I was a great solitary when I was young. I made it
my pride to keep aloof and suffice for my own entertainment; and I may say that
I had neither friends nor acquaintances until I met that friend who became my
wife and the mother of my children. With one man only was I on private terms;
this was R. Northmour, Esquire, of Graden Easter, in Scotland. We had met at
college; and though there was not much liking between us, nor even much
intimacy, we were so nearly of a humour that we could associate with ease to
both. Misanthropes, we believed ourselves to be; but I have thought since that
we were only sulky fellows. It was scarcely a companionship, but a coexistence
in unsociability. Northmour’s exceptional violence of temper made it no
easy affair for him to keep the peace with any one but me; and as he respected
my silent ways, and let me come and go as I pleased, I could tolerate his
presence without concern. I think we called each other friends.
When Northmour took his degree and I decided to leave the university without
one, he invited me on a long visit to Graden Easter; and it was thus that I
first became acquainted with the scene of my adventures. The mansion-house of
Graden stood in a bleak stretch of country some three miles from the shore of
the German Ocean. It was as large as a barrack; and as it had been built of a
soft stone, liable to consume in the eager air of the seaside, it was damp and
draughty within and half ruinous without. It was impossible for two young men
to lodge with comfort in such a dwelling. But there stood in the northern part
of the estate, in a wilderness of links and blowing sand-hills, and between a
plantation and the sea, a small Pavilion or Belvidere, of modern design, which
was exactly suited to our wants; and in this hermitage, speaking little,
reading much, and rarely associating except at meals, Northmour and I spent
four tempestuous winter months. I might have stayed longer; but one March night
there sprang up between us a dispute, which rendered my departure necessary.
Northmour spoke hotly, I remember, and I suppose I must have made some tart
rejoinder. He leaped from his chair and grappled me; I had to fight, without
exaggeration, for my life; and it was only with a great effort that I mastered
him, for he was near as strong in body as myself, and seemed filled with the
devil. The next morning, we met on our usual terms; but I judged it more
delicate to withdraw; nor did he attempt to dissuade me.
It was nine years before I revisited the neighbourhood. I travelled at that
time with a tilt cart, a tent, and a cooking-stove, tramping all day beside the
waggon, and at night, whenever it was possible, gipsying in a cove of the
hills, or by the side of a wood. I believe I visited in this manner most of the
wild and desolate regions both in England and Scotland; and, as I had neither
friends nor relations, I was troubled with no correspondence, and had nothing
in the nature of headquarters, unless it was the office of my solicitors, from
whom I drew my income twice a year. It was a life in which I delighted; and I
fully thought to have grown old upon the march, and at last died in a ditch.
It was my whole business to find desolate corners, where I could camp without
the fear of interruption; and hence, being in another part of the same shire, I
bethought me suddenly of the Pavilion on the Links. No thoroughfare passed
within three miles of it. The nearest town, and that was but a fisher village,
was at a distance of six or seven. For ten miles of length, and from a depth
varying from three miles to half a mile, this belt of barren country lay along
the sea. The beach, which was the natural approach, was full of quicksands.
Indeed I may say there is hardly a better place of concealment in the United
Kingdom. I determined to pass a week in the Sea-Wood of Graden Easter, and
making a long stage, reached it about sundown on a wild September day.
The country, I have said, was mixed sand-hill and links; links being a
Scottish name for sand which has ceased drifting and become more or less
solidly covered with turf. The Pavilion stood on an even space; a little behind
it, the wood began in a hedge of elders huddled together by the wind; in front,
a few tumbled sand-hills stood between it and the sea. An outcropping of rock
had formed a bastion for the sand, so that there was here a promontory in the
coast-line between two shallow bays; and just beyond the tides, the rock again
cropped out and formed an islet of small dimensions but strikingly designed.
The quicksands were of great extent at low water, and had an infamous
reputation in the country. Close in shore, between the islet and the
promontory, it was said they would swallow a man in four minutes and a half;
but there may have been little ground for this precision. The district was
alive with rabbits, and haunted by gulls which made a continual piping about
the pavilion. On summer days the outlook was bright and even gladsome; but at
sundown in September, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along
the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. A ship
beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half buried
in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo of the scene.
The pavilion—it had been built by the last proprietor, Northmour’s
uncle, a silly and prodigal virtuoso—presented little signs of age. It
was two storeys in height, Italian in design, surrounded by a patch of garden
in which nothing had prospered but a few coarse flowers; and looked, with its
shuttered windows, not like a house that had been deserted, but like one that
had never been tenanted by man. Northmour was plainly from home; whether, as
usual, sulking in the cabin of his yacht, or in one of his fitful and
extravagant appearances in the world of society, I had, of course, no means of
guessing. The place had an air of solitude that daunted even a solitary like
myself; the wind cried in the chimneys with a strange and wailing note; and it
was with a sense of escape, as if I were going indoors, that I turned away and,
driving my cart before me, entered the skirts of the wood.
The Sea-Wood of Graden had been planted to shelter the cultivated fields
behind, and check the encroachments of the blowing sand. As you advanced into
it from coastward, elders were succeeded by other hardy shrubs; but the timber
was all stunted and bushy; it led a life of conflict; the trees were accustomed
to swing there all night long in fierce winter tempests; and even in early
spring, the leaves were already flying, and autumn was beginning, in this
exposed plantation. Inland the ground rose into a little hill, which, along
with the islet, served as a sailing mark for seamen. When the hill was open of
the islet to the north, vessels must bear well to the eastward to clear Graden
Ness and the Graden Bullers. In the lower ground, a streamlet ran among the
trees, and, being dammed with dead leaves and clay of its own carrying, spread
out every here and there, and lay in stagnant pools. One or two ruined cottages
were dotted about the wood; and, according to Northmour, these were
ecclesiastical foundations, and in their time had sheltered pious hermits.
I found a den, or small hollow, where there was a spring of pure water; and
there, clearing away the brambles, I pitched the tent, and made a fire to cook
my supper. My horse I picketed farther in the wood where there was a patch of
sward. The banks of the den not only concealed the light of my fire, but
sheltered me from the wind, which was cold as well as high.
The life I was leading made me both hardy and frugal. I never drank but water,
and rarely ate anything more costly than oatmeal; and I required so little
sleep, that, although I rose with the peep of day, I would often lie long awake
in the dark or starry watches of the night. Thus in Graden Sea-Wood, although I
fell thankfully asleep by eight in the evening I was awake again before eleven
with a full possession of my faculties, and no sense of drowsiness or fatigue.
I rose and sat by the fire, watching the trees and clouds tumultuously tossing
and fleeing overhead, and hearkening to the wind and the rollers along the
shore; till at length, growing weary of inaction, I quitted the den, and
strolled towards the borders of the wood. A young moon, buried in mist, gave a
faint illumination to my steps; and the light grew brighter as I walked forth
into the links. At the same moment, the wind, smelling salt of the open ocean
and carrying particles of sand, struck me with its full force, so that I had to
bow my head.
When I raised it again to look about me, I was aware of a light in the
pavilion. It was not stationary; but passed from one window to another, as
though some one were reviewing the different apartments with a lamp or candle.
I watched it for some seconds in great surprise. When I had arrived in the
afternoon the house had been plainly deserted; now it was as plainly occupied.
It was my first idea that a gang of thieves might have broken in and be now
ransacking Northmour’s cupboards, which were many and not ill supplied.
But what should bring thieves to Graden Easter? And, again, all the shutters
had been thrown open, and it would have been more in the character of such
gentry to close them. I dismissed the notion, and fell back upon another.
Northmour himself must have arrived, and was now airing and inspecting the
pavilion.
I have said that there was no real affection between this man and me; but, had
I loved him like a brother, I was then so much more in love with solitude that
I should none the less have shunned his company. As it was, I turned and ran
for it; and it was with genuine satisfaction that I found myself safely back
beside the fire. I had escaped an acquaintance; I should have one more night in
comfort. In the morning, I might either slip away before Northmour was abroad,
or pay him as short a visit as I chose.
But when morning came, I thought the situation so diverting that I forgot my
shyness. Northmour was at my mercy; I arranged a good practical jest, though I
knew well that my neighbour was not the man to jest with in security; and,
chuckling beforehand over its success, took my place among the elders at the
edge of the wood, whence I could command the door of the pavilion. The shutters
were all once more closed, which I remember thinking odd; and the house, with
its white walls and green venetians, looked spruce and habitable in the morning
light. Hour after hour passed, and still no sign of Northmour. I knew him for a
sluggard in the morning; but, as it drew on towards noon, I lost my patience.
To say the truth, I had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and
hunger began to prick me sharply. It was a pity to let the opportunity go by
without some cause for mirth; but the grosser appetite prevailed, and I
relinquished my jest with regret, and sallied from the wood.
The appearance of the house affected me, as I drew near, with disquietude. It
seemed unchanged since last evening; and I had expected it, I scarce knew why,
to wear some external signs of habitation. But no: the windows were all closely
shuttered, the chimneys breathed no smoke, and the front door itself was
closely padlocked. Northmour, therefore, had entered by the back; this was the
natural and, indeed, the necessary conclusion; and you may judge of my surprise
when, on turning the house, I found the back door similarly secured.
My mind at once reverted to the original theory of thieves; and I blamed myself
sharply for my last night’s inaction. I examined all the windows on the
lower storey, but none of them had been tampered with; I tried the padlocks,
but they were both secure. It thus became a problem how the thieves, if thieves
they were, had managed to enter the house. They must have got, I reasoned, upon
the roof of the outhouse where Northmour used to keep his photographic battery;
and from thence, either by the window of the study or that of my old bedroom,
completed their burglarious entry.
I followed what I supposed was their example; and, getting on the roof, tried
the shutters of each room. Both were secure; but I was not to be beaten; and,
with a little force, one of them flew open, grazing, as it did so, the back of
my hand. I remember, I put the wound to my mouth, and stood for perhaps half a
minute licking it like a dog, and mechanically gazing behind me over the waste
links and the sea; and, in that space of time, my eye made note of a large
schooner yacht some miles to the north-east. Then I threw up the window and
climbed in.
I went over the house, and nothing can express my mystification. There was no
sign of disorder, but, on the contrary, the rooms were unusually clean and
pleasant. I found fires laid, ready for lighting; three bedrooms prepared with
a luxury quite foreign to Northmour’s habits, and with water in the ewers
and the beds turned down; a table set for three in the dining-room; and an
ample supply of cold meats, game, and vegetables on the pantry shelves. There
were guests expected, that was plain; but why guests, when Northmour hated
society? And, above all, why was the house thus stealthily prepared at dead of
night? and why were the shutters closed and the doors padlocked?
I effaced all traces of my visit, and came forth from the window feeling
sobered and concerned.
The schooner yacht was still in the same place; and it flashed for a moment
through my mind that this might be the Red Earl bringing the owner of
the pavilion and his guests. But the vessel’s head was set the other way.
