Arminell, Vol. 3. Baring-Gould Sabine

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      The men held their breath, and were for the moment afraid of the consequence of what they had done. But they breathed freely a moment later, as they saw the captain emerge from his house and cross the garden, and take up a place out of the reach of danger. What they did not notice, or disregarded, was that he had brought out his gun with him. Stephen stood where he could command those on the cliff, and levelled and cocked his gun. His strong jaws were set; his dark eyebrows drawn over his flashing eyes; there was not a tremor in his muscles. He watched the swaying thorn; he saw that in another moment it would come down along with the mass of rock on which it stood, and which it grappled with its claw-like roots.

      “What are you about, cap’n?” asked Mrs. Kite, coming up hastily.

      He turned his head, smiled bitterly, and touched the barrel of his gun.

      “When that rock comes down,” he said, “one of those above shall follow it.”

      At that moment the block parted from the parent rock, and whirled beneath, followed by a train of dust. It struck the corner of the chimney, sent the stones of which it was built flying in all directions, and crashed through the roof, but left the thorn-bush athwart the gap it had torn.

      Before Saltren could discharge his gun, Mrs. Kite struck it up, and he fired it into the air.

      “You fool!” she said, and then burst into a harsh laugh. “You find fault with others for doing that you approve yourself. You would undermine Orleigh, and object to Chillacot being overthrown.”

      CHAPTER XL.

      THE END OF A DELUSION

      Captain Saltren remained motionless, with his gun raised, as it had been struck up by Patience Kite, for several minutes; then he slowly lowered it, and turned his face to her. The troubled expression which of late had passed over it at intervals returned. The jaw was no longer set, and the red spots of anger had faded from his cheeks. The momentary character of decision his face had assumed was gone, and now the lips trembled feebly.

      “What was that you said?” he asked.

      Patience laughed, and pointed to the crag.

      “See,” she exclaimed, “the gun has frightened the men; and there comes the policeman with your son over the down!” She laughed again. “How the fellows run! After all, men are cowards.”

      “What was that you said when I was about to fire?” asked the captain again.

      “Said? – why, what is true. You wanted to rattle down his lordship’s house, and killed him because he refused to allow it to be done; and now you object to having your own shaken down. But there, that is the way of men.”

      Saltren remained brooding in thought, with his eyes on the ground, and the end of the gun resting where his eyes fell.

      Mrs. Kite taunted him.

      “You kill the man who won’t let you pull down his house, and you would kill the man who throws down yours. What are you going to do now? Prosecute them for the mischief, and make them patch up again what they have broken? or will you give up the point, and let them have their own way, and the railway to run here, with a station to Chillacot?”

      He did not answer. He was considering Mrs. Kite’s reproach, not her question. Presently he threw the gun away, and turned from his wrecked house.

      “It is true,” he said. “Our ways are unequal; it is very true.” He put his hand over his face, and passed it before his eyes; his hand was shaking. “I will go back to the Owl’s Nest,” he said in a low tone.

      “What! leave your house? Do you not want to secure what has not been broken?”

      “I do not care about my house. I do not care about anything in it.”

      “But will you not go and see Marianne – your wife? You do not know where she is, into what place your son took her, and whether she is ill?”

      He looked at her with a mazed expression, almost as if he were out of his senses, and said slowly —

      “I do not care about her any more.” Then, dimly seeing that this calmness needed justification, he added, “I have condemned in others what I allow in myself. I have measured to one in this way, and to myself in that.”

      He turned away, and went slowly along the brook to the point at which he had crossed it with Patience Kite after the death of Lord Lamerton, when she led him into the covert of the woods. Mrs. Kite accompanied him now.

      They ascended the further hillside together, passing through the coppice, and he remained silent, mechanically thrusting the oak-boughs apart. He seemed to see, to feel nothing, so occupied was he with his own thoughts.

      Presently he came out on the open patch where he had stood twice before, once to watch the removal of his victim, next to see the destruction of his house. There now he halted, and brushed his arms down, first the left, then the right with his hands, then passed them over his shoulders as though he were sweeping off him something that clung to and encumbered him.

      “They are all gone,” said Mrs. Kite pointing to the headland, “and Jingles is bringing the policeman down to see the mischief that has been done.”

      Captain Saltren stood and looked across the valley, but not at his house; he seemed to have forgotten about it, or lost all concern in it; he looked away from it, higher up, to the spot whence Lord Lamerton had fallen. Mrs. Kite was puzzled at the expression in his face, and at his peculiar manner. She had never thought highly of him, now she supposed he was losing his head. Every now and then he put up his hand over his mouth to conceal the contraction and quivering of the lips; and once she heard him utter a sound which might have been a laugh, but was more like a sob, not in his throat, but in his breast.

      That dread of having been a prey to delusions, which had passed over him before, had gained consistency, and burdened him insupportably. Opposite him was the headland whence he had precipitated Lord Lamerton, and now he asked himself why he had done it. Because he believed his lordship had hurt him in his family relations? In that he was mistaken. Because his lordship stopped the mine and threw him out of work rather than have his house imperilled? He himself was as resolute in resisting an attack on his own property, an interference with his own house. Because his lordship had occasioned the death of Arkie Tubb? Now as the veils of prejudice fell, one after another, he saw that no guilt attached to his lordship on that account. The boy had gone in to save Mrs. Kite. It was her fault that he was crushed. She had allowed her daughter, Arkie, all who looked on to believe she was endangered, when she had placed herself in a position of security. The only way in which he could allay the unrest in his mind was to repeat again and again to himself, “It was ordained. The Lord revealed it. There were reasons which I did not know.”

      There is a moment, we are told by those who have ascended in a balloon, when the cord is cut, and the solid earth is seen to begin to drift below, the trees to dance, and the towers to slide away, that an all but over-powering sense of fear and inclination comes on one to leap from the car at the risk of being dashed to pieces. It is said that the panic produced by an earthquake exceeds every other terror. When a ship is storm-tossed, escape is possible in a boat, when a house is on fire there are feather-beds into which we can leap; but when the earth is insecure, then we have nowhere to which we can flee, nothing to which we can look.

      With Captain Saltren, his religious convictions were what was most stable. Everything else glided before him as a dream, but he kept his feet on those things СКАЧАТЬ