Baring-Gould Sabine
In the Roar of the Sea
Judith had stood on the opposite side of the street looking up at Scantlebray’s establishment; she saw no light anywhere. Now she drew near and crept along the walls. There was a long wing, with its back to the street, without a window in the wall, and she thought it probable that the inmates of the asylum were accommodated therein, a dormitory up-stairs, play or school-rooms below. There Jamie must be. The only windows to this wing opened into the garden; and consequently Judith stole along the garden wall, turned the angle, down a little lane, and stood listening. The wall was high, and the summit encrusted with broken glass. She could see the glass prongs by the flicker of the lightning. She could not possibly see over the wall; the lane was too narrow for her to go back far, and the wall on the further side too high to climb. Not a sound from within reached her ears.
In the still night she stood holding her breath.
Then a scream startled her.
It was the cry of a gull flying inland.
If a gull’s cry could be heard, then surely that of her brother, were he awake and unhappy, and wanting her.
She went further down the wall, and came on a small garden gate in it, fastened, locked from within. It had a stone step. On that she sank, and laid her head in her hands.
CHAPTER XXV
FOUND
Strange mystery of human sympathy! inexplicable, yet very real. Irrational, yet very potent. The young mother has accepted an invitation to a garden-party. She knows that she never looked better than at present, with a shade of delicacy about her. She has got a new bonnet that is particularly becoming, and which she desires to wear in public. She has been secluded from society for several months, and she longs to meet her friends again. She knows that she is interesting, and believes herself to be more interesting than she really is. So she goes. She is talking, laughing, a little flushed with pleasure, when suddenly she becomes grave, the hand that holds the plate of raspberries and cream trembles. All her pleasure is gone. She knows that baby is crying. Her eye wanders in quest of her husband, she runs to him, touches his arm, says —
“Do order the carriage; baby is crying.”
It is all fiddle-de-dee. Baby has the best of nurses, the snuggest, daintiest little cot; has a fresh-opened tin of condensed Swiss milk. Reason tells her that; but no! and nurse cannot do anything to pacify the child, baby is crying, nurse is in despair.
In like manner now did Judith argue with herself, without being able to convince her heart. Her reason spoke and said to her —
No sound of cries comes from the asylum. There is no light in any window. Every inmate is asleep, Jamie among them. He does not need you. He is travelling in dreamland. The Scantlebrays have been kind to him. The lady is a good, motherly body; the gentleman’s whole soul is devoted to finding amusement and entertainment for the afflicted creatures under his care. He has played tricks before Jamie, made shadow-pictures on the wall, told funny stories, made jacks-in-the-box with his hands, and Jamie has laughed till he was tired, and his heavy eyes closed with a laugh not fully laughed out on his lips. The Scantlebrays are paid £70 for taking care of Jamie, and £70 in Judith’s estimation was a very princely sum. The £70 per annum Mr. Scantlebray would corruscate into his richest fun, and Mrs. Scantlebray’s heart overflowed with warmest maternal affection.
But it was in vain that Judith thus reasoned, her heart would not be convinced. An indescribable unrest was in her, and would not be laid. She knew by instinct that Jamie wanted her, was crying for her, was stretching out his hands in the dark for her.
As she sat on the step not only did reason speak, but judgment also. She could do nothing there. She had acted a foolish part in coming all that way in the dark, and without a chance of effecting any deliverance to Jamie now she had reached her destination. She had committed an egregious error in going such a distance from home, from anyone who might serve as protector to her in the event of danger, and there were other dangers she might encounter than having stones thrown at her by drunken men. If the watch were to find her there, what explanation of her presence could she give? Would they take her away and lock her up for the rest of the night? They could not leave her there. Large, warm drops, like tears from angels’ eyes, fell out of heaven upon her folded hands, and on her bowed neck.
She began to feel chilled after having been heated by her walk, so she rose, and found that she had become stiff. She must move about, however sore and weary her feet might be.
She had explored the lane as far as was needful. She could not see from it into the house, the garden, and playground. Was it possible that there was a lane on the further side of the house which would give her the desired opportunity?
Judith resolved to return by the way she had come, down the lane into the main street, then to walk along the front of the house, and explore the other side. As she was descending the lane she noticed, about twenty paces from the door, on the further side, a dense mass of Portugal laurel that hung over the opposite wall, casting a shadow of inky blackness into the lane. This she considered might serve her as shelter when the threatening storm broke and the rain poured down. She walked through this shadow, and would have entered the street, but that she perceived certain dark objects passing noiselessly along it. By the flashes of lightning she could distinguish men with laden asses, and one she saw turn to enter the lane where she was. She drew back hastily into the blot cast by the bush that swung its luxuriance over the wall, and drew as closely back to the wall as was possible. Thus she could not be seen, for the reflection of the lightning would not fall on her; every glare made the shadow seem the deeper. Though concealed herself, and wholly invisible, she was able to distinguish a man with an ass passing by, and then halting at the door in the wall that surrounded Mr. Obadiah’s tenement. There the man knocked, and uttered a peculiar whistle. As there ensued no immediate answer he knocked and whistled again, whereupon the door was opened; and a word or two was passed.
“How many do you want, sir?”
“Four.”
“Any to help to carry the half-ankers!”
“No.”
“Well, no odds. I’ll carry one and you the t’other. We’ll make two journeys, that’s all. I can’t leave Neddy for long, but I’ll go with you to your house-door.”
Probably the person addressed nodded a reply in the darkness; he made no audible answer.
“Which is it, Mr. Obadiah, rum or brandy?”
“Brandy.”
“Right you are, then. These are brandy. You won’t take three brandies and one rum?”
“Yes.”
“All right, sir; lead the way. It’s deuced dark.”
Judith knew what this signified. Some of the householders of Wadebridge were taking in their supplies of spirits from the smugglers. Owing to the inconvenience of it being unlawful to deal with these men for such goods, they had to receive their purchases at night, and with much secrecy. There were watchmen at Wadebridge, but on such nights they judiciously patrolled another quarter of the town than that which received its supplies. The watchmen were municipal officials, and were not connected with the excise, had no particular regard for the inland revenue, anyhow, owed no duties to the officers of the coast-guard. Their superior was the mayor, and the mayor was fond of buying his spirits at the cheapest market.
Both men disappeared. The door was left open behind them. The opportunity Judith had desired had come. Dare she seize it? For a moment she questioned her heart, then she resolutely stepped out of the shadow of the Portugal laurel, brushed past the patient ass, entered the grounds of Mr. Scantlebray’s establishment through the open garden-door, and drew behind a syringa bush to consider what further step she should take. In another moment both men were back.
“You are sure you don’t mind one rum?”
“No.”
“Right you are, then; I’ll have it for you direct. The other kegs are at t’other end of the lane. You come with me, and we’ll have ’em down in a jiffy.”
Judith heard both men pass out of the door. She looked toward the house. There was a light low down in a door opening into the garden or yard where she was.
Not a moment was to be lost. As soon as the last kegs were brought in the house-door would be locked, and though she had entered the garden she would be unable to penetrate to the interior of the asylum. Without hesitation, strong in her earnest purpose to help Jamie to the utmost of her power, and grasping at every chance that offered, she hastened, cautiously indeed, but swiftly, to the door whence the light proceeded. The light was but a feeble one, and cast but a fluttering ray upon the gravel. Judith was careful to walk where it could not fall on her dress.
The whole garden front of the house was now before her. She was in a sort of gravelled yard, with some bushes against the walls. The main block of the house lay to her right, and the view of it was intercepted by a wall. Clearly the garden space was divided, one portion for the house, and another, that into which she had entered, for the wing. That long wing rose before her with its windows all dark above, and the lower or ground floor also dark. Only from the door issued the light, and she saw that a guttering tallow candle was set there on the floor.
Hastily she drew back. She heard feet on the gravel. The men were returning, Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray and the smuggler, each laden with a small cask of spirits.
“Right you are,” said the man, as he set his keg down in the passage, “that’s yours, and I could drink your health, sir.”
“You wouldn’t – prefer? – ” Mr. Scantlebray made contortions with his hands between the candle and the wall, and threw a shadow on the surface of plaster.
“No, thanks sir, I’d prefer a shilling.”
Mr. Scantlebray fumbled in his pockets, grunted “Humph! purse up-stairs.” Felt again, “No,” groped inside the breast of his waistcoat, “another time – not forget.”
The man muttered something not complimentary, and turned to go through the yard.
“Must lock door,” said Mr. Obadiah, and went after him. Now was Judith’s last chance. She took it at once; the moment the backs of the two men were turned she darted into the passage and stood back against the door out of the flare of the candle.
The passage was a sort of hall with slated floor, the walls plastered and whitewashed at one time, but the wash and plaster had been picked off to about five feet from the floor wherever not strongly adhesive, giving a diseased and sore look to the wall. The slates of the floor were dirty and broken.
Judith looked along the hall for a place to which she could retreat on the return of the proprietor of the establishment. She had entered that portion of the building tenanted by the unhappy patients. The meanness of the passage, the picked walls, the situation on one side of the comfortable residence showed her this. A door there was on the right, ajar, that led into the private dwelling-house, but into that Judith did not care to enter. One further down on the left probably gave access to some apartment devoted to the “pupils,” as Mrs. Scantlebray called the patients.
There was, however, another door that was open, and from it descended a flight of brick steps to what Judith conjectured to be the cellars. At the bottom a second candle, in a tin candlestick, was guttering and flickering in the draught that blew in at the yard door, and descended to this underground story. It was obvious to the girl that Mr. Scantlebray was about to carry or roll his kegs just acquired down the brick steps to his cellar. For that purpose he had set a candle there. It would not therefore do for her, to attempt to avoid him, to descend to this lower region. She must pass the door that gave access to the cellars, a door usually locked, as she judged, for a large iron key stood in the lock, and enter the room, the door of which opened further down the passage.
She was drawing her skirts together, so as to slip past the candle on the passage floor for this purpose, when her heart stood still as though she had received a blow on it. She heard – proceeding from somewhere beneath down those steps – a moan, then a feeble cry of “Ju! Where are you? Ju! Ju! Ju!”
She all but did cry out herself. A gasp of pain and horror did escape her, and then, without a thought of how she could conceal herself, how avoid Scantlebray, she ran down the steps to the cellar.
On reaching the bottom she found that there were four doors, two of which had square holes cut in them, but with iron bars before these openings. The door of one of the others, one on the left, was open, and she could see casks and bottles. It was a wine and spirit cellar, and the smell of wine issued from it.
She stood panting, frightened, fearing what she might discover, doubting whether she had heard her brother’s voice or whether she was a prey to fancy. Then again she heard a cry and a moan. It issued from the nearest cell on her right hand.
“Jamie! my Jamie!” she cried.
“Ju! Ju!”
The door was hasped, with a crook let into a staple so that it might, if necessary, be padlocked. But now it was simply shut and a wooden peg was thrust through the eye of the crook.
She caught up the candle, and with trembling hand endeavored to unfasten the door, but so agitated was she, so blinded with horror, that she could not do so till she had put down the candle again. Then she forced the peg from its place and raised the crook. She stooped and took up the candle once more, and then, with a short breath and a contraction of the breast, threw open the door, stepped in, and held up the light.
The candle flame irradiated what was but a cellar compartment vaulted with brick, once whitewashed, now dirty with cobwebs and accumulated dust and damp stains. It had a stone shelf on one side, on which lay a broken plate and some scraps of food.
Against the further wall was a low truckle bed, with a mattress on it and some rags of blanket. Huddled on this lay Jamie, his eyes dilated with terror, and yet red with weeping. His clothes had been removed, except his shirt. His long red-gold hair had lost all its gloss and beauty, it was wet with sweat and knotted. The boy’s face was ghastly in the flickering light.
Judith dropped the candle on the floor, and rushed with outstretched arms, and a cry – piercing, but beaten back on her by the walls and vault of the cell – and caught the frightened boy to her heart.
“Jamie! O my Jamie! my Jamie!”
She swayed herself, crying, in the bed, holding him to her, with no thought, her whole being absorbed in a spasm of intensest, most harrowing pain. The tallow candle was on the slate floor, fallen, melting, spluttering, flaming.
And in the door, holding the brandy keg upon his shoulders, stood, with open eyes and mouth, Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray.
CHAPTER XXVI
AN UNWILLING PRISONER
Mr. Obadiah stood open-mouthed staring at the twins clasped in each other’s arms, unable at first to understand what he saw. Then a suspicion entered his dull brain, he uttered a growl, put down the keg, his heavy brows contracted, he shut his mouth, drawing in his lips so that they disappeared, and he clenched his hands.
“Wait – I’ll beat you!” he said.
The upset candle was on the floor, now half molten, with a pond of tallow burning with a lambent blue flicker trembling on extinction, then shooting up in a yellow flame.
In that uncertain, changeful, upward light the face of the man looked threatening, remorseless, so that Judith, in a paroxysm of fear for her brother and herself dropped, on her knee, and caught at the tin candlestick as the only weapon of defence accessible. It was hot and burnt her fingers, but she did not let go; and as she stood up the dissolved candle fell from it among some straw that littered the pavement. This at once kindled and blazed up into golden flame.
For a moment the cell was full of light. Mr. Obadiah at once saw the danger. His casks of brandy were hard by – the fume of alcohol was in the air – if the fire spread and caught his stores a volume of flame would sweep up the cellar stair and set his house on fire. He hastily sprang in, and danced about the cell stamping furiously at the ignited wisps. Judith, who saw him rush forward, thought he was about to strike her and Jamie, and raised the tin candlestick in self-defence; but when she saw him engaged in trampling out the fire, tearing at the bed to drag away the blankets with which to smother the embers, she drew Jamie aside from his reach, sidled, with him clinging to her, along the wall, and by a sudden spring reached the passage, slammed the door, fastened the hasp, and had the gaoler secured in his own gaol.
For a moment Mr. Scantlebray was unaware that he was a prisoner, so busily engaged was he in trampling out the fire, but the moment he did realize the fact he slung himself with all his force against the door.
Judith looked round her. There was now no light in the cellar but the feeble glimmer that descended the stair from the candle above. The flame of that was now burning steadily, for the door opening into the yard was shut, and the draught excluded.
In dragging Jamie along with her, Judith had drawn forth a scanty blanket that was about his shoulders. She wrapped it round the boy.
“Let me out!” roared Scantlebray. “Don’t understand. Fun – rollicking fun.”
Judith paid no attention to his bellow. She was concerned only to escape with Jamie. She was well aware that her only chance was by retaining Mr. Obadiah where he was.
“Let me out!” again shouted the prisoner; and he threw himself furiously against the door. But though it jarred on its hinges and made the hasp leap, he could not break it down. Nevertheless, so big and strong was the man that it was by no means improbable that his repeated efforts might start a staple or snap a hinge band, and he and the door might come together crashing down into the passage between the cells.
Judith drew Jamie up the steps, and on reaching the top shut the cellar door. Below, Mr. Scantlebray roared, swore, shouted, and beat against the door; but now his voice, and the sound of his blows were muffled, and would almost certainly be inaudible in the dwelling-house. No wonder that Judith had not heard the cries of her brother. It had never occurred to her that the hapless victim of the keeper of the asylum might be chastised, imprisoned, variously maltreated in regions underground, whence no sounds of distress might reach the street, and apprise the passers-by that all was not laughter within. Standing in the passage or hall above, Judith said:
“Oh, Jamie! where are your clothes?”
The boy looked into her face with a vacant and distressed expression. He could not answer, he did not even understand her question, so stupefied was he by his terrors, and the treatment he had undergone.
Judith took the candle from the floor and searched the hall. Nothing was there save Mr. Scantlebray’s coat, which he had removed and cast across one of the kegs when he prepared to convey them down to his cellar. Should she take that? She shook her head at the thought. She would not have it said that she had taken anything out of the house, except only – as that was an extreme necessity, the blanket wrapped about Jamie. She looked into the room that opened beyond the cellar door. It was a great bare apartment, containing only a table and some forms.
“Jamie!” she said, “we must get away from this place as we are. There is no help for it. Do you not know where your clothes were put?”
He shook his head. He clung to her with both arms, as though afraid, if he held by but one that she would slip away and vanish, as one drowning, clinging to the only support that sustained him from sinking.
“Come, Jamie! It cannot be otherwise!” She set down the candle, opened the door into the yard, and issued forth into the night along with the boy. The clouds had broken, and poured down their deluge of warm thunder rain. In the dark Judith was unable to find her direction at once, she reached the boundary wall where was no door.
Jamie uttered a cry of pain.
“What is it, dear?”
“The stones cut my feet.”
She felt along the wall with one hand till she touched the jamb, then pressed against the door itself. It was shut. She groped for the lock. No key was in it. She could as little escape from that enclosure as she could enter into it from without. The door was very solid, and the lock big and secure. What was to be done? Judith considered for a moment, standing in the pouring rain through which the lightning flashed obscurely, illumining nothing. It seemed to her that there was but one course open to her, to return and obtain the key from Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray. But it would be no easy matter to induce him to surrender it.
“Jamie! will you remain at the door? Here under the wall is some shelter. I must go back.”
But the boy was frightened at the prospect of being deserted.
“Then – Jamie, will you come back with me to the house?”
No, he would not do that.
“I must go for the key, dearest,” she said, coaxingly. “I cannot open the door, so that we can escape, unless I have the key. Will you do something for Ju? Sit here, on the steps, where you are somewhat screened from the rain, and sing to me something, one of our old songs – A jolly hawk and his wings were gray? sing that, that I may hear your voice and find my way back to you. Oh – and here, Jamie, your feet are just the size of mine, and so you shall pull on my shoes. Then you will be able to run alongside of me and not hurt your soles.”
With a little persuasion she induced him to do as she asked. She took off her own shoes and gave them to him, then went across the yard to where was the house, she discovered the door by a little streak of light below it and the well trampled and worn threshold stone. She opened the door, took up the candle and again descended the steps to the cellar floor. On reaching the bottom, she held up the light and saw that the door was still sound; at the square barred opening was the red face of Mr. Scantlebray.
“Let me out,” he roared.
“Give me the key of the garden door.”
“Will you let me out if I do?”
“No; but this I promise, as soon as I have escaped from your premises I will knock and ring at your front door till I have roused the house, and then you will be found and released. By that time we shall have got well away.”
“I will not give you the key.”
“Then here you remain,” said Judith, and began to reascend the steps. It had occurred to her, suddenly, that very possibly the key she desired was in the pocket of the coat Mr. Scantlebray had cast off before descending to the cellar. She would hold no further communication with him till she had ascertained this. He yelled after her “Let me out, and you shall have the key.” But she paid no attention to his promise. On reaching the top of the stairs, she again shut the door, and took up his coat. She searched the pockets. No key was within.
She must go to him once more.
He began to shout as he saw the flicker of the candle approach. “Here is the key, take it, and do as you said.” His hand, a great coarse hand, was thrust through the opening in the door, and in it was the key she required.
“Very well,” said she, “I will do as I undertook.”
She put her hand, the right hand, up to receive the key. In her left was the candlestick. Suddenly he let go the key that clinked down on the floor outside, and made a clutch at her hand and caught her by the wrist. She grasped the bar in the little window, or he would have drawn her hand in, dragged her by the arm up against the door, and broken it. He now held her wrist and with his strong hand strove to wrench her fingers from their clutch.
“Unhasp the door!” he howled at her.
She did not answer other than with a cry of pain, as he worked with his hand at her wrist, and verily it seemed as though the fragile bones must snap under his drag.
“Unhasp the door!” he roared again.
With his great fingers and thick nails he began to thrust at and ploughed her knuckles; he had her by the wrist with one hand, and he was striving to loosen her hold of the bar with the other.
“Unhasp the door!” he yelled a third time, “or I’ll break every bone in your fingers!” and he brought his fist down on the side of the door to show how he would pound them by a blow. If he did not do this at once it was because he dreaded by too heavy a blow to strike the bar and wound himself while crushing her hand.
She could not hold the iron stanchion for more than another instant – and then he would drag her arm in, as a lion in its cage when it had laid hold of the incautious visitor, tears him to itself through the bars.
Then she brought the candle-flame up against his hand that grasped her wrist, and it played round it. He uttered a scream of pain, and let go for a moment. But that moment sufficed. She was free. The key was on the floor. She stooped to pick it up; but her fingers were as though paralyzed, she was forced to take it with the left hand and leave the candle on the floor. Then, holding the key she ran up the steps, ran out into the yard, and heard her brother wailing, “Ju! I want you! Where are you, Ju?”
Guided by his cries she reached the door. The key she put into the lock, and with a little effort turned it. The door opened, she and Jamie were free.
The door shut behind them. They were in the dark lane, under a pouring rain. But Judith thought nothing of the darkness, nothing of the rain. She threw her arms round her brother, put her wet cheek against his, and burst into tears.
“My Jamie! O my Jamie!”
But the deliverance of her brother was not complete; she must bring him back to Polzeath. She could allow herself but a moment for the relief of her heart, and then she caught him to her side, and pushed on with him along the lane till they entered the street. Here she stood for a moment in uncertainty. Was she bound to fulfil her engagement to Mr. Obadiah? She had obtained the key, but he had behaved to her with treachery. He had not intended the key to be other than a bait to draw her within his clutch, that he might torture her into opening the door of his cell. Nevertheless, she had the key, and Judith was too honorable to take advantage of him.
With Jamie still clinging to her she went up the pair of steps to the front door, rang the night-bell, and knocked long and loud. Then, all at once her strength that had lasted gave way, and she sank on the doorsteps, without indeed losing consciousness, but losing in an instant all power of doing or thinking, of striving any more for Jamie or for herself.
