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

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The next instant he sprang up and faced the door. Glancing at Cicely, I
saw her cowering down in her chair.

The young Squire had hardly gained his feet when the door flew open and
the figures of two men appeared on the threshold--Sir Felix Williams and
his only son, the father and brother of Cicely.

There, in the doorway, the intruders halted; but for an instant only.
Almost before the Squire could draw, his sweetheart's brother had sprung
forward. Like two serpents their rapiers engaged in the candle-light.
The soundless blades crossed and glittered. Then one of them flickered
in a narrow circle, and the brother's rapier went spinning from his hand
across the room.

Young Cardinnock lowered his point at once, and his adversary stepped
back a couple of paces. While a man might count twenty the pair looked
each other in the face, and then the old man, Sir Felix, stepped slowly
forward.

But before he could thrust--for the young Squire still kept his point
lowered--Cicely sprang forward and threw herself across her lover's
breast. There, for all the gentle efforts his left hand made to
disengage her, she clung. She had made her choice. There was no sign
of faltering in her soft eyes, and her father had perforce to hold his
hand.

The old man began to speak. I saw his face distorted with passion and
his lips working. I saw the deep red gather on Cicely's cheeks and the
anger in her lover's eyes. There was a pause as Sir Felix ceased to
speak, and then the young Squire replied. But his sentence stopped
midway: for once more the old man rushed upon him.

This time young Cardinnock's rapier was raised. Girdling Cicely with
his left arm he parried her father's lunge and smote his blade aside.
But such was the old man's passion that he followed the lunge with all
his body, and before his opponent could prevent it, was wounded high in
the chest, beneath the collar-bone.

He reeled back and fell against the table. Cicely ran forward and
caught his hand; but he pushed her away savagely and, with another
clutch at the table's edge, dropped upon the hearth-rug. The young man,
meanwhile, white and aghast, rushed to the table, filled a glass with
wine, and held it to the lips of the wounded man. So the two lovers
knelt.

It was at this point that I who sat and witnessed the tragedy was
assailed by a horror entirely new. Hitherto I had, indeed, seen myself
in Squire Philip Cardinnock; but now I began also to possess his soul
and feel with his feelings, while at the same time I continued to sit
before the glass, a helpless onlooker. I was two men at once; the man
who knelt all unaware of what was coming and the man who waited in the
arm-chair, incapable of word or movement, yet gifted with a torturing
prescience. And as I sat this was what I saw:--

The brother, as I knelt there oblivious of all but the wounded man,
stepped across the room to the corner where his rapier lay, picked it up
softly and as softly stole up behind me. I tried to shout, to warn
myself; but my tongue was tied. The brother's arm was lifted. The
candlelight ran along the blade. Still the kneeling figure never
turned.

And as my heart stiffened and awaited it, there came a flash of pain--
one red-hot stroke of anguish.

III.

WHAT I SAW IN THE TARN.

As the steel entered my back, cutting all the cords that bound me to
life, I suffered anguish too exquisite for words to reach, too deep for
memory to dive after. My eyes closed and teeth shut on the taste of
death; and as they shut a merciful oblivion wrapped me round.

When I awoke, the room was dark, and I was standing on my feet. A cold
wind was blowing on my face, as from an open door. I staggered to meet
this wind and found myself groping along a passage and down a staircase
filled with Egyptian darkness. Then the wind increased suddenly and
shook the black curtain around my senses. A murky light broke in on me.
I had a body. That I felt; but where it was I knew not. And so I felt
my way forward in the direction where the twilight showed least dimly.

Slowly the curtain shook and its folds dissolved as I moved against the
wind. The clouds lifted; and by degrees I grew aware that I was
standing on the barren moor. Night was stretched around to the horizon,
where straight ahead a grey bar shone across the gloom. I pressed on
towards it. The heath was uneven under my feet, and now and then I
stumbled heavily; but still I held on. For it seemed that I must get to
this grey bar or die a second time. All my muscles, all my will, were
strained upon this purpose.

Drawing nearer, I observed that a wave-like motion kept passing over
this brighter space, as it had passed over the mirror. The glimmer
would be obscured for a moment, and then re-appear. At length a gentle
acclivity of the moor hid it for a while. My legs positively raced up
this slope, and upon the summit I hardly dared to look for a moment,
knowing that if the light were an illusion all my hope must die with it.

But it was no illusion. There was the light, and there, before my feet,
lay a sable sheet of water, over the surface of which the light was
playing. There was no moon, no star in heaven; yet over this desolate
tarn hovered a pale radiance that ceased again where the edge of its
waves lapped the further bank of peat. Their monotonous wash hardly
broke the stillness of the place.

The formless longing was now pulling at me with an attraction I could
not deny, though within me there rose and fought against it a horror
only less strong. Here, as in the Blue Room, two souls were struggling
for me. It was the soul of Philip Cardinnock that drew me towards the
tarn and the soul of Samuel Wraxall that resisted. Only, what was the
thing towards which I was being pulled?

I must have stood at least a minute on the brink before I descried a
black object floating at the far end of the tarn. What this object was
I could not make out; but I knew it on the instant to be that for which
I longed, and all my will grew suddenly intent on drawing it nearer.
Even as my volition centred upon it, the black spot began to move slowly
out into the pale radiance towards me. Silently, surely, as though my
wish drew it by a rope, it floated nearer and nearer over the bosom of
the tarn; and while it was still some twenty yards from me I saw it to
be a long black box, shaped somewhat like a coffin.

There was no doubt about it. I could hear the water now sucking at its
dark sides. I stepped down the bank, and waded up to my knees in the
icy water to meet it. It was a plain box, with no writing upon the lid,
nor any speck of metal to relieve the dead black: and it moved with the
same even speed straight up to where I stood.

As it came, I laid my hand upon it and touched wood. But with the touch
came a further sensation that made me fling both arms around the box and
begin frantically to haul it towards the shore.

It was a feeling of suffocation; of a weight that pressed in upon my
ribs and choked the lungs' action. I felt that I must open that box or
die horribly; that until I had it upon the bank and had forced the lid
up I should know no pause from the labour and torture of dying.

This put a wild strength into me. As the box grated upon the few
pebbles by the shore, I bent over it, caught it once more by the sides,
and with infinite effort dragged it up out of the water. It was heavy,
and the weight upon my chest was heavier yet: but straining, panting,
gasping, I hauled it up the bank, dropped it on the turf, and knelt over
it, tugging furiously at the lid.

I was frenzied--no less. My nails were torn until the blood gushed.
Lights danced before me; bells rang in my ears; the pressure on my lungs
grew more intolerable with each moment; but still I fought with that
lid. Seven devils were within me and helped me; and all the while I
knew that I was dying, that unless the box were opened in a moment or
two it would be too late.

The sweat ran off my eyebrows and dripped on the box. My breath came
and went in sobs. I could not die. I could not, must not die. And so
I tugged and strained and tugged again.

Then, as I felt the black anguish of the Blue Room descending a second
time upon me, I seemed to put all my strength into my hands. From the
lid or from my own throat--I could not distinguish--there came a creak
and a long groan. I tore back the board and fell on the heath with one
shuddering breath of relief.

And drawing it, I raised my head and looked over the coffin's edge.
Still drawing it, I tumbled back.

White, cold, with the last struggle fixed on its features and open eyes,
it was my own dead face that stared up at me!

IV.

WHAT I HAVE SINCE LEARNT.

They found me, next morning, lying on the brink of the tarn, and carried
me back to the inn. There I lay for weeks in a brain fever and talked--
as they assure me--the wildest nonsense. The landlord had first guessed
that something was amiss on finding the front door open when he came
down at five o'clock. I must have turned to the left on leaving the
house, travelled up the road for a hundred yards, and then struck almost
at right angles across the moor. One of my shoes was found a furlong
from the highway, and this had guided them. Of course they found no
coffin beside me, and I was prudent enough to hold my tongue when I
became convalescent. But the effect of that night was to shatter my
health for a year and more, and force me to throw up my post of School
Inspector. To this day I have never examined the school at Pitt's
Scawens. But somebody else has; and last winter I received a letter,
which I will give in full:--

21, Chesterham Road, KENSINGTON, W.
December 3rd, 1891.

Dear Wraxall,--

It is a long time since we have corresponded, but I have just
returned from Cornwall, and while visiting Pitt's Scawens
professionally, was reminded of you. I put up at the inn where
you had your long illness. The people there were delighted to
find that I knew you, and desired me to send "their duty" when
next I wrote. By the way, I suppose you were introduced to their
state apartment--the Blue Room--and its wonderful chimney carving.
I made a bid to the landlord for it, panels, mirror, and all, but
he referred me to Squire Parkyn, the landlord. I think I may get
it, as the Squire loves hard coin. When I have it up over my
mantel-piece here you must run over and give me your opinion on it.
By the way, clay has been discovered on the Tremenhuel Estate, just
at the back of the "Indian Queens": at least, I hear that Squire
Parkyn is running a Company, and is sanguine. You remember the
tarn behind the inn? They made an odd discovery there when
draining it for the new works. In the mud at the bottom was
imbedded the perfect skeleton of a man. The bones were quite clean
and white. Close beside the body they afterwards turned up a
silver snuff-box, with the word "Fui" on the lid. "Fui" was the
motto of the Cardinnocks, who held Tremenhuel before it passed to
the Parkyns. There seems to be no doubt that these are the bones
of the last Squire, who disappeared mysteriously more than a
hundred years ago, in consequence of a love affair, I'm told.
It looks like foul play; but, if so, the account has long since
passed out of the hands of man.

Yours ever, David E. Mainwaring.

P.S.--I reopen this to say that Squire Parkyn has accepted my offer
for the chimney-piece. Let me hear soon that you'll come and look
at it and give me your opinion.

THE TWO HOUSEHOLDERS.

_Extract from the Memoirs of Gabriel Foot, Highwayman._

I will say this--speaking as accurately as a man may, so long
afterwards--that when first I spied the house it put no desire in me but
just to give thanks.

For conceive my case. It was near mid-night, and ever since dusk I had
been tramping the naked moors, in the teeth of as vicious a nor'-wester
as ever drenched a man to the skin, and then blew the cold home to his
marrow. My clothes were sodden; my coat-tails flapped with a noise like
pistol-shots; my boots squeaked as I went. Overhead, the October moon
was in her last quarter, and might have been a slice of finger-nail for
all the light she afforded. Two-thirds of the time the wrack blotted
her out altogether; and I, with my stick clipped tight under my armpit,
eyes puckered up, and head bent aslant, had to keep my wits alive to
distinguish the road from the black heath to right and left. For three
hours I had met neither man nor man's dwelling, and (for all I knew) was
desperately lost. Indeed, at the cross-roads, two miles back, there had
been nothing for me but to choose the way that kept the wind on my face,
and it gnawed me like a dog.

Mainly to allay the stinging of my eyes, I pulled up at last, turned
right-about-face, leant back against the blast with a hand on my hat,
and surveyed the blackness behind. It was at this instant that, far
away to the left, a point of light caught my notice, faint but steady;
and at once I felt sure it burnt in the window of a house. "The house,"
thought I, "is a good mile off, beside the other road, and the light
must have been an inch over my hat-brim for the last half-hour."
This reflection--that on so wide a moor I had come near missing the
information I wanted (and perhaps a supper) by one inch--sent a strong
thrill down my back.

I cut straight across the heather towards the light, risking quags and
pitfalls. Nay, so heartening was the chance to hear a fellow creature's
voice, that I broke into a run, skipping over the stunted gorse that
cropped up here and there, and dreading every moment to see the light
quenched. "Suppose it burns in an upper window, and the family is going
to bed, as would be likely at this hour--" The apprehension kept my
eyes fixed on the bright spot, to the frequent scandal of my legs, that
within five minutes were stuck full of gorse prickles.

But the light did not go out, and soon a flicker of moonlight gave me a
glimpse of the house's outline. It proved to be a deal more imposing
than I looked for--the outline, in fact, of a tall, square barrack, with
a cluster of chimneys at either end, like ears, and a high wall, topped
by the roofs of some outbuildings, concealing the lower windows. There
was no gate in this wall, and presently I guessed the reason. I was
approaching the place from behind, and the light came from a back window
on the first floor.

The faintness of the light also was explained by this time. It shone
behind a drab-coloured blind, and in shape resembled the stem of a
wine-glass, broadening out at the foot; an effect produced by the
half-drawn curtains within. I came to a halt, waiting for the next ray
of moonlight. At the same moment a rush of wind swept over the
chimney-stacks, and on the wind there seemed to ride a human sigh.

On this last point I may err. The gust had passed some seconds before I
caught myself detecting this peculiar note, and trying to disengage it
from the natural chords of the storm. From the next gust it was absent;
and then, to my dismay, the light faded from the window.

I was half-minded to call out when it appeared again, this time in two
windows--those next on the right to that where it had shone before.
Almost at once it increased in brilliance, as if the person who carried
it from the smaller room to the larger were lighting more candles; and
now the illumination was strong enough to make fine gold threads of the
rain that fell within its radiance, and fling two shafts of warm yellow
over the coping of the back wall. During the minute or more that I
stood watching, no shadow fell on either blind.

Between me and the wall ran a ditch, into which the ground at my feet
broke sharply away. Setting my back to the storm again, I followed the
lip of this ditch around the wall's angle. Here it shallowed, and here,
too, was shelter; but not wishing to mistake a bed of nettles or any
such pitfall for solid earth, I kept pretty wide as I went on.
The house was dark on this side, and the wall, as before, had no
opening. Close beside the next angle there grew a mass of thick gorse
bushes, and pushing through these I found myself suddenly on a sound
high-road, with the wind tearing at me as furiously as ever.

But here was the front; and I now perceived that the surrounding wall
advanced some way before the house, so as to form a narrow courtlage.
So much of it, too, as faced the road had been whitewashed, which made
it an easy matter to find the gate. But as I laid hand on its latch I
had a surprise.

A line of paving-stones led from the gate to a heavy porch; and along
the wet surface of these there fell a streak of light from the front
door, which stood ajar.

That a door should remain six inches open on such a night was
astonishing enough, until I entered the court and found it as still as a
room, owing to the high wall. But looking up and assuring myself that
all the rest of the facade was black as ink, I wondered at the
carelessness of the inmates.

It was here that my professional instinct received the first jog.
Abating the sound of my feet on the paving-stones, I went up to the door
and pushed it softly. It opened without noise.

I stepped into a fair-sized hall of modern build, paved with red tiles
and lit with a small hanging-lamp. To right and left were doors leading
to the ground-floor rooms. Along the wall by my shoulder ran a line of
pegs, on which hung half-a-dozen hats and great-coats, every one of
clerical shape; and full in front of me a broad staircase ran up, with a
staring Brussels carpet, the colours and pattern of which I can recall
as well as I can to-day's breakfast. Under this staircase was set a
stand full of walking-sticks, and a table littered with gloves, brushes,
a hand-bell, a riding-crop, one or two dog-whistles, and a bedroom
candle, with tinder-box beside it. This, with one notable exception,
was all the furniture.

The exception--which turned me cold--was the form of a yellow mastiff
dog, curled on a mat beneath the table. The arch of his back was
towards me, and one forepaw lay over his nose in a natural posture of
sleep. I leant back on the wainscotting with my eyes tightly fixed on
him, and my thoughts sneaking back, with something of regret, to the
storm I had come through.

But a man's habits are not easily denied. At the end of three minutes
the dog had not moved, and I was down on the door-mat unlacing my soaked
boots. Slipping them off, and taking them in my left hand, I stood up,
and tried a step towards the stairs, with eyes alert for any movement of
the mastiff; but he never stirred. I was glad enough, however, on
reaching the stairs, to find them newly built, and the carpet thick. Up
I went, with a glance at every step for the table which now hid the
brute's form from me, and never a creak did I wake out of that staircase
till I was almost at the first landing, when my toe caught a loose
stair-rod, and rattled it in a way that stopped my heart for a moment,
and then set it going in double-quick time.

I stood still with a hand on the rail. My eyes were now on a level with
the floor of the landing, out of which branched two passages--one
turning sharply to my right, the other straight in front, so that I was
gazing down the length of it. Almost at the end, a parallelogram of
light fell across it from an open door.

A man who has once felt it knows there is only one kind of silence that
can fitly be called "dead." This is only to be found in a great house
at midnight. I declare that for a few seconds after I rattled the
stair-rod you might have cut the silence with a knife. If the house
held a clock, it ticked inaudibly.

Upon this silence, at the end of a minute, broke a light sound--the
_tink-tink_ of a decanter on the rim of a wine-glass. It came from the
room where the light was.

Now perhaps it was that the very thought of liquor put warmth into my
cold bones. It is certain that all of a sudden I straightened my back,
took the remaining stairs at two strides, and walked down the passage as
bold as brass, without caring a jot for the noise I made.

In the doorway I halted. The room was long, lined for the most part
with books bound in what they call "divinity calf," and littered with
papers like a barrister's table on assize day. A leathern elbow-chair
faced the fireplace, where a few coals burned sulkily, and beside it, on
the corner of a writing table, were set an unlit candle and a pile of
manuscripts. At the opposite end of the room a curtained door led (as I
guessed) to the chamber that I had first seen illuminated. All this I
took in with the tail of my eye, while staring straight in front, where,
in the middle of a great square of carpet, between me and the windows,
stood a table with a red cloth upon it. On this cloth were a couple of
wax candles lit, in silver stands, a tray, and a decanter three-parts
full of brandy. And between me and the table stood a man.

He stood sideways, leaning a little back, as if to keep his shadow off
the threshold, and looked at me over his left shoulder--a bald, grave
man, slightly under the common height, with a long clerical coat of
preposterous fit hanging loosely from his shoulders, a white cravat,
black breeches, and black stockings. His feet were loosely thrust into
carpet slippers. I judged his age at fifty, or thereabouts; but his
face rested in the shadow, and I could only note a pair of eyes, very
small and alert, twinkling above a large expanse of cheek.

He was lifting a wine-glass from the table at the moment when I
appeared, and it trembled now in his right hand. I heard a spilt drop
or two fall on the carpet. This was all the evidence he showed of
discomposure.

Setting the glass back, he felt in his breast-pocket for a handkerchief,
failed to find one, and rubbed his hands together to get the liquor off
his fingers.

"You startled me," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, turning his eyes
upon me, as he lifted his glass again, and emptied it. "How did you
find your way in?"

"By the front door," said I, wondering at his unconcern.

He nodded his head slowly.

"Ah! yes; I forgot to lock it. You came to steal, I suppose?"

"I came because I'd lost my way. I've been travelling this
God-forsaken moor since dusk--"

"With your boots in your hand," he put in quietly.

"I took them off out of respect to the yellow dog you keep."

"He lies in a very natural attitude--eh?"

"You don't tell me he was _stuffed?_"

The old man's eyes beamed a contemptuous pity.

"You are indifferent sharp, my dear sir, for a housebreaker. Come in.
Set down those convicting boots, and don't drip pools of water in the
doorway. If I must entertain a burglar, I prefer him tidy."

He walked to the fire, picked up a poker, and knocked the coals into a
blaze. This done, he turned round on me with the poker still in his
hand. The serenest gravity sat on his large, pale features.

"Why have I done this?" he asked.

"I suppose to get possession of the poker."

"Quite right. May I inquire your next move?"

"Why?" said I, feeling in my tail-pocket, "I carry a pistol."

"Which I suppose to be damp?"

"By no means. I carry it, as you see, in an oil-cloth case."

He stooped, and laid the poker carefully in the fender.

"That is a stronger card than I possess. I might urge that by pulling
the trigger you would certainly alarm the house and the neighbourhood,
and put a halter round your neck. But it strikes me as safer to assume
you capable of using a pistol with effect at three paces. With what
might happen subsequently I will not pretend to be concerned. The fate
of your neck"--he waved a hand,--"well, I have known you for just five
minutes, and feel but a moderate interest in your neck. As for the
inmates of this house, it will refresh you to hear that there are none.
I have lived here two years with a butler and female cook, both of whom
I dismissed yesterday at a minute's notice, for conduct which I will not
shock your ears by explicitly naming. Suffice it to say, I carried them
off yesterday to my parish church, two miles away, married them and
dismissed them in the vestry without characters. I wish you had known
that butler--but excuse me; with the information I have supplied, you
ought to find no difficulty in fixing the price you will take to clear
out of my house instanter."

"Sir," I answered, "I have held a pistol at one or two heads in my time,
but never at one stuffed with nobler indiscretion. Your chivalry does
not, indeed, disarm me, but prompts me to desire more of your
acquaintance. I have found a gentleman, and must sup with him before I
make terms."

This address seemed to please him. He shuffled across the room to a
sideboard, and produced a plate of biscuits, another of dried figs, a
glass, and two decanters.

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