VANGE ABBEY is, I suppose, the most solitary country house in England.
If Romayne wanted quiet, it was exactly the place for him.
On the rising ground of one of the wildest moors in the North Riding of
Yorkshire, the ruins of the old monastery are visible from all points of
the compass. There are traditions of thriving villages clustering about
the Abbey, in the days of the monks, and of hostleries devoted to the
reception of pilgrims from every part of the Christian world. Not a
vestige of these buildings is left. They were deserted by the pious
inhabitants, it is said, at the time when Henry the Eighth suppress ed
the monasteries, and gave the Abbey and the broad lands of Vange to his
faithful friend and courtier, Sir Miles Romayne. In the next generation,
the son and heir of Sir Miles built the dwelling-house, helping himself
liberally from the solid stone walls of the monastery. With some
unimportant alterations and repairs, the house stands, defying time and
weather, to the present day.
At the last station on the railway the horses were waiting for us. It
was a lovely moonlight night, and we shortened the distance considerably
by taking the bridle path over the moor. Between nine and ten o'clock we
reached the Abbey.
Years had passed since I had last been Romayne's guest. Nothing, out of
the house or in the house, seemed to have undergone any change in the
interval. Neither the good North-country butler, nor his buxom Scotch
wife, skilled in cookery, looked any older: they received me as if I
had left them a day or two since, and had come back again to live
in Yorkshire. My well-remembered bedroom was waiting for me; and
the matchless old Madeira welcomed us when my host and I met in the
inner-hall, which was the ordinary dining-room of the Abbey.
As we faced each other at the well-spread table, I began to hope that
the familiar influences of his country home were beginning already to
breathe their blessed quiet over the disturbed mind of Romayne. In
the presence of his faithful old servants, he seemed to be capable of
controlling the morbid remorse that oppressed him. He spoke to them
composedly and kindly; he was affectionately glad to see his old friend
once more in the old house.
When we were near the end of our meal, something happened that startled
me. I had just handed the wine to Romayne, and he had filled his
glass--when he suddenly turned pale, and lifted his head like a man
whose attention is unexpectedly roused. No person but ourselves was
in the room; I was not speaking to him at the time. He looked round
suspiciously at the door behind him, leading into the library, and rang
the old-fashioned handbell which stood by him on the table. The servant
was directed to close the door.
"Are you cold?" I asked.
"No." He reconsidered that brief answer, and contradicted himself.
"Yes--the library fire has burned low, I suppose."
In my position at the table, I had seen the fire: the grate was heaped
with blazing coals and wood. I said nothing. The pale change in his
face, and his contradictory reply, roused doubts in me which I had hoped
never to feel again.
He pushed away his glass of wine, and still kept his eyes fixed on the
closed door. His attitude and expression were plainly suggestive of the
act of listening. Listening to what?
After an interval, he abruptly addressed me. "Do you call it a quiet
night?" he said.
"As quiet as quiet can be," I replied. "The wind has dropped--and even
the fire doesn't crackle. Perfect stillness indoors and out."
"Out?" he repeated. For a moment he looked at me intently, as if I had
started some new idea in his mind. I asked as lightly as I could if I
had said anything to surprise him. Instead of answering me, he sprang to
his feet with a cry of terror, and left the room.
I hardly knew what to do. It was impossible, unless he returned
immediately to let this extraordinary proceeding pass without notice.
After waiting for a few minutes I rang the bell.
The old butler came in. He looked in blank amazement at the empty chair.
"Where's the master?" he asked.
I could only answer that he had left the table suddenly, without a word
of explanation. "He may perhaps be ill," I added. "As his old servant,
you can do no harm if you go and look for him. Say that I am waiting
here, if he wants me."
The minutes passed slowly and more slowly. I was left alone for so long
a time that I began to feel seriously uneasy. My hand was on the bell
again, when there was a knock at the door. I had expected to see the
butler. It was the groom who entered the room.
"Garthwaite can't come down to you, sir," said the man. "He asks, if you
will please go up to the master on the Belvidere."
The house--extending round three sides of a square--was only two stories
high. The flat roof, accessible through a species of hatchway, and still
surrounded by its sturdy stone parapet, was called "The Belvidere," in
reference as usual to the fine view which it commanded. Fearing I knew
not what, I mounted the ladder which led to the roof. Romayne received
me with a harsh outburst of laughter--that saddest false laughter which
is true trouble in disguise.
"Here's something to amuse you!" he cried. "I believe old Garthwaite
thinks I am drunk--he won't leave me up here by myself."
Letting this strange assertion remain unanswered, the butler withdrew.
As he passed me on his way to the ladder, he whispered: "Be careful of
the master! I tell you, sir, he has a bee in his bonnet this night."
Although not of the north country myself, I knew the meaning of the
phrase. Garthwaite suspected that the master was nothing less than mad!
Romayne took my arm when we were alone--we walked slowly from end to end
of the Belvidere. The moon was, by this time, low in the heavens; but
her mild mysterious light still streamed over the roof of the house and
the high heathy ground round it. I looked attentively at Romayne. He was
deadly pale; his hand shook as it rested on my arm--and that was all.
Neither in look nor manner did he betray the faintest sign of mental
derangement. He had perhaps needlessly alarmed the faithful old servant
by something that he had said or done. I determined to clear up that
doubt immediately.
"You left the table very suddenly," I said. "Did you feel ill?"
"Not ill," he replied. "I was frightened. Look at me--I'm frightened
still."
"What do you mean?"
Instead of answering, he repeated the strange question which he had put
to me downstairs.
"Do you call it a quiet night?"
Considering the time of year, and the exposed situation of the house,
the night was almost preternaturally quiet. Throughout the vast open
country all round us, not even a breath of air could be heard. The
night-birds were away, or were silent at the time. But one sound was
audible, when we stood still and listened--the cool quiet bubble of a
little stream, lost to view in the valley-ground to the south.
"I have told you already," I said. "So still a night I never remember on
this Yorkshire moor."
He laid one hand heavily on my shoulder. "What did the poor boy say of
me, whose brother I killed?" he asked. "What words did we hear through
the dripping darkness of the mist?"
"I won't encourage you to think of them. I refuse to repeat the words."
He pointed over the northward parapet.
"It doesn't matter whether you accept or refuse," he said, "I hear the
boy at this moment--there!"
He repeated the horrid words--marking the pauses in the utterance of
them with his finger, as if they were sounds that he heard:
"Assassin! Assassin! where are you?"
"Good God!" I cried. "You don't mean that you really _hear_ the voice?"
"Do you hear what I say? I hear the boy as plainly as you hear me. The
voice screams at me through the clear moonlight, as it screamed at me
through the sea-fog. Again and again. It's all round the house. _That_
way now, where the light just touches on the tops of the heather. Tell
the servants to have the horses ready the first thing in the morning. We
leave Vange Abbey to-morrow."
These were wild words. If he had spoken them wildly, I might have shared
the butler's conclusion that his mind was deranged. There was no
undue vehemence in his voice or his manner. He spoke with a melancholy
resignation--he seemed like a prisoner submitting to a sentence that
he had deserved. Remembering the cases of men suffering from nervous
disease who had been haunted by apparitions, I asked if he saw any
imaginary figure under the form of a boy.
"I see nothing," he said; "I only hear. Look yourself. It is in the last
degree improbable--but let us make sure that nobody has followed me from
Boulogne, and is playing me a trick."
We made the circuit of the Belvidere. On its eastward side the house
wall was built against one of the towers of the old Ab bey. On the
westward side, the ground sloped steeply down to a deep pool or tarn.
Northward and southward, there was nothing to be seen but the open moor.
Look where I might, with the moonlight to make the view plain to me, the
solitude was as void of any living creature as if we had been surrounded
by the awful dead world of the moon.
"Was it the boy's voice that you heard on the voyage across the
Channel?" I asked.
"Yes, I heard it for the first time--down in the engine-room; rising and
falling, rising and falling, like the sound of the engines themselves."
"And when did you hear it again?"
"I feared to hear it in London. It left me, I should have told you, when
we stepped ashore out of the steamboat. I was afraid that the noise of
the traffic in the streets might bring it back to me. As you know, I
passed a quiet night. I had the hope that my imagination had deceived
me--that I was the victim of a delusion, as people say. It is no
delusion. In the perfect tranquillity of this place the voice has come
back to me. While we were at table I heard it again--behind me, in the
library. I heard it still, when the door was shut. I ran up here to try
if it would follow me into the open air. It _has_ followed me. We may as
well go down again into the hall. I know now that there is no escaping
from it. My dear old home has become horrible to me. Do you mind
returning to London tomorrow?"
What I felt and feared in this miserable state of things matters little.
The one chance I could see for Romayne was to obtain the best medical
advice. I sincerely encouraged his idea of going back to London the next
day.
We had sat together by the hall fire for about ten minutes, when he took
out his handkerchief, and wiped away the perspiration from his forehead,
drawing a deep breath of relief. "It has gone!" he said faintly.
"When you hear the boy's voice," I asked, "do you hear it continuously?"
"No, at intervals; sometimes longer, sometimes shorter."
"And thus far, it comes to you suddenly, and leaves you suddenly?"
"Yes."
"Do my questions annoy you?"
"I make no complaint," he said sadly. "You can see for yourself--I
patiently suffer the punishment that I have deserved."
I contradicted him at once. "It is nothing of the sort! It's a nervous
malady, which medical science can control and cure. Wait till we get to
London."
This expression of opinion produced no effect on him.
"I have taken the life of a fellow-creature," he said. "I have closed
the career of a young man who, but for me, might have lived long and
happily and honorably. Say what you may, I am of the race of Cain. _He_
had the mark set on his brow. I have _my_ ordeal. Delude yourself,
if you like, with false hopes. I can endure--and hope for nothing.
Good-night."