HOUNDS PASTURE

Taranaki Daily News, 15 April 1926, Page 12

HOUNDS PASTURE

Vincent Cornier

By

CHAPTER XXII. THORROLD’S •CON’SCIENC'E. It was as though. Fate had staged to perfection the last incredible grim movement in Vhe affairs of that mysterious trinity in infamy and olden hates which was Thorrold of Thorroldan Priory, Leath ley and Benjamin Igod. For. it came about that Leathley’s murderous attack on the Master of Thorroldan signed for him his own death warrant. Ben Igod had started forward to his master’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 Leatbley had dealt— Leathle'y, apparently overbalancing, fell asprawl with it—and Leatbley 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 shakv comment a few moments later, when, standing giddy-brained by Igod’s side he tenderly caressed his bruised jawbone and looked aghast on the bloodfrothed face of his life long enemy. “Heart trouble Igod—he—he must have suffered for years. You hoard—heard the —whirring -sound?” 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. “Mis heart just—well—broke down within him. Igod—that evil, damnable heart of his —Ben Igod!” They looked down Leathley their dnemy. until the harshly lined features took on the smooth white mask of eternal un-wisdom in mankind’s affairs; until hatred lifted from flesh its bondage and 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 allsick to death on’t!” “The house is full of Hell, it seems.” Thorrold murdered, 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 vague—unrecorded. AVIhoTI believe Igod. who’ll believe?” “Aa ’card ’im! Aa’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. Aa ’eard him cave in an’ goa back on himsel’. Aa’ll bear thee aht if so be it comes to a law do.” Thorrold was—exasp'" - ‘ 1 '“God above us man talk sense!” he rasped. “Who’s to bripg 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 beneath hundreds of tons of stone: together with his damned treasure—the jewelled wreckage of all our lives. Who’s to resurrect him? Who. I say. is to cut up a hill to find a handful of old bones? And, if by the millionth chance his -skeleton was discovered—who is to point to it and say: “There. Thorrold. that was once flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone —born a moment or two before you 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—bis life.”

"Who is to say all this to me, Igod—who, I ask?” Always commanding; always tall and of a dominant personality, I horrold now looked greater physically and psychically than ever he had been before. In his strangely amingled 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 Marathon, declaiming: "Is there any fear in me, or for me, in such a remote possibility as any of those? Who is to ‘come to law,' as you sav, about it?” Igod. puzzled, was silent,

“No, it is not for that I’m worrying over Richard’s Leathley’s death, Igod—its for myself and—-and my own going out, . Ihe la w 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 ant gone? “I—l would have liked my name clean to go ou't with, Benjamin Igod; just a clean name —at 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 with an ill he could not understand. “Theer now—timer nah, maister! Dunnot fash thysen so—wlsat ails tha’ anyway ?” A wry smile pulled Thorrold’s lips about and he shook his massive head as does a dog shake, coining 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 Igod 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 Thorroldan; lie became contemptuous. “Tha’s ranting nah, maister. like a wattcr-brained babby. thou is!” He laughed his cackling laugh. “A ’conscience’ thou says, dosta—eeh—eeh—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 is fullest powers gone out—there was a rush as of soft silks across the still air—cringltng of spines; a coldness of flesh; a stiffening of hair and a thundering of blood. And some ghastly entity that had come into the room where Death had so recent',- stalked- -laughed also “eeh—eeli—eeh!”

CHAPTER NX HI. OUT GF HUE EARTH. To say that Dorothy was dumbfounded by Magerison’s casually preferred intelligence that the mummified thing had once been Thorrold’s, her grandfather’s twin brother would be to understate a case. 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, “I can’t bear it all I can't —oh how I’ve 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. "I’m an utter beast to torment you so; I should have waited." Still she was silent but her eyes questioned, dimly. "Waited, I mean, until we are out of this damnable catacomb of a place; waited until I could tell you all—from Alpha to Omega of this mystery.” She caught eagerly at that: “Yes —yes—you said it’s all over now. Basil, you said that —the mystery of—of Hdund’s Pasture, so far as you are concerned is solved —ended?” “And you want me to repeat that statement dearest—eh ? You want to be re-assured” “I want to know that there is nothing for me—to bear; that's all. Oh, I know that sounds a coward’s cry, but —oh—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 endurance now I’m just a little—” “Girl,” he concluded, putting his fingers across her lips to stop her utterance 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-head—easily!” He laughed. “We’ve got a plentiful supplj’ 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 regaining the false doorway in the study wall? And, you remember dear, don’t you, there's a rope ladder dangling down for our use and its pretty certain that the arrangement of livers on this side of ‘the * stone operates the door from the mines.” He chuckled. “Hope your grand-dad’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 dress straighter and then flashed a bolder smile.

"Right o Basil; I'm game; carry on! Sorry I was much a booby!”

Magerisbn longed to secure the strange diary and as many of the jewels as, conveniently, he could carry away with him, but knew that to leave Dorothy Thorrold instant would be for her to lose her regained calm. She could not bear - for him to approach the ghastly mummy again—she could not bear to see his back and his eyes: these, his living, loving eyes were, after all, her greatest hold on sanity and placidities of normal being—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 Iwliere their trail should end. And. without fault; under the lemon plumes of fire waving on the torches, they reached the secret doqr. As Basil Magerison had surmised, the bronze levers operated its swing from the inside of the lead mines. With a fulsome groaning the vast slab swung inwards. Light streamed in their faces from the study—together Magerison and Dorothy sealed the rope ladder and without looking up (they had to, safeguard their wavering foot-holds on the fl'imsv ladder) they entered, the room. Before them—as a scene from Dante’s Inferno—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 and shadowy figure —garbed like a monk of ancient days, strong, terrible and 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.)