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Gwen Wynn: A Romance of the Wye

CHAPTER LXVI
THE LAST OF LEWIN MURDOCK

Once more a boat upon the Wye, passing between Rugg's Ferry and Llangorren Court, but this time descending. It is the same boat, and, as before, with two men in it; though they are not both the same who went up. One of them is Coracle Dick, still at the oars; while Father Rogier's place in the stern is now occupied by another – not sitting upright, as was the priest, but lying along the bottom timbers with head coggled over, and somewhat uncomfortably supported by the thwart.

This man is Lewin Murdock, in a state of helpless inebriety – in common parlance, drunk. He has been brought to the boat landing by the landlord of the Welsh Harp, where he has been all day carousing, and delivered to Dempsey, who now, at a late hour of the night, is conveying him homeward. His hat is down by his feet, instead of upon his head; and the moonbeams, falling unobstructed on his face, show it of a sickly whitish hue; while his eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, have each a demilune of dark purplish colour underneath. But for an occasional twitching of the facial muscles, with a spasmodic movement of the lips, and at intervals, a raucous noise through his nostrils, he might pass for dead, as readily as dead drunk.

Verily is the priest's prognosis based upon reliable data; for by the symptoms now displayed, Lewin Murdock is doing his best to destroy himself – drinking suicidally!

For all, he is not destined thus to die. His end will come even sooner, and, it may be, easier.

It is not distant now, but ominously near, as may be told by looking into the eyes of the man who sits opposite, and recalling the conversation late exchanged between him and Father Rogier. For in those dark orbs a fierce light scintillates, such as is seen in the eyes of the assassin contemplating assassination, or the jungle tiger when within springing distance of its prey.

Nothing of all this sees the sot, but lies unconscious, every now and then giving out a snore, regardless of danger, as though everything around were innocent as the pale moonbeams shimmering down upon his cadaverous cheeks.

Possibly he is dreaming, and if so, in all likelihood it is of a grand gas-lighted salon, with tables of tapis vert, carrying packs of playing cards, dice cubes, and ivory counters. Or the mise en scène of his visionary vagaries may be a drinking saloon, where he carouses with boon companions, their gambling limited to a simple tossing of odd and even, "heads or tails."

But if dreaming at all, it is not of what is near him; else, far gone as he is, he would be aroused – instinctively – to make a last struggle for life. For the thing so near is death.

The fiend who sits regarding him in this helpless condition – as it were holding Lewin Murdock's life, or the little left of it, in his hand – has unquestionably determined upon taking it. Why he does not do so at once is not because he is restrained by any motive of mercy, or reluctance to the spilling of blood. The heart of the ci-devant poacher, counterfeiter, and cracksman, has been long ago steeled against such silly and sensitive scruples. The postponement of his hellish purpose is due to a mere question of convenience. He dislikes the idea of having to trudge over miles of meadow in dripping garments!

True, he could drown the drunken man, and keep himself dry – every stitch. But that would not do; for there will be another coroner's inquest, at which he will have to be present. He has escaped the two preceding; but at this he will be surely called upon, and as principal witness. Therefore he must be able to say he was wet, and prove it as well. Into the river, then, will he go, along with his victim; though there is no need for his taking the plunge till he has got nearer to Llangorren.

So ingeniously contriving, he sits with arms mechanically working the oars; his eyes upon the doomed man, as those of a cat having a crippled mouse within easy reach of her claws, at any moment to be drawn in and destroyed!

Silently, but rapidly, he rows on, needing no steerer. Between Rugg's Ferry and Llangorren Court he is as familiar with the river's channel as a coachman with the carriage-drive to and from his master's mansion; knows its every curve and crook, every purl and pool, having explored them while paddling his little "truckle." And now, sculling the larger craft, it is all the same. And he pulls on, without once looking over his shoulder; his eyes alone given to what is directly in front of him – Lewin Murdock lying motionless at his feet.

As if himself moved by a sudden impulse – impatience, or the thought it might be as well to have the dangerous work over – he ceases pulling, and acts as though he were about to unship the oars.

But again he seems suddenly to change his intention; on observing a white fleck by the river's edge, which he knows to be the lime-washed walls of the widow Wingate's cottage, at the same time remembering that the main road passes by it.

What if there be some one on the road, or the river's bank, and be seen in the act of capsizing his own boat? True, it is after midnight, and not likely any one abroad – even the latest wayfarer. But there might be; and in such clear moonlight his every movement could be made out.

That place will not do for the deed of darkness he is contemplating; and he trembles to think how near he has been to committing himself!

Thus warned to the taking of precautions hitherto not thought of, he proceeds onward, summoning up before his mind the different turns and reaches of the river, all the while mentally anathematising the moon. For, besides convenience of place, time begins to press, even trouble him, as he recalls the proverb of the cup and the lip.

He is growing nervously impatient – almost apprehensive of failure, through fear of being seen – when, rounding a bend, he has before him the very thing he is in search of – the place itself. It is a short, straight reach, where the channel is narrow, with high banks on both sides, and trees overhanging, whose shadows, meeting across, shut off the hated light, shrouding the whole water surface in deep obscurity. It is but a little way above the lone farmhouse of Abergann, and the mouth of the brook which there runs in. But Coracle Dick is not thinking of either – only of the place being appropriate for his diabolical design.

And, becoming satisfied it is so, he delays no longer, but sets about its execution – carrying it out with an adroitness which should fairly entitle him to the double reward promised by the priest. Having unshipped the oars, he starts to his feet; and mounting upon the thwart, there for a second or two stands poised and balancing. Then, stepping to the side, he sets foot on the gunwale rail with his whole body's weight borne upon it.

In an instant over goes the boat, careening bottom upwards, and spilling Lewin Murdock, as himself, into the mad, surging river!

The drunken man goes down like a lump of lead; possibly without pain, or the consciousness of being drowned; only supposing it the continuation of his dream!

Satisfied he has gone down, the assassin cares not how. He has enough to think of in saving himself, enough to do swimming in his clothes, even to the boots.

He reaches the bank, nevertheless, and climbs up it, exhausted; shivering like a water spaniel, for snow has fallen on Plinlimmon, and its thaw has to do with the freshet in the stream.

But the chill of the Wye's water is nought compared with that sent through his flesh, to the very marrow of his bones, on discovering he has crawled out upon the spot – the self-same spot – where the waves gave back another body he had consigned to them – that of Mary Morgan!

For a moment he stands horror-struck, with hair on end, the blood curdling in his veins. Then, nerving himself to the effort, he hitches up his dripping trousers, and hurries away from the accursed place – by himself accursed – taking the direction of Llangorren, but giving a wide berth to Abergann.

He has no fear of approaching the former in wet garments; instead, knows that in this guise he will be all the more warmly welcomed – as he is!

Mrs. Murdock sits up late for Lewin – though with little expectation of his coming home. Looking out of the window, in the moonlight she sees a man, who comes striding across the carriage sweep, and up into the portico.

Rushing to the door to receive him, she exclaims, in counterfeit surprise, —

"You, Monsieur Richard! Not my husband!"

When Coracle Dick has told his sad tale, shaped to suit the circumstances, her half-hysterical ejaculation might be supposed a cry of distress. Instead, it is one of ecstatic delight she is unable to restrain at knowing herself now sole owner of the house over her head, and the land for miles around it!

CHAPTER LXVII
A CHAPTER DIPLOMATIC

Another day has dawned, another sun set upon Boulogne; and Major Mahon is again in his dining-room, with Captain Ryecroft, his sole guest.

The cloth has been removed, the Major's favourite after-dinner beverage brought upon the table, and, with punches "brewed" and cigars set alight, they have commenced conversation upon the incidents of the day – those especially relating to Ryecroft's business in Boulogne.

The Major has had another interview with his sister – a short one, snatched while she was out with her school companions for afternoon promenade. It has added some further particulars to those they had already learnt, both about the English girl confined within the nunnery, and the priest who conveyed her thither. That the latter was Father Rogier is placed beyond a doubt by a minute description of his person given to Miss Mahon, well known to the individual who gave it. To the nuns within that convent the man's name is familiar – even to his baptismal appellation, Gregoire; for although the Major has pronounced all the sacerdotal fraternity alike, in being black, this particular member of it is of a shade deeper than common – a circumstance of itself going a good way towards his identification. Even within that sacred precinct where he is admitted, a taint attaches to him; though what its nature the young lady has not yet been able to ascertain.

The information thus obtained tallies with the estimate of the priest's character, already formed; in correspondence, too, with the theory that he is capable of the crime Captain Ryecroft believes him to have abetted, if not actually committed. Nor is it contradicted by the fact of his being a frequent visitor to the nunnery, and a favourite with the administration thereof; indeed, an intimate friend of the Abbess herself. Something more, in a way accounting for all: that the new novice is not the first agneau d'Angleterre he has brought over to Boulogne, and guided into that same fold, more than one of them having ample means, not only to provision themselves, but a surplus for the support of the general sisterhood.

There is no word about any of these English lambs having been other than voluntary additions to the French flock; but a whisper circulates within the convent walls, that Father Rogier's latest contribution is a recusant, and if she ever becomes a nun, it will be a forced one; that the thing is contre cœur– in short, she protests against it.

Jack Wingate can well believe that; still under full conviction that "Sœur Marie" is Mary Morgan; and, despite all its grotesque strangeness and wild improbability, Captain Ryecroft has pretty nearly come to the same conclusion; while the Major, with less knowledge of antecedent circumstances, but more of nunneries, never much doubted it.

"About the best way to get the girl out. What's your idea, Mahon?"

Ryecroft asks the question in no careless or indifferent way; on the contrary, with a feeling earnestness. For, although the daughter of the Wyeside farmer is nought to him, the Wye waterman is; and he has determined on seeing the latter through – to the end of the mysterious affair. In difficulties Jack Wingate has stood by him, and he will stand by Jack, coûte-que-coûte. Besides, figuratively speaking, they are still in the same boat. For if Wingate's dead sweetheart, so strangely returned to life, can be also restored to liberty, the chances are she may be the very one wanted to throw light on the other and, alas! surer death. Therefore, Captain Ryecroft is not all unselfish in backing up his boatman; nor, as he puts the question, being anxious about the answer.

"We'll have to use strategy," returns the Major; not immediately, but after taking a grand gulp out of his tumbler, and a vigorous draw at his regalia.

"But why should we?" impatiently demands the Captain. "If the girl have been forced in there, and's kept against her will – which, by all the probabilities, she is – surely she can be got out, on demand being made by her friends?"

"That's just what isn't sure – though the demand were made by her own mother, with the father to back it. You forget, old fellow, that you're in France, not England."

"But there's a British Consul in Boulogne."

"Ay, and a British Foreign Minister, who gives that Consul his instructions; with some queer ideas besides, neither creditable to himself nor his country. I'm speaking of that jaunty diplomat – the "judicious bottle-holder," who is accustomed to cajole the British public with his blarney about civis Romanus sum."

"True; but does that bear upon our affair?"

"It does – almost directly."

"In what way? I do not comprehend."

"Because you're not up to what's passing over here – I mean at headquarters – the Tuilleries, or St. Cloud, if you prefer it. There the man – if man he can be called – is ruled by the woman; she in her turn the devoted partisan of Pio Nono and the unprincipled Antonelli."

"I can understand all that; still, I don't quite see its application, or how the English Foreign Minister can be interested in those you allude to!"

"I do. But for him, not one of the four worthies spoken of would be figuring as they are. In all probability France would still be a republic instead of an empire, wicked as the world ever saw; and Rome another republic – it may be all Italy – with either Mazzini or Garibaldi at its head. For, certain as you sit there, old boy, it was the judicious bottle-holder who hoisted Nap into an imperial throne, over that Presidential chair, so ungratefully spurned – scurvily kicked behind after it had served his purpose. A fact of which the English people appear to be yet in purblind ignorance! as they are of another, equally notable, and alike misunderstood: that it was this same civis Romanus sum who restored old Pio to his apostolic chair; those red-breeched ruffians, the Zouaves, being but so much dust thrown into people's eyes – a bone to keep the British bull-dog quiet. He would have growled then, and will yet, when he comes to understand all these transactions; when the cloak of that scoundrelly diplomacy which screens them has rotted into shreds, letting the light of true history shine upon them."

"Why, Mahon! I never knew you were such a politician! much less such a Radical!"

"Nothing much of either, old fellow; only a man who hates tyranny in every shape and form – whether religious or political. Above all, that which owes its existence to the cheapest, the very shabbiest, chicanery the world was ever bamboozled with. I like open dealing in all things."

"But you are not recommending it now – in this little convent matter?"

"Ah! that's quite a different affair! There are certain ends that justify certain means – when the devil must be fought with his own weapons. Ours is of that kind, and we must either use strategy, or give the thing up altogether. By open measures there wouldn't be the slightest chance of our getting this girl out of the convent's clutches. Even then we may fail; but, if successful, it will only be by great craft, some luck, and possibly a good deal of time spent before we accomplish our purpose."

"Poor fellow!" rejoins Ryecroft, speaking of the Wye waterman, "he won't like the idea of long waiting. He's madly, terribly impatient. This afternoon, as we were passing the convent, I had a difficulty to restrain him from rushing up to its door, ringing the bell, and demanding an interview with the 'Sœur Marie' – having his Mary, as he calls her, restored to him on the instant."

"It's well you succeeded in hindering that little bit of rashness. Had he done so, 'twould have ended not only in the door being slammed in his face, but another door shut behind his back – that of a gaol, from which he would never have issued till embarking on a voyage to New Caledonia or Cayenne. Ay, both of you might have been so served. For would you believe it, Ryecroft, that you, an officer of the boasted H.B.R.A., rich, and with powerful friends – even you could be not only here imprisoned, but deporté, without any one who has interest in you being the wiser; or, if so, having no power to prevent it. France, under the régime of Napoleon le Petit, is not so very different from what it was under the rule of Louis le Grand, and lettres de cachet are now rife as then. Nay, more of them now written, consigning men to a hundred bastilles instead of one. Never was a people so enslaved as these Johnny Crapauds are at this present time; not only their speech fettered, but their very thoughts held in bondage, or so constrained, they may not impart them to one another. Even intimate friends forbear exchanging confidences, lest one prove false to the other! Nothing free but insincerity and sin; both fostered and encouraged from that knowledge intuitive among tyrants; that wickedness weakens a people, making them easier to rule and ride over. So, my boy, you perceive the necessity of our acting with caution in this business, whatever trouble or time it may take – don't you?"

"I do."

"After all," pursues the Major, "it seems to me that time isn't of so much consequence. As regards the girl, they're not going to eat her up. And for the other matters concerning yourself, they'll keep, too. As you say, the scent's become cold; and a few days more or less can't make any difference. Beside, the trails we intend following may in the end all run into one. I shouldn't be at all surprised if this captive damsel has come to the knowledge of something connected with the other affair. Faith, that may be the very reason for their having her conveyed over here, to be cooped up for the rest of her life. In any case, the fact of her abduction, in such an odd, outrageous way, would of itself be damning collateral evidence against whoever has done it, showing him or them good for anything. So, the first work on our hands, as the surest, is to get the waterman's sweetheart out of the convent, and safe back to her home in Herefordshire."

"That's our course, clearly. But have you any thoughts as to how we should proceed?"

"I have; more than thoughts – hopes of success – and sanguine ones."

"Good! I'm glad to hear it. Upon what do you base them?"

"On that very near relative of mine – Sister Kate. As I've told you, she's a pet of the Lady Superior; admitted into the very arcana of the establishment. And with such privilege, if she can't find a way to communicate with any one therein closeted, she must have lost the mother wit born to her, and brought thither from the 'brightest gem of the say.' I don't think she has, or that it's been a bit blunted in Boulogne. Instead, somewhat sharpened by communion with these Holy Sisters; and I've no fear but that 'twill be sharp to serve us in the little scheme I've in part sketched out."

"Let me hear it, Mahon."

"Kate must obtain an interview with the English girl; or, enough if she can slip a note into her hand. That would go some way towards getting her out – by giving her intimation that friends are near."

"I see what you mean," rejoins the Captain, pulling away at his cigar, the other left to finish giving details of the plan he has been mentally projecting.

"We'll have to do a little bit of burglary, combined with abduction. Serve them out in their own coin; as it were, hoisting the priest on his own petard!"

"It will be difficult, I fear."

"Of course it will, and dangerous. Likely more the last than the first. But it'll have to be done, else we may drop the thing entirely."

"Never, Mahon! No matter what the danger, I for one am willing to risk it. And we can reckon on Jack Wingate. He'll be only too ready to rush into it."

"Ah! there might be more danger through his rashness. But it must be held in check. After all, I don't apprehend so much difficulty if things be dexterously managed. Fortunately there's a circumstance in our favour."

"What is it?"

"A window."

"Ah! Where?"

"In the convent, of course. That which gives light – not much of it either – to the cloister where the girl is confined. By a lucky chance my sister has learnt the particular one, and seen the window from the outside. It looks over the grounds where the nuns take recreation, now and then allowed intercourse with the school girls. She says it's high up, but not higher than the top of the garden wall; so a ladder that will enable us to scale the one should be long enough to reach the other. I'm more dubious about the dimensions of the window itself. Kate describes it as only a small affair, with an upright bar in the middle – iron, she believes. Wood or iron, we may manage to remove that; but if the Herefordshire bacon has made your farmer's daughter too big to screw herself through the aperture, then it'll be all up a tree with us. However, we must find out before making the attempt to extract her. From what sister has told me, I fancy we can see the window from the Ramparts above. If so, we may make a distant measurement of it by guess work. Now," continues the Major, coming to his programme of action, "what's got to be done first is that your Wye boatman write a billet doux to his old sweetheart – in the terms I shall dictate to him. Then my sister must contrive, in some way, to put it in the girl's hands, or see that she gets it."

"And what after?"

"Well, nothing much after; only that we must make preparations for the appointment the waterman will make in his epistle."

"It may as well be written now – may it not?"

"Certainly; I was just thinking of that. The sooner, the better. Shall I call him in?"

"Do as you think proper, Mahon. I trust everything to you."

The Major, rising, rings a bell, which brings Murtagh to the dining-room door.

"Murt, tell your guest in the kitchen we wish a word with him."

The face of the Irish soldier vanishes from view, soon after replaced by that of the Welsh waterman.

"Step inside, Wingate!" says the Captain; which the other does, and remains standing to hear what the word was wanted.

"You can write, Jack, can't you?"

It is Ryecroft who puts the inquiry.

"Well, Captain, I ain't much o' a penman, but I can scribble a sort o' rough hand after a fashion."

"A fair enough hand for Mary Morgan to read it, I dare say."

"Oh, sir, I only weesh there wor a chance o' her gettin' a letter from me!"

"There is a chance. I think we can promise that. If you'll take this pen and put down what my friend Major Mahon dictates to you, it will in all probability be in her hands ere long."

Never was pen more eagerly laid hold of than that offered to Jack Wingate. Then, sitting down to the table as directed, he waits to be told what he is to write.

The Major, bent over him, seems cogitating what it should be. Not so, however. Instead, he is occupied with an astronomical problem which is puzzling him. For its solution he appeals to Ryecroft, asking, —

"How about the moon?"

"The moon?"

"Yes. Which quarter is she in? For the life of me, I can't tell."

"Nor I," rejoins the Captain. "I never think of such a thing."

"She's in her last," puts in the boatman, accustomed to take note of lunar changes. "It be an old moon now shining all the night, when the sky an't clouded."

"You're right, Jack!" says Ryecroft. "Now I remember; it is the old moon."

"In which case," adds the Major, "we must wait for the new one. We want darkness after midnight – must have it – else we cannot act. Let me see; when will that be?"

"The day week," promptly responds the waterman. "Then she'll be goin' down, most as soon as the sun's self."

"That'll do," says the Major. "Now to the pen!"

Squaring himself to the table, and the sheet of paper spread before him, Wingate writes to dictation. No words of love, but what inspires him with a hope he may once more speak such in the ears of his beloved Mary!