The trail of the serpent
The uncle and nephew went down to this little parlour, where they found
old Martha making up a bed on the sofa.
“You will sleep very comfortably here for to-night, Master Richard,”
said the old woman; “but if my mistress doesn’t have this ceiling
mended before long there’ll be an accident some day.”
They all looked up at the ceiling. The plaster had fallen in several
places, and there were one or two cracks of considerable size.
“If it was daylight,” grumbled the old woman, “you could see through
into Mister Harding’s bedroom, for his worship won’t have a carpet.”
His worship said he had not been used to carpets in India, and liked
the sight of Mrs. Martha’s snow-white boards.
“And it’s hard to keep them white, sir, I can tell you; for when I
scour the floor of that room the water runs through and spoils the
furniture down here.”
But Daredevil Dick didn’t seem to care much for the dilapidated
ceiling. The madeira, his brightened prospects, and the excitement he
had gone through, all combined to make him thoroughly wearied out.
He shook his uncle’s hand with a brief but energetic expression of
gratitude, and then flung himself half dressed upon the bed.
“There is an alarum clock in my room,” said the old man, “which I will
set for five o’clock. I always sleep with my door open; so you will be
sure to hear it go down. It won’t disturb your mother, for she sleeps
at the other end of the house. And now good night, and God bless you,
my boy!”
He is gone, and the returned prodigal is asleep. His handsome face
has lost half its look of dissipation and care, in the renewed light
of hope; his black hair is tossed off his broad forehead, and it is a
fine candid countenance, with a sweet smile playing round the mouth.
Oh, there is stuff in him to make a man yet, though he says they should
hang such fellows as he!
His uncle has retired to his room, where his half-caste servant assists
at his toilette for the night. This servant, who is a Lascar, and
cannot speak one word of English (his master converses with him in
Hindostanee), and is thought to be as faithful as a dog, sleeps in a
little bed in the dressing-room adjoining his master’s apartment.
So, on this bad November night, with the wind howling round the walls
as if it were an angry unadmitted guest that clamoured to come in; with
the rain beating on the roof, as if it had a special purpose and was
bent on flooding the old house; there is peace and happiness, and a
returned and penitent wanderer at the desolate old Black Mill.
The wind this night seems to howl with a peculiar significance, but
nobody has the key to its strange language; and if, in every shrill
dissonant shriek, it tries to tell a ghastly secret or to give a timely
warning, it tries in vain, for no one heeds or understands.
CHAPTER III.
THE USHER WASHES HIS HANDS.
MR. JABEZ NORTH had not his little room quite to himself at Dr.
Tappenden’s. There are some penalties attendant even on being a good
young man, and our friend Jabez sometimes found his very virtues
rather inconvenient. It happened that Allecompain Junior was ill of
a fever--sometimes delirious; and as the usher was such an excellent
young person, beloved by the pupils and trusted implicitly by the
master, the sick little boy was put under his especial care, and a bed
was made up for him in Jabez’ room.
This very November night, when the usher comes up stairs, his great
desk under one arm (he is very strong, this usher), and a little feeble
tallow candle in his left hand, he finds the boy very ill indeed. He
does not know Jabez, for he is talking of a boat-race--a race that took
place in the bright summer gone by. He is sitting up on the pillow,
waving his little thin hand, and crying out at the top of his feeble
voice, “Bravo, red! Red wins! Three cheers for red! Go it--go it, red!
Blue’s beat--I say blue’s beat! George Harris has won the day. I’ve
backed George Harris. I’ve bet six-pennorth of toffey on George Harris!
Go it, red!”
“We’re worse to-night, then,” said the usher; “so much the better.
We’re off our head, and we’re not likely to take much notice; so
much the better;” and this benevolent young man began to undress. To
undress, but not to go to bed; for from a small trunk he takes out a
dark smock-frock, a pair of leather gaiters, a black scratch wig, and a
countryman’s slouched hat. He dresses himself in these things, and sits
down at a little table with his desk before him.
The boy rambles on. He is out nutting in the woods with his little
sister in the glorious autumn months gone by.
“Shake the tree, Harriet, shake the tree; they’ll fall if you only
shake hard enough. Look at the hazel-nuts! so thick you can’t count’em.
Shake away, Harriet; and take care of your head, for they’ll come down
like a shower of rain!”
The usher takes the coil of rope from his desk, and begins to unwind
it; he has another coil in his little trunk, another hidden away under
the mattress of his bed. He joins the three together, and they form a
rope of considerable length. He looks round the room; holds the light
over the boy’s face, but sees no consciousness of passing events in
those bright feverish eyes.
He opens the window of his room; it is on the second story, and looks
out into the playground--a large space shut in from the lane in which
the school stands by a wall of considerable height. About half the
height of this room are some posts erected for gymnastics; they are
about ten feet from the wall of the house, and the usher looks at them
dubiously. He lowers the rope out of the window and attaches one end of
it to an iron hook in the wall--a very convenient hook, and very secure
apparently, for it looks as if it had been only driven in that very day.
He surveys the distance beneath him, takes another dubious look at the
posts in the playground, and is about to step out of the window, when
a feeble voice from the little bed cries out--not in any delirious
ramblings this time--“What are you doing with that rope? Who are you?
What are you doing with that rope?”
Jabez looks round, and although so good a young man, mutters something
very much resembling an oath.
“Silly boy, don’t you know me? I’m Jabez, your old friend----”
“Ah, kind old Jabez; you won’t send me back in Virgil, because I’ve
been ill; eh, Mr. North?”
“No, no! See, you want to know what I am doing with this rope; why,
making a swing, to be sure.”
“A swing? Oh, that’s capital. Such a jolly thick rope too! When shall I
be well enough to swing, I wonder? It’s so dull up here. I’ll try and
go to sleep; but I dream such bad dreams.”
“There, there, go to sleep,” says the usher, in a soothing voice. This
time, before he goes to the window, he puts out his tallow candle; the
rushlight on the hearth he extinguishes also; feels for something in
his bosom, clutches this something tightly; takes a firm grasp of the
rope, and gets out of the window.
A curious way to make a swing! He lets himself down foot by foot, with
wonderful caution and wonderful courage. When he gets on a level with
the posts of the gymnasium he gives himself a sudden jerk, and swinging
over against them, catches hold of the highest post, and his descent is
then an easy one for the post is notched for the purpose of climbing,
and Jabez, always good at gymnastics, descends it almost as easily
as another man would an ordinary staircase. He leaves the rope still
hanging from his bedroom window, scales the playground wall, and when
the Slopperton clocks strike twelve is out upon the highroad. He skirts
the town of Slopperton by a circuitous route, and in another half-hour
is on the other side of it, bearing towards the Black Mill. A curious
manner of making a swing this midnight ramble. Altogether a curious
ramble for this good young usher; but even good men have sometimes
strange fancies, and this may be one of them.
One o’clock from the Slopperton steeples: two o’clock: three o’clock.
The sick little boy does not go to sleep, but wanders, oh, how wearily,
through past scenes in his young life. Midsummer rambles, Christmas
holidays, and merry games; the pretty speeches of the little sister who
died three years ago; unfinished tasks and puzzling exercises, all pass
through his wandering mind; and when the clocks chime the quarter after
three, he is still talking, still rambling on in feeble accents, still
tossing wearily on his pillow.
As the clocks chime the quarter, the rope is at work again, and five
minutes afterwards the usher clambers into the room.
Not very good to look upon, either in costume or countenance; bad
to look upon, with his clothes mud-bespattered and torn; wet to the
skin; his hair in matted locks streaming over his forehead; worse
to look upon, with his light blue eyes, bright with a dangerous and
wicked fire--the eyes of a wild beast baulked of his prey; dreadful to
look upon, with his hands clenched in fury, and his tongue busy with
half-suppressed but terrible imprecations.
“All for nothing!” he mutters. “All the toil, the scheming, and
the danger for nothing--all the work of the brain and the hands
wasted--nothing gained, nothing gained!”
He hides away the rope in his trunk, and begins to unbutton his
mud-stained gaiters. The little boy cries out in a feeble voice for his
medicine.
The usher pours a tablespoonful of the mixture into a wine-glass with a
steady hand, and carries it to the bedside.
The boy is about to take it from him, when he utters a sudden cry.
“What’s the matter?” asks Jabez, angrily.
“Your hand!--your hand! What’s that upon your hand?”
A dark stain scarcely dry--a dark stain, at the sight of which the boy
trembles from head to foot.
“Nothing, nothing!” answers the tutor. “Take your medicine, and go to
sleep.”
No, the boy cries hysterically, he won’t take his medicine; he will
never take anything again from that dreadful hand. “I know what that
horrid stain is. What have you been doing? Why did you climb out of the
window with a rope? It wasn’t to make a swing; it must have been for
something dreadful! Why did you stay away three hours in the middle of
the night? I counted the hours by the church clocks. Why have you got
those strange clothes on? What does it all mean? I’ll ask the Doctor to
take me out of this room! I’ll go to him this moment, for I’m afraid of
you.”
The boy tries to get out of bed as he speaks; but the usher holds him
down with one powerful hand, which he places upon the boy’s mouth, at
the same time keeping him from stirring and preventing him from crying
out.
With his free right hand he searches among the bottles on the table by
the bedside.
He throws the medicine out of the glass, and pours from another bottle
a few spoonfuls of a dark liquid labelled, “Opium--Poison!”
“Now, sir, take your medicine, or I’ll report you to the principal
to-morrow morning.”
The boy tries to remonstrate, but in vain; the powerful hand throws
back his head, and Jabez pours the liquid down his throat.
For a little time the boy, quite delirious now, goes on talking of the
summer rambles and the Christmas games, and then falls into a deep
slumber.
Then Jabez North sets to work to wash his hands. A curious young man,
with curious fashions for doing things--above all, a curious fashion of
washing his hands.
He washes them very carefully in a small quantity of water, and when
they are quite clean, and the water has become a dark and ghastly
colour, he drinks it, and doesn’t make even one wry face at the
horrible draught.
“Well, well,” he mutters, “if nothing is gained by to-night’s work, I
have at least tried my strength, and I now know what I’m made of.”