HOUNDS PASTURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3766, 18 May 1926, Page 7

HOUNDS PASTURE

By

Vincent Cornier,

(Copyright.—For the Witness.)

CHAPTER XXII.—THORROLD'S CONSCIENCE. It was as though Fate had staged to perfection the last incredibly grim movement in the affairs of that mysterious irinity in infamy and olden hates which was Thorrold, of Thorroldan Priory, Leathley, and Benjamin Igod. . . For it came about that Leathley’s murderous attack on the Master of Thorroldan fhgned for him his own death warrant. Ben Igod had started forward to his toaster’s aid, but, almost in the same movement, recoiled horror-stricken. As the gaunt body of old Thorrold crashed to the study floor before the sledgehammer blow that Leathley had dealt—Leathley, apparently overbalancing, fell asprawl with it . . . and Leathley groaned, coughed in his chest—a muffled sound—. • whirred like an asthmatical man in extremis, and died. He was dead when Igod touched him. “A—an aneurism.” was Thorrold’s shaky comment a few moments later, when, standing giddy-brained by Igod’s side lie tenderly caressed bis bruised jawbone and looked aghast on the bloodfrothed face of his life-long enemy. “Heart trouble, Igod—he—he must have suffered foi years. You heard—heard the—whirring sound V’ Igod nodded grimly. “Like the last protest of an old clock at its defeat by its master—Time ” Thorrold was regaining poise; colour came back to his cheeks and flushed the marred jaw of him with the colour of ripened plums. “His heart just—well—broke down within him, Igod . . . that evil, damnable heart of his—Ben Igod!” They looked down on Leathley the.ir enemy, until the harshly-lined features took on the smooth white mask of eternal tin-wisdom in mankind’s affairs; until hatred lifted from flesh its bondage arid the peace of sleep came in its place. And those two men were saddened. “Aa—Aa can’t abide it. maister. Aa can’t abide it. Aa says. . . . Let's get outer ’ere. Aa’m fair moidered wi‘ it all —sick to death on’t!” “The house is full oi Hell, it seems.” Thorrold murmured, well nigh soliloquised, as he replied to Igod. “He—Leathley—comes here to me; rids me of a life-long fear . . . proves to myself—to my own satisfaction, that I—l am no murderer, then—dies . . . and leaves it all vauue—unrecorded. Who’ll believe, Igod who’ll believe— ?” “Aa ’card ’’.m! An’ll witness to it. never ye fret!” Igod unceremoniously tore a curtain from its hangers and stepped forward, servant to the end, to cover the still form from sight. a ’eard him cave in an’ goa back on himsol' Aa’ll bear thee aht if so be it comes to a law do.” Thorrold was exasperated at that: God above us, man—talk sense!” he rasped. “Who’s to bring anything to law now—at this time o’ day? He”—the ‘he’ to whom Thorrold referred was at that moment the mummified thing that Basil Magerison and Dorothy were confronted by down in the lead mines—“he’s buried b6neatli hundreds of tons of stone, together with his damned treasure . . . the jewelled wreckage of all our lives. Who’s to resurrect dm? Who. I say, is to cut up a hill to find a handful of old bones? And, if by the millionth chance bis skeleton was discovered —who is to point to it and say: ‘there, Thorrold, that was once flesh of ’j-our flesh, bone of your bone—born a moment or two before yon only to die for it. . . . That handful of shattered lime and tattered rags was once your brother, Thorrold . . . who found a great treasure, and, in its finding, lost a greater—his life.’ “Who is to say all this to me. Igod—who, I ask?” Always commanding, always tall and of a dominant personality, Thorrold now looked greater physically and psychically than ever he had been before. In his strangely a-mingl-Xi mood of remorse for the past and defiance of the future, he looked an olden prophet re-incarnate, a vibrant, living tower of dynamically human arrogance something more than an Ajax—little less than an ancient Greek before Maratli' \ declaiming: “Is there any fear in me, or for me, in such a remote possibility any of those? Who is to ‘come to law.’ as you say, about it?” Igod, puzzled, was silent. “No, it is not for that I’m worrying over Richard Lcathlcy's death, Igod—its for myself and—and mv n«-” - ' • '“it. The law of man is circumscribed by the incidents of the days in which it moves to encompass little lives with ordinances of justice . . . but. what of the —the beyond ... or less than that, the immediate memory of the generations to succeed on me—when I am gone? “I—l would have liked my name clean to go out with, Benjamin Igod; just a clean name—a decent memory. What wrong I have done I’ll pay for—have paid for, in full. But a murderer, Igod—no—no—no!”

Thorrold’s voice had raised to a note like a scream; Igod attempted crude sympathy frith an ill he could not underßtund. “Tlieer now—theer nab, maister! Dun* hot fash tliyscn so . . . what nils tha’, anyway?” A wry smile pulled Thorrold’s lips about and ho shook his massive head as does a

dog 6hake, coming out of water. His mood had passed. “‘Ails me,’ Igod?” he echoed. “Oh, nothing much . . . just a—a conscience. Laws cannot harm ; men cannot know—but, yes, I—l have a conscience.”

Now, Benjamin teod thought, this was something he could understand. He swiftly thought again ... to counter its (to his mind) appalling effects on the hitherto iron-hard Master of Thorraldan ; lie became contemptuous. “Tha’s ranting nah, maister, like a watter-brained babby, thou is!” He laughed his cackling laugh. “A conscience thou says, dosta —eeh—eeli—eeh— yon’s a good ’un, yon is ... a Thorrold wi’ a conscience—eeh—eeh—eeh !’’ He broke off there abruptly. There was a sudden drop in the illuminations of the study, as though light still lingered yet with its fullest powers gone out . . . there was a rush as of soft silks across the still air . . a crinkling of spines; a coldness of flesh : a stiffening of hair and a thundering of blood. . . . And seme ghastly entity that had come into the room where Death had so recently stalked, laughed also —“eeh— eeh—eeh!”

CHAPTER XXIII.—OUT OF THE EARTH. To say that Dorothv was dumbfounded by Magerison’s casuallv proferred intelli gence that the mummified thing had once been Thorrold’s, her grandfather’s twin brother, would be to understate a ease. She was electrified—struck aghast, impotent of mind and movement and all sense of being. She reeled a little, and a horrible vertigo whelmed all her remaining faculties in a sparking haze of approaching unconsciousness. “Oh—oh.” she was moaning now. “1 can’t bear it all—l can’t . . . oh. how Pve tried—but, I —l can’t ! Basil, keep hold—hold, I —l feel I —l’m going— ’’ “Now, old woman, you’re not going to faint or be silly in any way!” He enfolded her warmly in his arms, and his lips were to her hair. ‘Tin an utter beast to torment you so: T should have waited.” Still she was silent, but her eyes ques tioned. dimly. "Waited, I mean, until we are out of this damnable catacomb of a place . waited until I could tell vou all—from rtlphf. to Omega of this mystery’’. She caught eagerly at that : “Yes—ves . . . vou said it’s all over now. Basil, vou said that—the mystery of—of Hound’s Pasture, so far as vou are concerned, is solved—ended’” “And you want me to repent that statement. dearest—eh? You want to be reassured ” “ 1 want to know that there* is nothing for me—to bear: that’s all. Oh. T know that sounds a coward’s cry. but—oil—Basil, it isn’t! Darling. I—l’ve tried so hard—so hard to keep a ‘straight upper lip,’ as you told me. but I’m afraid I’m just at the uttermost limit of my endur anco now. . . . I’m just a little ’’ “ Girl,” he eoncluded. putting his fingers across her lins to stop her utter ance of the word “fool” that he knew, inevitably, must have followed. “Yes. dearest mine—let’s clear our brains of all this awful devilment and . . . let’s get out of here." “Oh. Basil”—she was re-vivified—“do, you think—we can? And how?” “Fiddle-liQad —easily!” He laughed. “We’ve got a plentiful supply of torches, and as good a one of matches: we’re on a straight road—a torch in hand to help us travel without bumps, and a careful following of our noses—what on earth is to prevent us from re-gaining the false doorway in the study wall? And, you re member, dear, don’t you, there’s a rope ladder dangling down for our use, and its pretty certain that the arrangement of levers on this side of the stone operates the door from the mines.” Tie chuckled. “Hope your granddad’s in his study when we prise that wall open . . give him a well-merited scare—what?” She faintly smiled, and dabbed at her hair and eyes. She pulled her dross straighter, and then flashed a bolder smile “Right-o. Basil—l’m game: carry on 1 Sorry I was such a booby!” Magerison longed to secure the strange diary and as many of the jewels ns. con vcnicntly, he could carry away with him hut knew that to leave Dorothy Thorrold for one instant would be for her to lose her regained calm. She could not bea? for him to approach the glwstly mummy again—she could not bear to see his back and not his eyes; these, his living, loving eyes were, after all. her greatest hold on sanity and the placidities of normal beiug . . . because she knew he loved her . . Together—as they had gone out from the study to mystery—they set back their steps toward the realities of house and hearth awaiting them where their trail should end. And without fault, under the lemon plumes of fire waving on the torches, they reached the secret door. As Basil Magerison had surmised, the bronze levers operated its swing from the inside of the lead mines. With n fulsome groaning the vast slab swung inwards. Light streamed in their faces from the study—together Magerison and Dorothy scaled the rope ladder, and without looking up (they had to safeguard their wavering foot-holds on the flimsy ladder) they entered the room. • • •

Before them—as a scene from Dante’s Inferuo—stood poised a tableau of allevil. ... It seemed that three dead

men lay therein, one covered by a curtain, and above them gibbered a hideous aud shadowy figure ... . garbed like a monk of ancient days, strong, terrible, and intensely malignant.

And it turned its skull-like mask to look, like death, on the two new lives that had entered to dare its unearthly dominion over Thorroldan Priory, (To be continued).