In the Roar of the Sea Part 37

Hastily she drew back. She heard feet on the gravel. The men were returning, Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray and the smuggler, each laden with a small cask of spirits.

"Right you are," said the man, as he set his keg down in the pa.s.sage, "that's yours, and I could drink your health, sir."

"You wouldn't--prefer?--" Mr. Scantlebray made contortions with his hands between the candle and the wall, and threw a shadow on the surface of plaster.

"No, thanks sir, I'd prefer a shilling."

Mr. Scantlebray fumbled in his pockets, grunted "Humph! purse up-stairs." Felt again, "No," groped inside the breast of his waistcoat, "another time--not forget."

The man muttered something not complimentary, and turned to go through the yard.

"Must lock door," said Mr. Obadiah, and went after him. Now was Judith's last chance. She took it at once; the moment the backs of the two men were turned she darted into the pa.s.sage and stood back against the door out of the flare of the candle.

The pa.s.sage was a sort of hall with slated floor, the walls plastered and whitewashed at one time, but the wash and plaster had been picked off to about five feet from the floor wherever not strongly adhesive, giving a diseased and sore look to the wall. The slates of the floor were dirty and broken.

Judith looked along the hall for a place to which she could retreat on the return of the proprietor of the establishment. She had entered that portion of the building tenanted by the unhappy patients. The meanness of the pa.s.sage, the picked walls, the situation on one side of the comfortable residence showed her this. A door there was on the right, ajar, that led into the private dwelling-house, but into that Judith did not care to enter. One further down on the left probably gave access to some apartment devoted to the "pupils," as Mrs.

Scantlebray called the patients.

There was, however, another door that was open, and from it descended a flight of brick steps to what Judith conjectured to be the cellars.

At the bottom a second candle, in a tin candlestick, was guttering and flickering in the draught that blew in at the yard door, and descended to this underground story. It was obvious to the girl that Mr.

Scantlebray was about to carry or roll his kegs just acquired down the brick steps to his cellar. For that purpose he had set a candle there.

It would not therefore do for her, to attempt to avoid him, to descend to this lower region. She must pa.s.s the door that gave access to the cellars, a door usually locked, as she judged, for a large iron key stood in the lock, and enter the room, the door of which opened further down the pa.s.sage.

She was drawing her skirts together, so as to slip past the candle on the pa.s.sage floor for this purpose, when her heart stood still as though she had received a blow on it. She heard--proceeding from somewhere beneath down those steps--a moan, then a feeble cry of "Ju!

Where are you? Ju! Ju! Ju!"

She all but did cry out herself. A gasp of pain and horror did escape her, and then, without a thought of how she could conceal herself, how avoid Scantlebray, she ran down the steps to the cellar.

On reaching the bottom she found that there were four doors, two of which had square holes cut in them, but with iron bars before these openings. The door of one of the others, one on the left, was open, and she could see casks and bottles. It was a wine and spirit cellar, and the smell of wine issued from it.

She stood panting, frightened, fearing what she might discover, doubting whether she had heard her brother's voice or whether she was a prey to fancy. Then again she heard a cry and a moan. It issued from the nearest cell on her right hand.

"Jamie! my Jamie!" she cried.

"Ju! Ju!"

The door was hasped, with a crook let into a staple so that it might, if necessary, be padlocked. But now it was simply shut and a wooden peg was thrust through the eye of the crook.

She caught up the candle, and with trembling hand endeavored to unfasten the door, but so agitated was she, so blinded with horror, that she could not do so till she had put down the candle again. Then she forced the peg from its place and raised the crook. She stooped and took up the candle once more, and then, with a short breath and a contraction of the breast, threw open the door, stepped in, and held up the light.

The candle flame irradiated what was but a cellar compartment vaulted with brick, once whitewashed, now dirty with cobwebs and acc.u.mulated dust and damp stains. It had a stone shelf on one side, on which lay a broken plate and some sc.r.a.ps of food.

Against the further wall was a low truckle bed, with a mattress on it and some rags of blanket. Huddled on this lay Jamie, his eyes dilated with terror, and yet red with weeping. His clothes had been removed, except his shirt. His long red-gold hair had lost all its gloss and beauty, it was wet with sweat and knotted. The boy's face was ghastly in the flickering light.

Judith dropped the candle on the floor, and rushed with outstretched arms, and a cry--piercing, but beaten back on her by the walls and vault of the cell--and caught the frightened boy to her heart.

"Jamie! O my Jamie! my Jamie!"

She swayed herself, crying, in the bed, holding him to her, with no thought, her whole being absorbed in a spasm of intensest, most harrowing pain. The tallow candle was on the slate floor, fallen, melting, spluttering, flaming.

And in the door, holding the brandy keg upon his shoulders, stood, with open eyes and mouth, Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray.

CHAPTER XXVI.

AN UNWILLING PRISONER.

Mr. Obadiah stood open-mouthed staring at the twins clasped in each other's arms, unable at first to understand what he saw. Then a suspicion entered his dull brain, he uttered a growl, put down the keg, his heavy brows contracted, he shut his mouth, drawing in his lips so that they disappeared, and he clenched his hands.

"Wait--I'll beat you!" he said.

The upset candle was on the floor, now half molten, with a pond of tallow burning with a lambent blue flicker trembling on extinction, then shooting up in a yellow flame.

In that uncertain, changeful, upward light the face of the man looked threatening, remorseless, so that Judith, in a paroxysm of fear for her brother and herself dropped, on her knee, and caught at the tin candlestick as the only weapon of defence accessible. It was hot and burnt her fingers, but she did not let go; and as she stood up the dissolved candle fell from it among some straw that littered the pavement. This at once kindled and blazed up into golden flame.

For a moment the cell was full of light. Mr. Obadiah at once saw the danger. His casks of brandy were hard by--the fume of alcohol was in the air--if the fire spread and caught his stores a volume of flame would sweep up the cellar stair and set his house on fire. He hastily sprang in, and danced about the cell stamping furiously at the ignited wisps. Judith, who saw him rush forward, thought he was about to strike her and Jamie, and raised the tin candlestick in self-defence; but when she saw him engaged in trampling out the fire, tearing at the bed to drag away the blankets with which to smother the embers, she drew Jamie aside from his reach, sidled, with him clinging to her, along the wall, and by a sudden spring reached the pa.s.sage, slammed the door, fastened the hasp, and had the gaoler secured in his own gaol.

For a moment Mr. Scantlebray was unaware that he was a prisoner, so busily engaged was he in trampling out the fire, but the moment he did realize the fact he slung himself with all his force against the door.

Judith looked round her. There was now no light in the cellar but the feeble glimmer that descended the stair from the candle above. The flame of that was now burning steadily, for the door opening into the yard was shut, and the draught excluded.

In dragging Jamie along with her, Judith had drawn forth a scanty blanket that was about his shoulders. She wrapped it round the boy.

"Let me out!" roared Scantlebray. "Don't understand. Fun--rollicking fun."

Judith paid no attention to his bellow. She was concerned only to escape with Jamie. She was well aware that her only chance was by retaining Mr. Obadiah where he was.

"Let me out!" again shouted the prisoner; and he threw himself furiously against the door. But though it jarred on its hinges and made the hasp leap, he could not break it down. Nevertheless, so big and strong was the man that it was by no means improbable that his repeated efforts might start a staple or snap a hinge band, and he and the door might come together crashing down into the pa.s.sage between the cells.

Judith drew Jamie up the steps, and on reaching the top shut the cellar door. Below, Mr. Scantlebray roared, swore, shouted, and beat against the door; but now his voice, and the sound of his blows were m.u.f.fled, and would almost certainly be inaudible in the dwelling-house. No wonder that Judith had not heard the cries of her brother. It had never occurred to her that the hapless victim of the keeper of the asylum might be chastised, imprisoned, variously maltreated in regions underground, whence no sounds of distress might reach the street, and apprise the pa.s.sers-by that all was not laughter within. Standing in the pa.s.sage or hall above, Judith said:

"Oh, Jamie! where are your clothes?"

The boy looked into her face with a vacant and distressed expression.

He could not answer, he did not even understand her question, so stupefied was he by his terrors, and the treatment he had undergone.

Judith took the candle from the floor and searched the hall. Nothing was there save Mr. Scantlebray's coat, which he had removed and cast across one of the kegs when he prepared to convey them down to his cellar. Should she take that? She shook her head at the thought. She would not have it said that she had taken anything out of the house, except only--as that was an extreme necessity, the blanket wrapped about Jamie. She looked into the room that opened beyond the cellar door. It was a great bare apartment, containing only a table and some forms.

"Jamie!" she said, "we must get away from this place as we are. There is no help for it. Do you not know where your clothes were put?"

He shook his head. He clung to her with both arms, as though afraid, if he held by but one that she would slip away and vanish, as one drowning, clinging to the only support that sustained him from sinking.

"Come, Jamie! It cannot be otherwise!" She set down the candle, opened the door into the yard, and issued forth into the night along with the boy. The clouds had broken, and poured down their deluge of warm thunder rain. In the dark Judith was unable to find her direction at once, she reached the boundary wall where was no door.

Jamie uttered a cry of pain.