Part 8 (1/2)

”As you are told?” interrupted Mitchelbourne.

”Yes, for I have never seen her. No, not so much as her miniature.

Nor have I seen her mother either, or any of the family, except the father, from whom I carry letters to introduce me. She lives in a house called 'The Porch' some miles from here. There is another house hard by to it, I understand, which has long stood empty and I have a mind to buy it. I bring a fortune, the lady a standing in the county.”

”And what has the lady to say to it?” asked Mitchelbourne.

”The lady!” replied Lance with a stare. ”Nothing but what is dutiful, I'll be bound. The father is under obligations to me.” He stopped suddenly, and Mitchelbourne, looking up, saw that his mouth had fallen. He sat with his eyes starting from his head and a face grey as lead, an image of panic pitiful to behold. Mitchelbourne spoke but got no answer. It seemed Lance could not answer--he was so arrested by a paralysis of terror. He sat staring straight in front of him, and it seemed at the mantelpiece which was just on a level with his eyes. The mantelpiece, however, had nothing to distinguish it from a score of others. Its counterpart might be found to this day in the parlour of any inn. A couple of china figures disfigured it, to be sure, but Mitchelbourne could not bring himself to believe that even their barbaric crudity had power to produce so visible a discomposure. He inclined to the notion that his companion was struck by a physical disease, perhaps some recrudescence of a malady contracted in those foreign lands of which he vaguely spoke.

”Sir, you are ill,” said Mitchelbourne. ”I will have a doctor, if there is one hereabouts to be found, brought to your relief.” He sprang up as he spoke, and that action of his roused Lance out of his paralysis. ”Have a care,” he cried almost in a shriek, ”Do not move!

For pity, sir, do not move,” and he in his turn rose from his chair.

He rose trembling, and swept the dust off a corner of the mantelpiece into the palm of his hand. Then he held his palm to the lamp.

”Have you seen the like of this before?” he asked in a low shaking voice.

Mitchelbourne looked over Lance's shoulder. The dust was in reality a very fine grain of a greenish tinge.

”Never!” said Mitchelbourne.

”No, nor I,” said Lance, with a sudden cunning look at his companion, and opening his fingers, as he let the grain run between them. But he could not remove as easily from Mitchelbourne's memories that picture he had shown him of a shaking and a shaken man. Mitchelbourne went to bed divided in his feelings between pity for the lady Lance was to marry, and curiosity as to Lance's apprehensions. He lay awake for a long time speculating upon that mysterious green seed which could produce so extraordinary a panic, and in the morning his curiosity predominated. Since, therefore, he had no particular destination he was easily persuaded to ride to Saxmundham with Mr. Lance, who, for his part, was most earnest for a companion. On the journey Lance gave further evidence of his fears. He had a trick of looking backwards whenever they came to a corner of the road--an habitual trick, it seemed, acquired by a continued condition of fear. When they stopped at midday to eat at an ordinary, he inspected the guests through the c.h.i.n.k at the hinges of the door before he would enter the room; and this, too, he did as though it had long been natural to him. He kept a bridle in his mouth, however; that little pile of grain upon the mantelshelf had somehow warned him into reticence, so that Mitchelbourne, had he not been addicted to his tobacco, would have learnt no more of the business and would have escaped the extraordinary peril which he was subsequently called upon to face.

But he _was_ addicted to his tobacco, and no sooner had he finished his supper that night at Saxmundham than he called for a pipe. The maidservant fetched a handful from a cupboard and spread them upon the table, and amongst them was one plainly of Barbary manufacture. It had a straight wooden stem painted with hieroglyphics in red and green and a small reddish bowl of baked earth. Nine men out of ten would no doubt have overlooked it, but Mitchelbourne was the tenth man. His fancies were quick to kindle, and taking up the pipe he said in a musing voice:

”Now, how in the world comes a Barbary pipe to travel so far over seas and herd in the end with common clays in a little Suffolk village?”

He heard behind him the grating of a chair violently pushed back. The pipe seemingly made its appeal to Mr. Lance also.

”Has it been smoked?” he asked in a grave low voice.

”The inside of the bowl is stained,” said Mitchelbourne.

Mitchelbourne had been inclined to believe that he had seen last evening the extremity of fear expressed in a man's face: he had now to admit that he had been wrong. Mr. Lance's terror was a Circe to him and sunk him into something grotesque and inhuman; he ran once or twice in a little tripping, silly run backwards and forwards like an animal trapped and out of its wits; and his face had the look of a man suffering from a nausea; so that Mitchelbourne, seeing him, was ashamed and hurt for their common nature.

”I must go,” said Lance babbling his words. ”I cannot stay. I must go.”

”To-night?” exclaimed Mitchelbourne. ”Six yards from the door you will be soaked!”

”Then there will be the fewer men abroad. I cannot sleep here! No, though it rained pistols and bullets I must go.” He went into the pa.s.sage, and calling his host secretly asked for his score.

Mitchelbourne made a further effort to detain him.

”Make an inquiry of the landlord first. It may be a mere shadow that frightens you.”

”Not a word, not a question,” Lance implored. The mere suggestion increased a panic which seemed incapable of increase. ”And for the shadow, why, that's true. The pipe's the shadow, and the shadow frightens me. A shadow! Yes! A shadow is a horrible, threatning thing!

Show me a shadow cast by nothing and I am with you. But you might as easily hold that this Barbary pipe floated hither across the seas of its own will. No! 'Ware shadows, I say.” And so he continued harping on the word, till the landlord fetched in the bill.

The landlord had his dissuasions too, but they availed not a jot more than Mr. Mitchelbourne's.

”The road is as black as a pauper's coffin,” said he, ”and d.a.m.nable with ruts.”

”So much the better,” said Lance.

”There is no house where you can sleep nearer than Glemham, and no man would sleep there could he kennel elsewhere.”

”So much the better,” said Lance. ”Besides, I am expected to-morrow evening at 'The Porch' and Glemham is on the way.” He paid his bill, slipped over to the stables and lent a hand to the saddling of his horse. Mitchelbourne, though for once in his life he regretted the precipitancy with which he welcomed strangers, was still sufficiently provoked to see the business to its end. His imagination was seized by the thought of this fat and vulgar person fleeing in terror through English lanes from a Barbary Moor. He had now a conjecture in his mind as to the nature of that greenish seed. He accordingly rode out with Lance toward Glemham.