St. George and St. Michael

  CHAPTER XXII.

  THE CATARACT.

  In the midst of a great psalm, on the geyser column of which his spiritwas borne heavenward, young Delaware all of a sudden found the keys dumbbeneath his helpless fingers: the bellows was empty, the singing thingdead. He called aloud, and his voice echoed through the empty chapel,but no living response came back. Tom Fool had grown weary and forsakenhim. Disappointed and baffled, he rose and left the chapel, notimmediately from the organ loft, by a door and a few upward stepsthrough the wall to the minstrels' gallery, as he had entered, but bythe south door into the court, his readiest way to reach the rooms heoccupied with his father, near the marquis's study. Hardly another doorin either court was ever made fast except this one, which, merely inself-administered flattery of his own consequence, the conceitedsacristan who assumed charge of the key, always locked at night. Butthere was no reason why Delaware should pay any respect to this, orhesitate to remove the bar securing one-half of the door, without whichthe lock retained no hold.

  Although Tom had indeed deserted his post, the organist was mistaken asto the cause and mode of his desertion: oppressed like every one elsewith the sultriness of the night, he had fallen fast asleep, leaningagainst the organ. The thunder only waked him sufficiently to render himcapable of slipping from the stool on which he had lazily seated himselfas he worked the lever of the bellows, and stretching himself at fulllength upon the floor; while the coolness that by degrees filled the airas the rain kept pouring, made his sleep sweeter and deeper. He lay andsnored till midnight.

  A bell rang in the marquis's chamber.

  It was one of his lordship's smaller economic maxims that in everyhouse, and the larger the house the more necessary its observance, themaster thereof should have his private rooms as far apart from eachother as might, with due respect to general fitness, be arranged for, inorder that, to use his own figure, he might spread his skirts the widerover the place, and chiefly the part occupied by his own family andimmediate attendants--thereby to give himself, without paying moreattention to such matters than he could afford, a better chance ofcoming upon the trace of anything that happened to be going amiss.'For,' he said, 'let a man have ever so many responsible persons abouthim, the final responsibility of his affairs yet returns upon himself.'Hence, while his bedroom was close to the main entrance, that is thegate to the stone court, the room he chose for retirement and study wasover the western gate, that of the fountain-court, nearly a whole sideof the double quadrangle away from his bedroom, and still farther fromthe library, which was on the other side of the main entrance--whence,notwithstanding, he would himself, gout permitting, always fetch anybook he wanted. It was, therefore, no wonder that, being now in hisstudy, the marquis, although it rang loud, never heard the bell whichCaspar had hung in his bedchamber. He was, however, at the moment,looking from a window which commanded the very spot--namely, the mouthof the archway--towards which the bell would have drawn his attention.

  The night was still, the rain was over, and although the moon wasclouded, there was light enough to recognise a known figure in any partof the court, except the shadowed recess where the door of the chapeland the archway faced each other, and the door of the hall stood atright angles to both.

  Came a great clang that echoed loud through the court, followed by theroar of water. It sounded as if a captive river had broken loose, andgrown suddenly frantic with freedom. The marquis could not help startingviolently, for his nerves were a good deal shaken. The same instant, erethere was time for a single conjecture, a torrent, visible by the lightof its foam, shot from the archway, hurled itself against the chapeldoor, and vanished. Sad and startled as he was, lord Worcester,requiring no explanation of the phenomenon now that it was completed,laughed aloud and hurried from the room.

  When he had screwed his unwieldy form to the bottom of the stair, andcame out into the court, there was Tom Fool flying across the turf inmortal terror, his face white as another moon, and his hair standing onend--visibly in the dull moonshine.

  His terror had either deafened him, or paralysed the nerves of hisobedience, for the first call of his master was insufficient to stophim. At the second, however, he halted, turned mechanically, went to himtrembling, and stood before him speechless. But when the marquis, tosatisfy himself that he was really as dry as he seemed, laid his hand onhis arm, the touch brought him to himself, and, assisted by his master'squestions, he was able to tell how he had fallen asleep in the chapel,had waked but a minute ago, had left it by the minstrels' gallery, hadreached the floor of the hall, and was approaching the western door,which was open, in order to cross the court to his lodging near thewatch-tower, when a hellish explosion, followed by the most frightfulroaring, mingled with shrieks and demoniacal laughter, arrested him; andthe same instant, through the open door, he saw, as plainly as he nowsaw his noble master, a torrent rush from the archway, full of dimfigures, wallowing and shouting. The same moment they all vanished, andthe flood poured into the hall, wetting him to the knees, and almostcarrying him off his legs.

  Here the marquis professed profound astonishment, remarking that thewater must indeed have been thickened with devils to be able to lay holdof Tom's legs.

  'Then,' pursued Tom, reviving a little, 'I summoned up all my courage--'

  'No great feat,' said the marquis.

  But Tom went on unabashed.

  'I summoned up the whole of my courage,' he repeated, 'stepped out ofthe hall, carefully examined the ground, looked through the archway, sawnothing, and was walking slowly across the court to my lodging,pondering with myself whether to call my lord governor or sir TobyMathews, when I heard your lordship call me.'

  'Tom! Tom! thou liest,' said the marquis. 'Thou wast running as if allthe devils in hell had been at thy heels.'

  Tom turned deadly pale, a fresh access of terror overcoming his new-bornhardihood.

  'Who were they, thinkest thou, whom thou sawest in the water, Tom?'resumed his master. 'For what didst thou take them?'

  Tom shook his head with an awful significance, looked behind him, andsaid nothing.

  Perceiving there was no more to be got out of him, the marquis sent himto bed. He went off shivering and shaking. Three times ere he reachedthe watch-tower his face gleamed white over his shoulder as he went. Thenext day he did not appear. He thought himself he was doomed, but hisillness was only the prostration following upon terror.

  In the version of the story which he gave his fellow-servants, hedoubtless mingled the after visions of his bed with what he had whenhalf-awake seen and heard through the mists of his startled imagination.His tale was this--that he saw the moat swell and rise, boil over in amass, and tumble into the court as full of devils as it could hold,swimming in it, floating on it, riding it aloft as if it had been ahorse; that in a moment they had all vanished again, and that he had nota doubt the castle was now swarming with them--in fact, he had heardthem all the night long.

  The marquis walked up to the archway, saw nothing save the grim wall ofthe keep, impassive as granite crag, and the ground wet a long waytowards the white horse; and never doubting he had lost his chance bytaking Tom for the culprit, contented himself with the reflection that,whoever the night-walkers were, they had received both a fright and aducking, and betook himself to bed, where, falling asleep at length, hesaw little Molly in the arms of mother Mary, who, presently changing tohis own lady Anne that left him about a year before little Molly came,held out a hand to him to help him up beside them, whereupon the bubblesleep, unable to hold the swelling of his gladness, burst, and he wokejust as the first rays of the sun smote the gilded cock on thebell-tower.

  The noise of the falling drawbridge and the out-rushing water had rousedDorothy also, with most of the lighter sleepers in the castle; but whenshe and all the rest whose windows were to the fountain court, ran tothem and looked out, they saw nothing but the flight of Tom Fool acrossthe turf, its arrest by his master, and their following conference. Themoon had broken through the clo
uds, and there was no mistaking either oftheir persons.

  Meantime, inside the chapel door stood Amanda and Rowland, bothdripping, and one of them crying as well. Thither, as into a safeharbour, the sudden flood had cast them; and it indicated no smallamount of ready faculty in Scudamore that, half-stunned as he was, heyet had the sense, almost ere he knew where he was, to put up the longbar that secured the door.

  All the time that the marquis was drawing his story from Tom, they stoodtrembling, in great bewilderment yet very sensible misery, bruised,drenched, and horribly frightened, more even at what might be than bywhat had been. There was only one question, but that was hard to answer:what were they to do next? Amanda could contribute nothing towards itssolution, for tears and reproaches resolve no enigmas. There were manyways of issue, whereof Rowland knew several; but their watery trail, ifsoon enough followed, would be their ruin as certainly asHop-o'-my-Thumb's pebbles were safety to himself and his brothers. Hestood therefore the very bond slave of perplexity, 'and, like a neutralto his will and matter, did nothing.'

  Presently they heard the approaching step of the marquis, which everyone in the castle knew. It stopped within a few feet of them, andthrough the thick door they could hear his short asthmatic breathing.

  They kept as still as their trembling, and the mad beating of theirhearts, would permit. Amanda was nearly out of her senses, and thoughther heart was beating against the door, and not against her own ribs.But the marquis never thought of the chapel, having at once concludedthat they had fled through the open hall. Had he not, however, been soweary and sad and listless, he would probably have found them, for hewould at least have crossed the hall to look into the next court, and,the moon now shining brightly, the absence of all track on the floorwhere the traces of the brief inundation ceased, would have surelyindicated the direction in which they had sought refuge.

  The acme of terror happily endured but a moment. The sound of hisdeparting footsteps took the ghoul from their hearts; they began tobreathe, and to hope that the danger was gone. But they waited long ereat last they ventured, like wild animals overtaken by the daylight, tocreep out of their shelter and steal back like shadows--but separately,Amanda first, and Scudamore some slow minutes after--to their differentquarters. The tracks they could not help leaving in-doors were dried upbefore the morning.

  Rowland had greater reason to fear discovery than any one else in thecastle, save one, would in like circumstances have had, and that one washis bedfellow in the ante-chamber to his master's bedroom. Through thisroom his lordship had to pass to reach his own; but so far was he fromsuspecting Rowland, or indeed any gentleman of his retinue, that henever glanced in the direction of his bed, and so could not discoverthat he was absent from it. Had Rowland but caught a glimpse of his ownfigure as he sneaked into that room five minutes after the marquis hadpassed through it, believing his master was still in his study, where hehad left his candles burning, he could hardly for some time have had hisusual success in regarding himself as a fine gentleman.

  Amanda Serafina did not show herself for several days. A bad cold in herhead luckily afforded sufficient pretext for the concealment of a badbruise upon her cheek. Other bruises she had also, but they, althoughmore severe, were of less consequence.

  For a whole fortnight the lovers never dared exchange a word.

  In the morning the marquis was in no mood to set any inquiry on foot.His little lamb had vanished from his fold, and he was sad and lonely.Had it been otherwise, possibly the shabby doublet in which Scudamorestood behind his chair the next morning, might have set him thinking;but as it was, it fell in so well with the gloom in which his own spiritshrouded everything, that he never even marked the change, and ere longRowland began to feel himself safe.