by Richard Dowling, author of "The Mystery of Killard," "An Isle of Surrey," etc.
As published in Strange Doings in Strange Places (Cassell & Company, Ltd.; 1890), originally published in Cassell's Saturday Journal.
I.
The great feature of Bayfield is its railway junction. But for the accident that here two lines touch, the hamlet would be unknown, unheard of. Nearly a mile from the station sleeps the quiet little village, hidden from the eyes of travellers by a wooded rise.
At the foot of this wooded slope, half a mile from the line, stands a square tower. On the top of the tower rests a huge iron tank, which yields water for the locomotives; on the ground floor lies the engine that works the pump; and, far below the level of the ground, in silence and eternal darkness, sleeps the well from which the water supply for Bayfield Junction is raised. The flow of water in the well is not ample or regular, and often, in times of drought or unusual demand, the pump has to be kept going beyond the ordinary hours of the working day.
William Lee, a good-looking, good-humoured, dark, curly-haired young man, had charge of the pump-tower on ordinary occasions. When the engine worked overtime, Fred Merrick, who looked after the donkey-engine at the goods store of Bayfield Station, lent him a hand. At the goods store, Saturday was always a short day; at the Tower, as the water-tower was called for brevity, Saturday was a long day, for, if the well would yield sufficient, Sunday had to be provided for, so as to avoid lighting the fire on the Sabbath.
The fifteenth of September fell on a Saturday, so, in any case, Fred Merrick would have worked for a spell at the Tower. This day, in order to oblige William Lee, Merrick had arranged to take the other's place at nine in the forenoon, and stay till six in the evening. Any one who knew Lee would have done a good deal to oblige him; he was so pleasant-mannered and amiable and good-natured.
On this occasion there were particular reasons why a friend should put himself out of his own way to oblige Lee. He had been left fifty pounds in the will of his godfather, the saddler of Lauriston, a town thirty miles off, and he wanted to go and get his money that day.
"I suppose, Fred," said he to his substitute, "you know that I have made it all right with Kate Denham?"
Merrick nodded.
"Well, I'm off to get the money, and there's to be a sale at Burkett's on Monday, and Kate and I think of buying the sticks we shall want for our home there."
Fred Merrick nodded again and sighed. "You couldn't do better. You could not do better in the way of a wife, and the things at Burkett's will go cheap. You're a lucky man, Will Lee—a lucky man to get Kate Denham. She's worth half the girls in Bayfield put together. I'd have asked her myself, only I hadn't the pluck. I wish you all the happiness in the world, old chap!"
Kate Denham was not a great beauty, but she was the brightest and cleverest and happiest-mannered girl of the village. She had laughed at the mere mention of love until Will Lee came. She accepted him in a free, off-hand way. She had always thought much of him and she loved him now; but told him that it was her opinion there was no necessity for people in their relations to behave like a pair of fools.
"I like you better than any of them," she admitted, frankly; "but that is no reason why there should be any rubbish between us." Her notion of rubbish was sentimentality.
That Saturday morning Lee left for Lauriston at ten o'clock. He got back to Bayfield between four and five, and went straight from the train to the cottage on the Station Road where Kate lived. Kate's father was Farmer Bell's right-hand man. He had attached to his own cottage a large garden and two acres of land. He kept a cow, pigs, and fowl; and was, for one in his position, counted comfortable.
The garden was partly in front of the cottage, partly at the left-hand side. Before the cottage grew flowers and herbs. On the left rose a privet hedge, and beyond the privet hedge spread the kitchen garden, with its fruit and vegetables. By the side of the privet hedge, which separated the kitchen garden from the road, ran a walk, and, half-way down this walk against the privet hedge, a weeping willow had been trained into a bower. The trunk of the tree sloped inward from the hedge, and in the centre of the bower stood a rustic table.
As the girl and the young man entered the bower, the latter pulled a small brown-paper bag out of his pocket, and, handing it to her, put his arm round her waist, and kissed her, saying, "There, Kate, that's the money for the furniture. I drew it out of the bank in Lauriston in gold, as I thought that would be the handiest way to have it for Burkett's sale on Monday." He kissed her again, and they both sat down.
At the same moment that they sat down in the bower, a wayworn, ragged man sat down on the outside of the hedge, with his back against the privet, and his legs doubled up under him. He was a stranger to the place, and, to judge by his appearance, a tramp whose wanderings had not brought him much content or comfort.
The tramp took out of his pocket a piece of brown paper in which something was wrapped up. He placed the parcel beside him, and was about to throw himself back against the hedge, when his ears caught the voices of Lee and Kate Denham.
The tramp arrested the motion of his body, and remained listening. It is not in the nature of a man of his ways to court unnecessary attention. Hence he drew his body forward and continued sitting upright. Had he flung himself back, he would have made a noise and attracted the observation of the talkers to his vicinity.
He listened to the dialogue for a while. It did not entertain him. It was about love, and would not interest any one but the speakers. It concerned their future life—their future happiness. The wayfarer thought it intolerable stuff. With a shrug of disgust, he gave up eavesdropping, and, remembering the brown-paper parcel he had taken from his pocket, opened it on the grass by his side. The parcel contained a piece of bread as big as a man's fist, and a lump of pork-fat the size of a man's thumb. The lovers had nothing but nectar for supper; the tramp nothing but bread and pork-fat.
From another pocket the man under the hedge produced a jack knife, opened the blade, and laid the knife on the grass beside the brown paper. He was deliberate in his actions. He possessed no money whatever, and all the food at his disposal lay there on the ground; he had plenty of time. Time was always as plentiful with him as fresh air. Neither was accounted of any value. But food was often scarce, and could hardly ever be obtained without labour or risk; he had to ask for it or steal it.
All now was ready for his meal, but his mind did not seem at rest. He fumbled in his pockets, and at length drew forth a short clay pipe. He looked carefully into the bowl, then thrust his little finger to the bottom. There was not a grain of tobacco in it. With a muttered curse he angrily returned the empty pipe to his pocket, and, taking up the bread and knife, cut off a slice of the former and then some of the fat, put the fat on the bread, and, with the knife still held in the heel of his right hand, raised the bread to his open month.
His whole soul was concentrated on the food. His eyes were fixed hungrily on it; his mouth opened wider as the morsel approached his lips.
When the food was no further than a hand's breadth from the black, gap-toothed cavern of his mouth, his hand suddenly paused, as if arrested by a powerful spring. The eager hungry look died in his eyes; he no longer even saw the food. His eyes were blind by the withdrawal of his attention from them. His whole body became rigid, as if his veins had turned to iron. Every faculty of his being was concentrated on his hearing. He was listening with all his ears, with all his body, with all his soul.
"Do, please, Kate, take the money. Put the bag in your pocket. You know it is all for you, every penny, to buy the furniture. Keep it for me, any way, until Monday. It will be safer with you than with me. You are living in your own house, and I am only in lodgings. I never had near so much money before, and it would seem as though you were already my very own if I knew you had the money in your pocket. It's all in the bag—all in gold. I did not spend a penny of it. I did not break a single sovereign. There are forty sovereigns and twenty half sovereigns. Look!"
He opened the brown-paper bag and poured a glittering stream of gold out on the rustic table in front of the girl.
"I won't take the money," said she; "put it in your pocket. It is much safer with you than with me. I do think you were rash to get it in gold. I should be afraid of my life to have so much money in my charge."
With noiseless stealth the man in the road lowered the hand raised to his mouth, and put the knife and morsel of bread and meat on the ground. With the most elaborate caution, he turned, and kneeling up, peered into the privet hedge. Then, with caution like that of an American Indian, he began moving the twigs and leaves aside.
The ground on which the tramp knelt was higher than the ground of the garden. The sun shone brightly over head. Through the leaves of the willow spears of sharp sunlight pierced the roof of the arbour here and there. One broad and irregular shaft fell upon the table, and broke into a thousand gleaming, glittering splotches and sparks among the pieces of scattered gold.
In the verdurous gloom of the hedge, two points of fierce light glared on the gold. The eyes of the tramp had found a tiny rift in the leaves, and were fastened in savage greed upon the money.
Once more the faculties of the stranger were concentrated in sight, and for a while he heard nothing of what passed between the lovers. At length he was awakened from his trance of gloating. The whole pool of gold was swept up together by a man's hand, poured into a brown paper, and the bag dropped carefully into the breast coat pocket of the young man.
The tramp could hear once more.
"Very well, dear. But if you won't keep the money for us, help me to make it safe. Have you a needle and thread? Of course you have. Now stitch up the pocket so that the bag can't fall out, and you must cut out the stitches on Monday, and I shall feel that we both have a hand in keeping our money safe, just as if we were married already."
The listener could distinctly hear the sound of the stitching. The young man in the bower spoke again:—
"Now, one kiss and I'm off. You'll come to meet me at nine sharp at the corner of the wood, and we'll walk back together. Till then good-bye."
The tramp drew his body back without moving his feet. He heard the footsteps of the lovers as they left the summer house. When they had got a few paces away and there was little chance of his footfalls being heard, he crossed the road quickly, lightly, and clambered over a gate into a field. He had no thought now of supping off bread and pork-fat. He had left the food and his knife by the path. He had never seen fifty pounds in gold before. Fancy, fifty pounds, and in every pound twenty shillings; and there had been only a couple or three feet of hedge between him and it! Why had he not dashed at it and fled with the speed of the wind away with the spoil?
But wait! wait!
II.
William Lee walked out of the garden with a light, free step, and took his way first along the main road past the gate over which the tramp had climbed, past the corner of a little wood, and then down a by-way to the left towards the Tower. As Lee turned into
the by-way, the tramp clambered over the gate into the road, and followed him with careful tread and eyes that sought to look careless.
Lee carried his head thrown back, swang his right arm gaily, and kept his left hand in his trousers. pocket, and his left arm pressed closely against the brown-paper bag of gold, stitched in the breast pocket of his coat.
It was a few minutes past six when he reached the engine-house. "Well," said Merrick, cheerfully, "did you do your business at Lauriston?"
"Oh, yes; that's all right, and I'm obliged to you. I am a few minutes late, I am afraid," said Lee, as he took off his coat, threw it on a bench at the right-hand head of the engine, and began putting on his white slops.
"Oh, never mind me; you're on till nine, aren't you?"
"Yes," answered Lee, looking first at the furnace and then at the glass tube; "I'm on till nine."
"The fire's all right; but you might give her a drop of water," said Merrick as he went to the door. "Good-night."
"Good-night," and Lee was alone.
The ground-floor of the Tower was a room of about twenty feet square. The door stood in the front, not facing the railway line, but the path or by-way leading out of the main road or Junction Road as it has come to be called. On either side of the door was a small, oblong window, the glass of which was never cleaned, and which admitted very little light by day, and none at all in twilight. Right before the door, and only a few feet from it, rose the frame of the pumping-machine: Slightly to the right stood the engine, and on the left hand of the pumping apparatus revolved the heavy fly-wheel. Between the furnace and the fly-wheel lay the well-head, an opening between three and four feet square, protected by a single bar of iron breast-high, and up and down which the pump-rods rose and fell alternately in dull monotony. From the impenetrable darkness of the well came upward, through its dark, moist mouth, the hiss of escaping water and the heavy, squeezing thud of the plungers as they churned up and down in the sightless gloom below.
The boiler wanted water; Lee turned a tap and let it drink its fill. He looked around, and finding all right, sat down beside his rolled-up jacket at the head of the engine, to rest and smoke and give up his mind to dream over the delightful future. How much he had to be thankful for! Kate—his Kate was no pink-and-white beauty, but her dark hair and her bright, dark eyes were finer than any others in the county. And then all allowed she was the cleverest and most sensible girl in these parts, and she was so bright-spirited and happy-minded, with always a song on her lips when she was alone, and always a smile when any one was by. There wasn't a young man in Bayfield who wouldn't be proud to call her sweetheart. Three months before no one could persuade Lee that he ever could have summoned up courage to ask her to be his, and now she was his very own. It was past belief, and yet it was deliciously true. What a long life of happiness stretched before them!
And to think of it, too, just when she had consented to be his wife, and he was casting about in his mind as to how he should manage to buy the furniture for their little new home, came this wholly unexpected fifty pounds—this fifty pounds now safe sewed into the pocket of his coat on the bench beside him! It was past believing!
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose. At that moment the form of a man appeared at the doorway, and threw a shadow across the floor of the engine-house. The shadow of the man was long and lean, the head and shoulders of it falling into the open jaws of the well in which the pump-rods rose and fell, drawing up and thrusting down the plungers, from which a dull, dead, thudding and hissing sound ascended from the damp darkness of the chasm.
"Can I have a light, gov'nor?" The tramp did not cross the threshold. He stood outside the Tower, holding his pipe forward in explanation.
"Of course. Come in and have a light and welcome," said Lee cordially. He rose and went with gestures of hospitable invitation towards the stranger. His mind was so full of the glow of pleasant thoughts that he would have felt it a physical pleasure to do any man a service.
The tramp passed out of the light of the level sun into the twilight of the room, casting, as he did so, a quick, furtive glance at the jacket lying on the bench.
"I'll get you a light in a minute," said Lee, going to the furnace door and opening it. "I've just let some water into the boiler, and have to keep the door shut to blow up the fire to warm it." He was genial and talkative out of the fulness of his heart.
The tramp stood holding the tobacco pipe in his hand. "I see," said he, in a dogged, heavy tone.
"My mate has put in too much coal," said Lee, garrulously, as he fumbled about with a bit of cotton waste on the front bar. "It damps the fire. Here you are." He handed the other the light, and standing up with his back against the bar across the opening of the well, watched the other draw the flame into his pipe. "Why, there's no tobacco in it. May be you haven't a fill. I'll give you some of mine." He went to his jacket, and came back with a tin box in which he kept his supply.
The tramp followed him with heavy eyes. If Lee could have seen those eyes his suspicions might have been awakened, but his back was towards the man. "Thank you," said the latter, as he filled his pipe from the tin box.
"He's a tramp," thought Lee; "poor fellow, he may be tired.". He said, "If you like, you may sit down and rest. I'm all by myself, and will be glad of a chat."
"Thank you," again said the man. He took a low stool between the door and the well-head. Lee leaned against the door jamb, and seeing the other did not appear disposed to contribute much to the conversation, and being in exuberant spirits himself, he went on talking of what he knew most about, his engine, excluding technicalities out of consideration for the ignorance of his visitor.
"Lots of people don't know much about an engine. Do you?"
"Nothing."
"Well, now, of course you must have fire and water, or you can't have steam, and if you can't have steam, where are you to get your pressure? And without your pressure your engine is only fit to break up for old iron."
"Ay," said the other, without any manner of interest. He sat so that he could see, without moving, Lee's coat, in which he knew the gold had been sewn.
"Fire and water and pressure are all very well in their own way, but you may have too much of any of them. If you have too much water, you can't get steam; and if you have too much fire, you have too much pressure; and if you have too much pressure, you have a burst. Do you see?"
"Oh, yes."
"You saw me shut the furnace door now? Well, I did that to blow up the fire, same as a bellows. But I mustn't leave it shut too long, or I should have too much steam."
"You would?" said the tramp, in a tone of awakening interest. "And if you had too much steam?" he asked.
"Why, then, I'd have a burst."
"So that, suppose you fell asleep now, the engine would burst?"
"Yes, if it didn't wake me before."
"And if it burst 'twould blow down this place?" He was now very much interested indeed.
"Well, I can't say for certain, but very likely."
"And you are all alone and no one is coming here to-night?"
"No one is coming here," said Lee, with emphasis on the last word for the delight of his own ears, and a smile on his face for thinking of Kate coming to the corner of the wood to meet him on his way home.
"Ah!" said the tramp, getting up, and keeping his hand on the bar across the head of the well and his back to the fly-wheel.
"Are you thinking of going?" asked Lee, coming in from the door, and standing in front of the stranger.
"Yes, I must be getting on, and I'd be very much obliged, gov'nor, if you'd spare me another fill of tobacco."
"To be sure," said Lee, handing him the tin box.
The hands of the tramp had grown strangely clumsy. He was not able to fill his pipe at once. Something seemed wrong with his fingers, and in the end all the tobacco fell out of the box and dropped to the floor close to the edge of the well. He stooped to pick it up, but failed to bend low enough.
"My back!" he exclaimed. "I've the rheumatics. Beg pardon, gov'nor; I can't stoop."
"Never mind," said Lee; "I'll get it."
The young man leaned forward under the iron bar until his hand touched the floor where the tobacco lay, and his head was over the well. Quick as lightning the other man sprang behind the stooping man and pushed him forward and downward.
With a cry of horror and despair, William Lee shot into the blind abyss of the well.
With a cry like the growl of a wild beast, the tramp leaped upon the jacket lying on the bench, rolled it up with frantic haste, and thrust it under his coat. Then, without looking to the right or left, he dashed out of the engine-house, muttering—
"Let it burst now and bury him!"
The engine went on quietly and evenly. The plungers of the pump rose and fell with their dull, dead thud. The water escaping far down in the well hissed in the depth and rayless night of the humid shaft.
III.
"What can be keeping him? It was just nine when I left the house. It must be past nine now—quite a quarter past. This is the first time he ever was late with me. I hope nothing is wrong. I did feel uneasy about his having all that money with him. But it's safe enough stitched up in his pocket."
The girl paced up and down the deserted road in the deep darkness of the hour. No timid blood ran in her veins, and she scorned the fear of solitude and night as a weakness or an affectation. She possessed the strict sincerity of simple natures, and had looked with indifference on all men until she gave her heart away for good and all.
There was no timid blood in her veins, but now her soul had cause of fear. She had no jealous or exacting doubt of her lover. She did not explain to herself his tardiness by any assurance of want of thought or ardour. She knew he would be with her if possible. What could be keeping him? Something serious beyond all doubt—something of grave and unpleasant moment. Something dire and unforeseen. She would, she could, bear suspense no longer. She must know all—the worst.
Gathering her shawl around her, she turned into the by-road leading to the Tower, and hurried forward. When she had got half-way she paused to look and listen.
She had been walking in the middle of the road. She moved to the left-hand side so as to command a view of the Tower door.
She bent her head forward and looked. Close to the ground in front of her burned a fiery light, like the eye of some gigantic beast crouching low for the spring. From this blazing eye now and then fell glittering drops like incandescent tears.
"The furnace! But I never saw it burn so bright before."
She listened.
There was a loud whirring and buzzing and groaning in the air fronting her, and the air around her shook and murmured.
"The engine! but I never heard it go so frantically before. Oh, what is the matter?"
She bent her head and caught her breath, and ran at the top of her speed towards the flaming eye—the panting beast.
In the doorway of the Tower she paused. By the light of the red-hot furnace door she saw the great wheel flying round like a circle of polished copper. She heard the pistons of the engine panting faster than a dog wild with flight. She felt the air of the room beat against her like the heart of a bird mad with terror. She felt the walls of the Tower vibrate like the parchment of a beaten drum.
"Will! Will! Where are you, Will?"
Out of the bowels of the earth beneath her came the answer—
"Fly!"
"Will! Where are you? Speak!"
"Away! For your life! Away!"
"Where are you?" She crosses the floor and stands close to the whirring fly-wheel—close to the yawning abyss.
Up out of that abyss comes the voice a third time—
"Fly, for your life. The engine must burst in a few minutes. Fly!"
She now knows whence the voice comes. She leans over. She can see nothing. It seems as though the Tower must be shaken down from its summit.
"What can I do for you?"
"Fly, I say! Fly at once if you love me. I am a dead man. There is not a moment. Go, I say, or I will think you hate me. Save yourself; I am a dead man."
"I will not go."
She kneels down and leans over the pit.
"Go, or I shall curse you with my dying breath. I'm a dead man. Nothing can save me. Oh, give me the one thought to cheer me before the end, Kat—the thought that you are safe!"
"I will stay and die with you," she says.
"I tell you it is a matter of a few seconds. Oh, go, go! For the love of me—for the love of Heaven—fly!"
"I shall stay and die with you."
"You are not going! I can hear by your voice you are looking down. Listen, while you are there the plates of the boilers are opening. In a minute you must die if you stay."
"I shall stay and die. Can I do nothing while I wait? Can I not let off steam?"
"No, no; that would be sudden death."
"Let water into the boiler?"
"No no; that would be worse."
"Can I do nothing for you?"
"Oh yes, yes, yes, my darling, you can."
"What?"
"Fly!"
"I have told you I shall die here. Can I do nothing for you, darling; for us?"
"Then, in Heaven's name be it! Take the rod by the door, and knock out the furnace bars."
"Yes; I know. How?"
"Open the furnace and prise the bars up."
"Yes."
She springs up, wheels round, and seizes the long bar standing by the door.
She knows more of these things than other women: he has told her much. By nature she is stronger than most women. The thought that she is trying to save him gives her the strength of a man.
She knocks up the latch of the furnace door and opens the door, and thrusts the long iron rod desperately into the fiercely burning fire. She raises the rod high above her head, and drives it down between two of the bars, and then springs into the air, and clutching the rod above her head, brings her whole weight on her iron lever. In the furnace rises a volcano of flame, followed by a subsidence, and then a heavy fall of red-hot coal to the bed of ashes beneath. In the sheet of liquid flame there is a break—a bar had fallen.
Then another, and another, and another. The rod has grown red-hot and bends.
"Four are out. The rod is red," she cries down the well.
"Cool it in the tank outside."
She dashes out and returns in a moment with the hissing and smoking iron in her hand.
After a while she calls down once more, "They are all out but three."
"That will do. We are saved. Sit down and rest."
"Can I do no more?"
"No. The engine will stop of itself. Sit down and rest."
Then she fainted.
* * * * *
"When I was shot down the well," said William Lee, explaining to Fred Merrick on Monday, as he was coming back from identifying Wood, the tramp, and his coat, and the brown-paper bag in which the money had been found save a sovereign and a half, "I caught the rods of the plungers in both arms, and before I knew where I was, found myself stopped by the head of the pump—that's forty feet down. The rods broke my fall so that I was not much hurt, though a good deal shaken. I tried half a dozen times to get up by the rods, but found I couldn't. They were too close together to use only one, and when I caught the two, the down stroke pushed me back faster than I could climb up. So I stood on the head of the pump and gave myself up for lost, for I knew from the water and the fire I had left in the engine that the boiler must burst. Well, I can't think of it now, but you know how she came and knocked the bars out and fainted and got help when she came to. I wonder I didn't turn grey. It makes me shiver to think of it. It's her willingness to die with me more than her saving my life that breaks me down. I feel that nearly too much to bear."