Somehow or other, by hook and crook, and between the
three of us, we got Bernard Huddlestone bundled upstairs and laid upon the bed
in My Uncle’s Room. During the whole process, which was rough
enough, he gave no sign of consciousness, and he remained, as we had thrown
him, without changing the position of a finger. His daughter opened his shirt
and began to wet his head and bosom; while Northmour and I ran to the window.
The weather continued clear; the moon, which was now about full, had risen and
shed a very clear light upon the links; yet, strain our eyes as we might, we
could distinguish nothing moving. A few dark spots, more or less, on the uneven
expanse were not to be identified; they might be crouching men, they might be
shadows; it was impossible to be sure.
“Thank God,” said Northmour, “Aggie is not coming
to-night.”
Aggie was the name of the old nurse; he had not thought of her till now; but
that he should think of her at all, was a trait that surprised me in the man.
We were again reduced to waiting. Northmour went to the fireplace and spread
his hands before the red embers, as if he were cold. I followed him
mechanically with my eyes, and in so doing turned my back upon the window. At
that moment a very faint report was audible from without, and a ball shivered a
pane of glass, and buried itself in the shutter two inches from my head. I
heard Clara scream; and though I whipped instantly out of range and into a
corner, she was there, so to speak, before me, beseeching to know if I were
hurt. I felt that I could stand to be shot at every day and all day long, with
such marks of solicitude for a reward; and I continued to reassure her, with
the tenderest caresses and in complete forgetfulness of our situation, till the
voice of Northmour recalled me to myself.
“An air-gun,” he said. “They wish to make no noise.”
I put Clara aside, and looked at him. He was standing with his back to the fire
and his hands clasped behind him; and I knew by the black look on his face,
that passion was boiling within. I had seen just such a look before he attacked
me, that March night, in the adjoining chamber; and, though I could make every
allowance for his anger, I confess I trembled for the consequences. He gazed
straight before him; but he could see us with the tail of his eye, and his
temper kept rising like a gale of wind. With regular battle awaiting us
outside, this prospect of an internecine strife within the walls began to daunt
me.
Suddenly, as I was thus closely watching his expression and prepared against
the worst, I saw a change, a flash, a look of relief, upon his face. He took up
the lamp which stood beside him on the table, and turned to us with an air of
some excitement.
“There is one point that we must know,” said he. “Are they
going to butcher the lot of us, or only Huddlestone? Did they take you for him,
or fire at you for your own beaux yeux?”
“They took me for him, for certain,” I replied. “I am near as
tall, and my head is fair.”
“I am going to make sure,” returned Northmour; and he stepped up to
the window, holding the lamp above his head, and stood there, quietly
affronting death, for half a minute.
Clara sought to rush forward and pull him from the place of danger; but I had
the pardonable selfishness to hold her back by force.
“Yes,” said Northmour, turning coolly from the window;
“it’s only Huddlestone they want.”
“Oh, Mr. Northmour!” cried Clara; but found no more to add; the
temerity she had just witnessed seeming beyond the reach of words.
He, on his part, looked at me, cocking his head, with a fire of triumph in his
eyes; and I understood at once that he had thus hazarded his life, merely to
attract Clara’s notice, and depose me from my position as the hero of the
hour. He snapped his fingers.
“The fire is only beginning,” said he. “When they warm up to
their work, they won’t be so particular.”
A voice was now heard hailing us from the entrance. From the window we could
see the figure of a man in the moonlight; he stood motionless, his face
uplifted to ours, and a rag of something white on his extended arm; and as we
looked right down upon him, though he was a good many yards distant on the
links, we could see the moonlight glitter on his eyes.
He opened his lips again, and spoke for some minutes on end, in a key so loud
that he might have been heard in every corner of the pavilion, and as far away
as the borders of the wood. It was the same voice that had already shouted
“Traditore!” through the shutters of the dining-room; this
time it made a complete and clear statement. If the traitor
“Oddlestone” were given up, all others should be spared; if not, no
one should escape to tell the tale.
“Well, Huddlestone, what do you say to that?” asked Northmour,
turning to the bed.
Up to that moment the banker had given no sign of life, and I, at least, had
supposed him to be still lying in a faint; but he replied at once, and in such
tones as I have never heard elsewhere, save from a delirious patient, adjured
and besought us not to desert him. It was the most hideous and abject
performance that my imagination can conceive.
“Enough,” cried Northmour; and then he threw open the window,
leaned out into the night, and in a tone of exultation, and with a total
forgetfulness of what was due to the presence of a lady, poured out upon the
ambassador a string of the most abominable raillery both in English and
Italian, and bade him be gone where he had come from. I believe that nothing so
delighted Northmour at that moment as the thought that we must all infallibly
perish before the night was out.
Meantime the Italian put his flag of truce into his pocket, and disappeared, at
a leisurely pace, among the sand-hills.
“They make honourable war,” said Northmour. “They are all
gentlemen and soldiers. For the credit of the thing, I wish we could change
sides—you and I, Frank, and you too, Missy, my darling—and leave
that being on the bed to some one else. Tut! Don’t look shocked! We are
all going post to what they call eternity, and may as well be above-board while
there’s time. As far as I’m concerned, if I could first strangle
Huddlestone and then get Clara in my arms, I could die with some pride and
satisfaction. And as it is, by God, I’ll have a kiss!”
Before I could do anything to interfere, he had rudely embraced and repeatedly
kissed the resisting girl. Next moment I had pulled him away with fury, and
flung him heavily against the wall. He laughed loud and long, and I feared his
wits had given way under the strain; for even in the best of days he had been a
sparing and a quiet laugher.
“Now, Frank,” said he, when his mirth was somewhat appeased,
“it’s your turn. Here’s my hand. Good-bye; farewell!”
Then, seeing me stand rigid and indignant, and holding Clara to my
side—“Man!” he broke out, “are you angry? Did you think
we were going to die with all the airs and graces of society? I took a kiss;
I’m glad I had it; and now you can take another if you like, and square
accounts.”
I turned from him with a feeling of contempt which I did not seek to dissemble.
“As you please,” said he. “You’ve been a prig in life;
a prig you’ll die.”
And with that he sat down in a chair, a rifle over his knee, and amused himself
with snapping the lock; but I could see that his ebullition of light spirits
(the only one I ever knew him to display) had already come to an end, and was
succeeded by a sullen, scowling humour.
All this time our assailants might have been entering the house, and we been
none the wiser; we had in truth almost forgotten the danger that so imminently
overhung our days. But just then Mr. Huddlestone uttered a cry, and leaped from
the bed.
I asked him what was wrong.
“Fire!” he cried. “They have set the house on fire!”
Northmour was on his feet in an instant, and he and I ran through the door of
communication with the study. The room was illuminated by a red and angry
light. Almost at the moment of our entrance, a tower of flame arose in front of
the window, and, with a tingling report, a pane fell inwards on the carpet.
They had set fire to the lean-to outhouse, where Northmour used to nurse his
negatives.
“Hot work,” said Northmour. “Let us try in your old
room.”
We ran thither in a breath, threw up the casement, and looked forth. Along the
whole back wall of the pavilion piles of fuel had been arranged and kindled;
and it is probable they had been drenched with mineral oil, for, in spite of
the morning’s rain, they all burned bravely. The fire had taken a firm
hold already on the outhouse, which blazed higher and higher every moment; the
back door was in the centre of a red-hot bonfire; the eaves we could see, as we
looked upward, were already smouldering, for the roof overhung, and was
supported by considerable beams of wood. At the same time, hot, pungent, and
choking volumes of smoke began to fill the house. There was not a human being
to be seen to right or left.
“Ah, well!” said Northmour, “here’s the end, thank
God.”
And we returned to My Uncle’s Room. Mr. Huddlestone was putting on
his boots, still violently trembling, but with an air of determination such as
I had not hitherto observed. Clara stood close by him, with her cloak in both
hands ready to throw about her shoulders, and a strange look in her eyes, as if
she were half hopeful, half doubtful of her father.
“Well, boys and girls,” said Northmour, “how about a sally?
The oven is heating; it is not good to stay here and be baked; and, for my
part, I want to come to my hands with them, and be done.”
“There is nothing else left,” I replied.
And both Clara and Mr. Huddlestone, though with a very different intonation,
added, “Nothing.”
As we went downstairs the heat was excessive, and the roaring of the fire
filled our ears; and we had scarce reached the passage before the stairs window
fell in, a branch of flame shot brandishing through the aperture, and the
interior of the pavilion became lit up with that dreadful and fluctuating
glare. At the same moment we heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in
the upper story. The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like a box
of matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and sea, but threatened
with every moment to crumble and fall in about our ears.
Northmour and I cocked our revolvers. Mr. Huddlestone, who had already refused
a firearm, put us behind him with a manner of command.
“Let Clara open the door,” said he. “So, if they fire a
volley, she will be protected. And in the meantime stand behind me. I am the
scapegoat; my sins have found me out.”
I heard him, as I stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol ready,
pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and I confess, horrid as
the thought may seem, I despised him for thinking of supplications in a moment
so critical and thrilling. In the meantime, Clara, who was dead white but still
possessed her faculties, had displaced the barricade from the front door.
Another moment, and she had pulled it open. Firelight and moonlight illuminated
the links with confused and changeful lustre, and far away against the sky we
could see a long trail of glowing smoke.
Mr. Huddlestone, filled for the moment with a strength greater than his own,
struck Northmour and myself a back-hander in the chest; and while we were thus
for the moment incapacitated from action, lifting his arms above his head like
one about to dive, he ran straight forward out of the pavilion.
“Here am I!” he cried—“Huddlestone! Kill me, and spare
the others!”
His sudden appearance daunted, I suppose, our hidden enemies; for Northmour and
I had time to recover, to seize Clara between us, one by each arm, and to rush
forth to his assistance, ere anything further had taken place. But scarce had
we passed the threshold when there came near a dozen reports and flashes from
every direction among the hollows of the links. Mr. Huddlestone staggered,
uttered a weird and freezing cry, threw up his arms over his head, and fell
backward on the turf.
“Traditore! Traditore!” cried the invisible avengers.
And just then, a part of the roof of the pavilion fell in, so rapid was the
progress of the fire. A loud, vague, and horrible noise accompanied the
collapse, and a vast volume of flame went soaring up to heaven. It must have
been visible at that moment from twenty miles out at sea, from the shore at
Graden Wester, and far inland from the peak of Graystiel, the most eastern
summit of the Caulder Hills. Bernard Huddlestone, although God knows what were
his obsequies, had a fine pyre at the moment of his death.
