I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales written by Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch

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"Sherry and Madeira," he said. "There is also a cold pie in the larder,
if you care for it."

"A biscuit will serve," I replied. "To tell the truth, I'm more for the
bucket than the manger, as the grooms say: and the brandy you were
tasting just now is more to my mind than wine."

"There is no water handy."

"I have soaked in enough to-night to last me with this bottle."

I pulled over a chair, laid my pistol on the table, and held out the
glass for him to fill. Having done so, he helped himself to a glass and
a chair, and sat down facing me.

"I was speaking, just now, of my late butler," he began, with a sip at
his brandy. "Does it strike you that, when confronted with moral
delinquency, I am apt to let my indignation get the better of me?"

"Not at all," I answered heartily, refilling my glass.

It appeared that another reply would have pleased him better.

"H'm. I was hoping that, perhaps, I had visited his offence too
strongly. As a clergyman, you see, I was bound to be severe; but upon
my word, sir, since Parkinson left I have felt like a man who has lost a
limb."

He drummed with his fingers on the cloth for a few moments, and went
on--

"One has a natural disposition to forgive butlers--Pharaoh, for
instance, felt it. There hovers around butlers an atmosphere in which
common ethics lose their pertinence. But mine was a rare bird--a black
swan among butlers! He was more than a butler: he was a quick and
brightly gifted man. Of the accuracy of his taste, and the unusual
scope of his endeavour, you will be able to form some opinion when I
assure you he modelled himself upon _me_."

I bowed, over my brandy.

"I am a scholar: yet I employed him to read aloud to me, and derived
pleasure from his intonation. I talk with refinement: yet he learned to
answer me in language as precise as my own. My cast-off garments fitted
him not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner. Divest him
of his tray, and you would find his mode of entering a room hardly
distinguishable from my own--the same urbanity, the same alertness of
carriage, the same superfine deference towards the weaker sex. All--all
my idiosyncrasies I saw reflected in him; and can you doubt that I was
gratified? He was my _alter ego_--which, by the way, makes it harder
for me to pardon his behaviour with the cook."

"Look here," I broke in; "you want a new butler?"

"Oh, you really grasp that fact, do you?" he retorted.

"Why, then," said I, "let me cease to be your burglar and let me
continue here as your butler."

He leant back, spreading out the fingers of each hand on the table's
edge.

"Believe me," I went on, "you might do worse. I have been in my time a
demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, and retain some Greek and Latin.
I'll undertake to read the Fathers with an accent that shall not offend
you. My taste in wine is none the worse for having been formed in other
men's cellars. Moreover, you shall engage the ugliest cook in
Christendom, so long as I'm your butler. I've taken a liking to you--
that's flat--and I apply for the post."

"I give forty pounds a year," said he.

"And I'm cheap at that price."

He filled up his glass, looking up at me while he did so with the air of
one digesting a problem. From first to last his face was grave as a
judge's.

"We are too impulsive, I think," was his answer, after a minute's
silence; "and your speech smacks of the amateur. You say, 'Let me cease
to be your burglar and let me be your butler.' The aspiration is
respectable; but a man might as well say, 'Let me cease to write
sermons, let me paint pictures.' And truly, sir, you impress me as no
expert even in your present trade."

"On the other hand," I argued, "consider the moderation of my demands;
that alone should convince you of my desire to turn over a new leaf.
I ask for a month's trial; if at the end of that time I don't suit, you
shall say so, and I'll march from your door with nothing in my pocket
but my month's wages. Be hanged, sir! but when I reflect on the amount
you'll have to pay to get me to face to-night's storm again, you seem to
be getting off dirt cheap!" cried I, slapping my palm on the table.

"Ah, if you had only known Parkinson!" he exclaimed.

Now the third glass of clean spirit has always a deplorable effect on
me. It turns me from bright to black, from levity to extreme sulkiness.
I have done more wickedness over this third tumbler than in all the
other states of comparative inebriety within my experience. So now I
glowered at my companion and cursed.

"Look here, I don't want to hear any more of Parkinson, and I've a
pretty clear notion of the game you're playing. You want to make me
drink, and you're ready to sit prattling there plying me till I drop
under the table."

"Do me the favour to remember that you came, and are staying, on your
own motion. As for the brandy, I would remind you that I suggested a
milder drink. Try some Madeira."

He handed me the decanter, as he spoke, and I poured out a glass.

"Madeira!" said I, taking a gulp, "Ugh! it's the commonest Marsala!"

I had no sooner said the words than he rose up, and stretched a hand
gravely across to me.

"I hope you will shake it," he said; "though, as a man who after three
glasses of neat spirit can distinguish between Madeira and Marsala, you
have every right to refuse me. Two minutes ago you offered to become my
butler, and I demurred. I now beg you to repeat that offer. Say the
word, and I employ you gladly; you shall even have the second decanter
(which contains genuine Madeira) to take to bed with you."

We shook hands on our bargain, and catching up a candlestick, he led the
way from the room.

Picking up my boots, I followed him along the passage and down the
silent staircase. In the hall he paused to stand on tip-toe, and turn
up the lamp, which was burning low. As he did so, I found time to fling
a glance at my old enemy, the mastiff. He lay as I had first seen him--
a stuffed dog, if ever there was one. "Decidedly," thought I, "my wits
are to seek to-night;" and with the same, a sudden suspicion made me
turn to my conductor, who had advanced to the left-hand door, and was
waiting for me, with a hand on the knob.

"One moment!" I said: "This is all very pretty, but how am I to know
you're not sending me to bed while you fetch in all the countryside to
lay me by the heels?"

"I'm afraid," was his answer, "you must be content with my word, as a
gentleman, that never, to-night or hereafter, will I breathe a syllable
about the circumstances of your visit. However, if you choose, we will
return up-stairs."

"No; I'll trust you," said I; and he opened the door.

It led into a broad passage paved with slate, upon which three or four
rooms opened. He paused by the second and ushered me into a
sleeping-chamber, which, though narrow, was comfortable enough--a vast
improvement, at any rate, on the mumpers' lodgings I had been used to
for many months past.

"You can undress here," he said. "The sheets are aired, and if you'll
wait a moment, I'll fetch a nightshirt--one of my own."

"Sir, you heap coals of fire on me."

"Believe me that for ninety-nine of your qualities I do not care a
tinker's curse; but for your palate you are to be taken care of."

He shuffled away, but came back in a couple of minutes with the
nightshirt.

"Good-night," he called to me, flinging it in at the door; and without
giving me time to return the wish, went his way up-stairs.

Now it might be supposed I was only too glad to toss off my clothes and
climb into the bed I had so unexpectedly acquired a right to. But, as a
matter of fact, I did nothing of the kind. Instead, I drew on my boots
and sat on the bed's edge, blinking at my candle till it died down in
its socket, and afterwards at the purple square of window as it slowly
changed to grey with the coming of dawn. I was cold to the heart, and
my teeth chattered with an ague. Certainly I never suspected my host's
word; but was even occupied in framing good resolutions and shaping out
a reputable future, when I heard the front door gently pulled to, and a
man's footsteps moving quietly to the gate.

The treachery knocked me in a heap for the moment. Then, leaping up and
flinging my door wide, I stumbled through the uncertain light of the
passage into the front hall. There was a fan-shaped light over the
door, and the place was very still and grey. A quick thought, or,
rather, a sudden, prophetic guess at the truth, made me turn to the
figure of the mastiff curled under the hall table.

I laid my hand on the scruff of his neck. He was quite limp, and my
fingers sank into the flesh on either side of the vertebrae.
Digging them deeper, I dragged him out into the middle of the hall and
pulled the front door open to see the better.

His throat was gashed from ear to ear.

How many seconds passed after I dropped the senseless lump on the floor,
and before I made another movement, it would puzzle me to say. Twice I
stirred a foot as if to run out at the door. Then, changing my mind, I
stepped over the mastiff, and ran up the staircase.

The passage at the top was now dark; but groping down it, I found the
study door open, as before, and passed in. A sick light stole through
the blinds--enough for me to distinguish the glasses and decanters on
the table, and find my way to the curtain that hung before the inner
room.

I pushed the curtain aside, paused for a moment, and listened to the
violent beat of my heart; then felt for the door-handle and turned
it.

All I could see at first was that the chamber was small; next, that the
light patch in a line with the window was the white coverlet of a bed;
and next that somebody, or something, lay on the bed.

I listened again. There was no sound in the room; no heart beating but
my own. I reached out a hand to pull up the blind, and drew it back
again. I dared not.

The daylight grew minute by minute on the dull oblong of the blind, and
minute by minute that horrible thing on the bed took something of
distinctness.

The strain beat me at last. I fetched a loud yell to give myself
courage, and, reaching for the cord, pulled up the blind as fast as it
would go.

The face on the pillow was that of an old man--a face waxen and
peaceful, with quiet lines about the mouth and eyes, and long lines of
grey hair falling back from the temples. The body was turned a little
on one side, and one hand lay outside the bedclothes in a very natural
manner. But there were two big dark stains on the pillow and coverlet.

Then I knew I was face to face with the real householder, and it flashed
on me that I had been indiscreet in taking service as his butler, and
that I knew the face his ex-butler wore.

And, being by this time awake to the responsibilities of the post, I
quitted it three steps at a time, not once looking behind me.
Outside the house the storm had died down, and white daylight was
gleaming over the sodden moors. But my bones were cold, and I ran
faster and faster.

THE DISENCHANTMENT OF 'LIZABETH.

"So you reckon I've got to die?"

The room was mean, but not without distinction. The meanness lay in
lime-washed walls, scant fittings, and uncovered boards; the distinction
came of ample proportions and something of durability in the furniture.
Rooms, like human faces, reflect their histories; and that generation
after generation of the same family had here struggled to birth or death
was written in this chamber unmistakably. The candle-light, twinkling
on the face of a dark wardrobe near the door, lit up its rough
inscription, "S.T. and M.T., MDCLXVII"; the straight-backed oaken chairs
might well claim an equal age; and the bed in the corner was a spacious
four-poster, pillared in smooth mahogany and curtained in faded green
damask.

In the shadow of this bed lay the man who had spoken. A single candle
stood on a tall chest at his left hand, and its ray, filtering through
the thin green curtain, emphasised the hue of death on his face.
The features were pinched, and very old. His tone held neither
complaint nor passion: it was matter-of-fact even, as of one whose talk
is merely a concession to good manners. There was the faintest
interrogation in it; no more.

After a minute or so, getting no reply, he added more querulously--

"I reckon you might answer, 'Lizabeth. Do 'ee think I've got to die?"

'Lizabeth, who stood by the uncurtained window, staring into the
blackness without, barely turned her head to answer--

"Certain."

"Doctor said so, did he?"

'Lizabeth, still with her back towards him, nodded. For a minute or two
there was silence.

"I don't feel like dyin'; but doctor ought to know. Seemed to me 'twas
harder, an'--an' more important. This sort o' dyin' don't seem o' much
account."

"No?"

"That's it. I reckon, though, 'twould be other if I had a family round
the bed. But there ain't none o' the boys left to stand by me now.
It's hard."

"What's hard?"

"Why, that two out o' the three should be called afore me. And hard is
the manner of it. It's hard that, after Samuel died o' fever, Jim shud
be blown up at Herodsfoot powder-mill. He made a lovely corpse, did
Samuel; but Jim, you see, he hadn't a chance. An' as for William, he's
never come home nor wrote a line since he joined the Thirty-Second; an'
it's little he cares for his home or his father. I reckoned, back
along, 'Lizabeth, as you an' he might come to an understandin'."

"William's naught to me."

"Look here!" cried the old man sharply; "he treated you bad, did
William."

"Who says so?"

"Why, all the folks. Lord bless the girl! do 'ee think folks use their
eyes without usin' their tongues? An' I wish it had come about, for
you'd ha' kept en straight. But he treated you bad, and he treated me
bad, tho' he won't find no profit o' that. You'm my sister's child,
'Lizabeth," he rambled on; "an' what house-room you've had you've fairly
earned--not but what you was welcome: an' if I thought as there was harm
done, I'd curse him 'pon my deathbed, I would."

"You be quiet!"

She turned from the window and cowed him with angry grey eyes.
Her figure was tall and meagre; her face that of a woman well over
thirty--once comely, but worn over-much, and prematurely hardened.
The voice had hardened with it, perhaps. The old man, who had risen on
his elbow in an access of passion, was taken with a fit of coughing, and
sank back upon the pillows.

"There's no call to be niffy," he apologised at last. "I was on'y
thinkin' of how you'd manage when I'm dead an' gone."

"I reckon I'll shift."

She drew a chair towards the bed and sat beside him. He seemed drowsy,
and after a while stretched out an arm over the coverlet and fell
asleep. 'Lizabeth took his hand, and sat there listlessly regarding the
still shadows on the wall. The sick man never moved; only muttered
once--some words that 'Lizabeth did not catch. At the end of an hour,
alarmed perhaps by some sound within the bed's shadow, or the feel of
the hand in hers, she suddenly pushed the curtain back, and, catching up
the candle, stooped over the sick man.

His lids were closed, as if he slept still; but he was quite dead.

'Lizabeth stood for a while bending over him, smoothed the bedclothes
straight, and quietly left the room. It was a law of the house to doff
boots and shoes at the foot of the stairs, and her stocking'd feet
scarcely raised a creak from the solid timbers. The staircase led
straight down into the kitchen. Here a fire was blazing cheerfully, and
as she descended she felt its comfort after the dismal room above.

Nevertheless, the sense of being alone in the house with a dead man, and
more than a mile from any living soul, was disquieting. In truth, there
was room for uneasiness. 'Lizabeth knew that some part of the old man's
hoard lay up-stairs in the room with him. Of late she had, under his
eye, taken from a silver tankard in the tall chest by the bed such
moneys as from week to week were wanted to pay the farm hands; and she
had seen papers there, too--title-deeds, maybe. The house itself lay in
a cup of the hill-side, backed with steep woods--so steep that, in
places, anyone who had reasons (good or bad) for doing so, might well
see in at any window he chose. And to Hooper's Farm, down the valley,
was a far cry for help. Meditating on this, 'Lizabeth stepped to the
kitchen window and closed the shutter; then, reaching down an old
horse-pistol from the rack above the mantelshelf, she fetched out powder
and bullet and fell to loading quietly, as one who knew the trick of it.

And yet the sense of danger was not so near as that of loneliness--of a
pervading silence without precedent in her experience, as if its
master's soul in flitting had, whatever Scripture may say, taken
something out of the house with it. 'Lizabeth had known this kitchen
for a score of years now; nevertheless, to-night it was unfamiliar, with
emptier corners and wider intervals of bare floor. She laid down the
loaded pistol, raked the logs together, and set the kettle on the flame.
She would take comfort in a dish of tea.

There was company in the singing of the kettle, the hiss of its overflow
on the embers, and the rattle with which she set out cup, saucer, and
teapot. She was bending over the hearth to lift the kettle, when a
sound at the door caused her to start up and listen.

The latch had been rattled: not by the wind, for the December night
without was misty and still. There was somebody on the other side of
the door; and, as she turned, she saw the latch lowered back into its
place.

With her eyes fastened on this latch, she set down the kettle softly and
reached out for her pistol. For a moment or two there was silence.
Then someone tapped gently.

The tapping went on for half a minute; then followed silence again.
'Lizabeth stole across the kitchen, pistol in hand, laid her ear
against the board, and listened.

Yes, assuredly there was someone outside. She could catch the sound of
breathing, and the shuffling of a heavy boot on the door-slate. And now
a pair of knuckles repeated the tapping, more imperiously.

"Who's there?"

A man's voice, thick and husky, made some indistinct reply.

'Lizabeth fixed the cap more securely on her pistol, and called again--

"Who's there?"

"What the devil--" began the voice.

'Lizabeth shot back the bolt and lifted the latch.

"If you'd said at once 'twas William come back, you'd ha' been let in
sooner," she said quietly.

A thin puff of rain floated against her face as the door opened, and a
tall soldier stepped out of the darkness into the glow of the warm
kitchen.

"Well, this here's a queer home-coming. Why, hullo, 'Lizabeth--with a
pistol in your hand, too! Do you shoot the fatted calf in these parts
now? What's the meaning of it?"

The overcoat of cinder grey that covered his scarlet tunic was powdered
with beads of moisture; his black moustaches were beaded also; his face
was damp, and smeared with the dye that trickled from his sodden cap.
As he stood there and shook himself, the rain ran down and formed small
pools upon the slates around his muddy boots.

He was a handsome fellow, in a florid, animal fashion; well-set, with
black curls, dark eyes that yet contrived to be exceedingly shallow, and
as sanguine a pair of cheeks as one could wish to see. It seemed to
'Lizabeth that the red of his complexion had deepened since she saw him
last, while the white had taken a tinge of yellow, reminding her of the
prize beef at the Christmas market last week. Somehow she could find
nothing to say.

"The old man's in bed, I reckon. I saw the light in his window."

"You've had a wet tramp of it," was all she found to reply, though aware
that the speech was inconsequent and trivial.

"Damnably. Left the coach at Fiddler's Cross, and trudged down across
the fields. We were soaked enough on the coach, though, and couldn't
get much worse."

"We?"

"Why, you don't suppose I was the only passenger by the coach, eh?" he
put in quickly.

"No, I forgot."

There was an awkward silence, and William's eyes travelled round the
kitchen till they lit on the kettle standing by the hearthstone.
"Got any rum in the cupboard?" While she was getting it out, he took
off his cap and great-coat, hung them up behind the door, and, pulling
the small table close to the fire, sat beside it, toasting his knees.
'Lizabeth set bottle and glass before him, and stood watching as he
mixed the stuff.

"So you're only a private."

William set down the kettle with some violence.

"You still keep a cursedly rough tongue, I notice."

"An' you've been a soldier five year. I reckoned you'd be a sergeant at
least," she pursued simply, with her eyes on his undecorated sleeve.

William took a gulp.

"How do you know I've not been a sergeant?"

"Then you've been degraded. I'm main sorry for that."

"Look here, you hush up! Damn it! there's girls enough have fancied
this coat, though it ain't but a private's; and that's enough for you, I
take it."

"It's handsome."

"There, that'll do. I do believe you're spiteful because I didn't offer
to kiss you when I came in. Here, Cousin 'Lizabeth," he exclaimed,
starting up, "I'll be sworn for all your tongue you're the prettiest
maid I've seen this five year. Give me a kiss."

"Don't, William!"

Such passionate entreaty vibrated in her voice that William, who was
advancing, stopped for a second to stare. Then, with a laugh, he had
caught and kissed her loudly.

Her cheeks were flaming when she broke free.

William turned, emptied his glass at a gulp, and began to mix a second.

"There, there; you never look so well as when you're angered,
'Lizabeth."

"'Twas a coward's trick," she panted.

"Christmas-time, you spitfire. So you ain't married yet? Lord!
I don't wonder they fight shy of you; you'd be a handful, my vixen, for
any man to tame. How's the old man?"

"He'll never be better."

"Like enough at his age. Is he hard set against me?"

"We've never spoke of you for years now, till to-night."

"To-night? That's queer. I've a mind to tip up a stave to let him know
I'm about. I will, too. Let me see--"

"When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hooray! Hoo--"

"Don't, don't! Oh, why did you come back to-night, of all nights?"

"And why the devil not to-night so well as any other? You're a
comfortable lot, I must say! Maybe you'd like common metre better:--

"Within my fathers house
The blessed sit at meat.
Whilst I my belly stay
With husks the swine did eat."

--"Why shouldn't I wake the old man? I've done naught that I'm ashamed
of."

"It don't seem you're improved by soldiering."

"Improved? I've seen life." William drained his glass.

"An' got degraded."

"Burn your tongue! I'm going to see him." He rose and made towards the
door. 'Lizabeth stepped before him.

"Hush! You mustn't."

"'Mustn't?' That's a bold word."

"Well, then--'can't.' Sit down, I tell you."

"Hullo! Ain't you coming the mistress pretty free in this house?
Stand aside. I've got something to tell him--something that won't wait.
Stand aside, you she-cat!"

He pushed by her roughly, but she held on to his sleeve.

"It _must_ wait. Listen to me."

"I won't."

"You shall. He's dead."

"_Dead!_" He reeled back to the table and poured out another glassful
with a shaking hand. 'Lizabeth noticed that this time he added no
water.

"He died to-night," she explained; "but he's been ailin' for a year
past, an' took to his bed back in October."

William's face was still pallid; but he merely stammered--

"Things happen queerly. I'll go up and see him; I'm master here now.
You can't say aught to that. By the Lord! but I can buy myself out--I'm
sick of soldiering--and we'll settle down here and be comfortable."

"We?"

His foot was on the stair by this time. He turned and nodded.

"Yes, _we_. It ain't a bad game being mistress o' this house.
Eh, Cousin 'Lizabeth?"

She turned her hot face to the flame, without reply; and he went on his
way up the stairs.

'Lizabeth sat for a while staring into the wood embers with shaded eyes.
Whatever the path by which her reflections travelled, it led in the end
to the kettle. She remembered that the tea was still to make, and, on
stooping to set the kettle back upon the logs, found it emptied by
William's potations. Donning her stout shoes and pattens, and slipping
a shawl over her head, she reached down the lantern from its peg, lit
it, and went out to fill the kettle at the spring.

It was pitch-dark; the rain was still falling, and as she crossed the
yard the sodden straw squeaked beneath her tread. The yard had been
fashioned generations since, by levelling back from the house to the
natural rock of the hill-side, and connecting the two on the right by
cow-house and stable, with an upper storey for barn and granary, on the
left by a low wall, where, through a rough gate, the cart-track from the
valley found its entrance. Against the further end of this wall leant
an open cart-shed; and within three paces of it a perpetual spring of
water gushing down the rock was caught and arrested for a while in a
stone trough before it hurried out by a side gutter, and so down to join
the trout-stream in the valley below. The spring first came to light
half-way down the rock's face. Overhead its point of emergence was
curtained by a network of roots pushed out by the trees above and
sprawling over the lip in helpless search for soil.

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