.”
Leslie brought her feet to the floor and stood up. She was still a
little unsteady and the pain in her feet was atrocious, in spite of
the dressing that the doctor had applied.
“I must say that Arthur took it very well,” said Miss Wenner as she
assisted the girl to dress. “It was naturally a great blow to him.”
“What was?” Leslie was a little dazed.
“My engagement,” said Mary. “You didn’t know----” she sighed. “Arthur
was very fond of me, I’ll admit it. But in the circumstances I don’t
think it would be nice to marry a gentleman who’s bad friends with my
fiancé, do you, Leslie?”
“I had no idea that there was anything between Arthur and you,” said
Leslie truthfully.
Again Miss Wenner sighed.
“Very few people knew anything about it. Perhaps it is all for the
best. Arthur thinks so. It isn’t as though I’d thrown myself at him,
so there’s no harm done one way or the other.”
Leslie was wearing a pair of man’s slippers when she came down the
broad stairs. Dick’s study door was open and she saw him sitting in a
deep cane chair on the lawn outside, a pipe between his teeth, a heap
of documents on his knees which he was examining slowly one by one. He
looked round, rising from his chair at the sound of her voice. She saw
his face and was shocked.
“Dick, you look a hundred years old!”
“I feel a thousand,” he said, and guided her to the chair. “Sit down.
Well, that’s the end, Leslie--and the beginning.”
She nodded.
“I think we’ve managed to keep the ugliest part of it out of the
newspapers. Poor old Harry!” There were tears in his eyes which he did
not attempt to hide. “Poor old victim!”
“Victim of what?”
“Of his mother,” said Dick. “There never was a time when she was sane.
My poor father did not discover this until after the child was born,
and her death removed one of the greatest sorrows from his life. The
other was--Harry! Well, now you know the secrets of us all, what do
you think, Leslie?”
“Who was the Black Abbot?” she asked, and then, to her amazement:
“I was,” he replied quietly, and told her all he had told the high
official from Scotland Yard.
“The queer thing was that he must have seen the gold before he died.
What fools we were! The Diary told us as plainly as anything could
that the old Lord Chelford who hid his treasure chose the bed of the
river. It was a year of drought, the river was quite dry, and probably
he found a deep hole in its bed, hid the gold and covered it with
shingle that would not wash away.”
“You are very rich now, Dick?”
He nodded slowly.
“Yes--I suppose I am. There are a few minor trials and troubles for
us, Leslie dear,” he said, “but when those are all over and everything
is settled we will go abroad for a year and forget all about these
ghastly days and nights.”
She took his hand between her two palms.
FINIS
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ frock-coat/frock coat,
paving-stone/paving stone, shirt-sleeves/shirt sleeves, etc.) have
been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Abandon the use of drop-caps.
Adjust the chapter numbering (the source text had two chapter XLIs).
Add ToC.
Punctuation: fix some missing periods and quotation mark pairings.
[Chapter I]
Change “such _aws_ the gloom in the library” to _was_.
[Chapter XIII]
“he said, and his voice was _kusky_ with emotion” to _husky_.
[Chapter XX]
“then went _downstars_ to his own room” to _downstairs_.
[Chapter XXI]
“moved stealthily toward the bed, _feeeling_ for the brass rail” to
_feeling_.
[Chapter XXIV]
(“Do you know that _Robison_ Crusoe was a German?”) to _Robinson_.
[Chapter LVI]
“and _occasionlly_ as prospective buyers of our property” to
_occasionally_.
[Chapter LXIV]
“Her mouth went _dray nd_ she felt for the knife she” to _dry and_.
[End of text]