“Cursed provoking!” echoed Jack.
“But then there’s no help, so I must make the best of it,” returned the good-humoured Irishman.
“Body o’ me,” said Coates, “there’s something in all this that I can’t fathom. As to keeping the prisoner here, that’s all moonshine. But I suppose we shall know the whole drift of it to-morrow.”
“Ay,” replied Jack, with a meaning smile, “to-morrow!”
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BOOK II
THE SEXTON
Duchess. Thou art very plain.
Bosola. My trade is to flatter the dead—not the living—I am a tomb-maker.
—WEBSTER
CHAPTER I
THE STORM
THE night was wild and stormy. The day had been sultry, with a lurid, metallic-looking sky, hanging like a vast galvanic plate over the face of nature. As evening drew on, everything betokened the coming tempest. Unerring indications of the approach were noted by the weather-wise at the hall. The swallow was seen to skim the surface of the pool so closely, that he ruffled its placid mirror as he passed; and then, sharply darting round and round, with twittering scream, he winged his rapid flight to his clay-built home beneath the barn eaves. The kine that had herded to the margin of the water, and sought, by splashing, to relieve themselves from the keen persecution of their myriad insect tormentors, wended stallwards, undriven, and deeply lowing. The deer, that at twilight had trooped thither also for refreshment, suddenly, “with expanded nostrils, snuffed the air,” and bounded off to their coverts, amidst the sheltering fernbrake. The rooks, “obstreperous of wing, in crowds combined,” cawed in a way that, as plainly as words could have done, bespoke their apprehension; and were seen, some hovering and beating the air with flapping pinion, others shooting upwards in mid space, as if to reconnoitre the weather; while others, again, were croaking to their mates, in loud discordant tone, from the highest branches of the lime-trees; all, seemingly, as anxious and as busy as mariners before a gale of wind.
At sunset, the hazy vapours, which had obscured the horizon throughout the day, rose up in spiral volumes, like smoke from a burning forest, and, becoming gradually condensed, assumed the form of huge, billowy masses, which, reflecting the sun’s light, changed, as the sinking orb declined, from purple to flame colour, and thence to ashy, angry grey. Night rushed onwards, like a sable steed. There was a dead calm. The stillness was undisturbed, save by an intermittent, sighing wind, which, hollow as a murmur from the grave, died as it rose. At once the grey clouds turned to an inky blackness. A single, sharp, intensely vivid flash shot from the bosom of the rack, sheer downwards, and struck the earth with a report like that of a piece of ordnance. In ten minutes it was dunnest night, and a rattling thunderstorm.
The progress of the storm was watched with infinite apprehension by the crowd of tenantry assembled in the great hall; and loud and frequent were the ejaculations uttered, as each succeeding peal burst over their heads. There was, however, one amongst the assemblage who seemed to enjoy the uproar. A kindred excitement appeared to blaze in his glances, as he looked upon the storm without. This was Peter Bradley. He stood close by the window, and shaded not his eyes, even before the fiercest flashes. A grin of unnatural exhilaration played upon his features, and he seemed to exult in, and to court, the tempestuous horrors, which affected the most hardy amongst his companions with consternation, and made all shrink trembling into the recesses of the room. Peter’s conduct was not unobserved, nor his reputation for unholy dealing forgotten. To some he was almost as much an object of dread as the storm itself.
“Didst ever see the like o’ that?” said farmer Burtenshaw (one of the guests, whose round, honest face, good wine had recently empurpled, but fear had now mottled white), addressing a neighbour. “Didst ever hear of any man that were a Christian laughing in the very face o’ a thunderstorm, with the lightnin’ fit to put out his eyes, and the rattle above ready to break the drums o’ his ears? I always thought Peter Bradley was not exactly what he ought to be, and now I am sure on it.”