But the elder woman sat upright, in scorn of all such weakness, with her gaunt figure drawn like a cable taut, no sign of a tear on her shrunken cheeks, and the whole of her face as numb and cold as an iced figurehead in the Arctic seas. Yet no one, with knowledge of the human race, could doubt which of these two suffered most.
We reined up our horses, and gazed in terror, for neither of them noticed us; and then we heard, from inside the house, sounds that made our flesh creep. Barking, howling, snapping of teeth, baying as of a human bloodhound, frothy splutterings of fury, and then smothered yelling.
“Her have a gat ’un now,” cried a clown, running round the end of the house, as if he were enjoying it. “Reckon our passon wun’t baite much moore, after Passon Jack be atop of ’un.”
“Oh sir, oh sir, oh for God’s sake, sir,” cried the poor lady who had lain on the ground, rushing up to us, and kneeling, and trying to get hold of us; “you must have come to stop it, sir. Only one hour—allow him one hour, dear, dear sirs, for repentance. He has not been a good man, I know, but I am his own wife, good kind sirs—and if he could only have a little time, if it were only half an hour—he might, he might—”
Here a sound of throttling came through a broken windowpane, and down she fell insensible.
“What does it mean?” cried Rodney Bluett; “is it murder, madness, or suicide? Follow me, Davy. Here I go, anyhow, into the thick of it.”
He dashed through the window; and I with more caution, cocking my pistol, followed him, while I heard the clown shouting after us—
“Danged vules both of ’e. Bide outside, bide outside, I tell ’e.”
Oh that we had remained outside! I have been through a great deal of horrible sights, enough to harden any man, and cure him of womanly squeamishness. Yet never did I behold, or dream of, anything so awful as the scene that lay before me. People were longing to look at it now, but none (save ourselves) durst enter.
It was Chowne’s own dining-room, all in the dark, except where a lamp had been brought in by a trembling footman, who ran away, knowing that he brought this light for his master to be strangled by. And in the corner now lay his master, smothered under a featherbed; yet with his vicious head fetched out in the last rabid struggle to bite. There was the black hair, black face, and black tongue, shown by the frothy wainscot, or between it and the ticking. On the featherbed lay exhausted, and with his mighty frame convulsed, so that a child might master him, Parson Jack Rambone, the strongest man, whose strength (like all other powers) had laid a horrible duty upon him. Sobbing with all his great heart he lay, yet afraid to take his weight off, and sweating at every pore with labour, peril of his life, and agony.
“Oh Dick, Dick,” he said, quite softly, and between his pantings; “how many larks have we had together, and for me to have to do this to you! I am sure you knew me, before you died. I think you know me now, Dick. Oh, for God’s sake, shut your eyes! Darling Dick, are you dead, are you dead? You are the very cleverest fellow ever I came across of. You can do it, if you like. Oh, dear Dick, Dick, my boy, do shut your eyes!”
We stood looking at them, with no power to go up to them; all experience failed us as to what was the proper thing to do, till I saw that Chowne’s face ought to have a napkin over it. None had been laid for dinner; but I knew where butlers keep them.
When I had done this, Parson Jack (who could not escape from the great black eyes) arose, and said, “I thank you, sir.” He staggered so that we had to support him; but not a word could we say to him. “I am bitten in two places, if not more,” he rather gasped than said to us, as he laid bare his enormous arms. “I care not much. I will follow my friend. Or if the Lord should please to spare me, henceforth I am an altered man. And yet, for the sake of my family, will you heat the kitchen poker?”
LXVIII
The Old Pitcher at the Well Again
It helps a thoughtless man on his road towards a better kingdom, to get a glimpse, every now and then, of such visitations of the Lord. When I was a little boy, nothing did me so much good in almost all the Bible, as to hear my father read the way in which Herod was eaten of worms. And now in mature years, I received quite a serious turn by the death of this Parson Chowne of ignominious canine madness. And still more, when I came to know by what condign parental justice this visitation smote him.
For while the women were busy upstairs by candlelight, and with some weeping, it fell to Parson Rambone’s lot to lay the truth before us. This great man took at once to Captain Rodney Bluett, as if he had known him for years; nor did he
