Gwen Wynn: A Romance of the Wye

Amy Preece, lying awake in her bed, hears Jack Wingate's voice excitedly exclaiming, and wonders what that means. But she is not told; nor learns she aught of a conversation which succeeds in more subdued tone; prolonged to a much later hour – even into morning. For before the two men part, they mature a plan for ascertaining why that ghostly thing is still above ground instead of in the grave, where the body it covered is coldly sleeping!

CHAPTER LX

A BRACE OF BODY-SNATCHERS

What with the high hills that shut in the valley of the Wye, and the hanging woods that clothe their steep slopes, the nights there are often so dark as to justify the familiar saying, "You couldn't see your hand before you." I have been out on some, when a white kerchief held within three feet of the eye was absolutely invisible; and it required a skilful Jehu, with best patent lamps, to keep carriage wheels upon the causeway of the road.

Such a night has drawn down over Rugg's Ferry, shrouding the place in impenetrable gloom. Situated in a concavity – as it were, at the bottom of an extinct volcanic crater – the obscurity is deeper than elsewhere; to-night alike covering the Welsh Harp, detached dwelling houses, chapel, and burying-ground, as with a pall. Not a ray of light scintillates anywhere; for the hour is after midnight, and everybody has retired to rest; the weak glimmer of candles from cottage windows, as the stronger glare through those of the hotel-tavern, are no longer to be seen. In the last every lamp is extinguished, its latest-sitting guest – if it have any guest – having gone to bed.

Some of the poachers and night-netters may be astir. If so, they are abroad, and not about the place, since it is just at such hours they are away from it.

For all, two men are near by, seemingly moving with as much stealth as any trespassers after fish or game, and with even more mystery in their movements. The place occupied by them is the shadowed corner under the wall of the chapel cemetery, where Captain Ryecroft saw three men embarking on a boat. These are also in a boat; but not one in the act of rowing off from the river's edge; instead, just being brought into it.

Soon as its cutwater strikes against the bank, one of the men, rising to his feet, leaps out upon the land, and attaches the painter to a sapling, by giving it two or three turns around the stem. Then facing back towards the boat, he says, —

"Hand me them things; an' look out not to let 'em rattle!"

"Ye need ha' no fear 'bout that," rejoins the other, who has now unshipped the oars, and stowed them fore and aft along the thwarts, they not being the things asked for. Then, stooping down, he lifts something out of the boat's bottom, and passes it over the side, repeating the movement three or four times. The things thus transferred from one to the other are handled by both as delicately as though they were pheasant's or plover's eggs, instead of what they are – an ordinary set of grave-digger's tools – spade, shovel, and mattock. There is, besides, a bundle of something soft, which, as there is no danger of its making noise, is tossed up to the top of the bank.

He who has flung follows it; and the two gathering up the hardware, after some words exchanged in muttered tone, mount over the cemetery wall. The younger first leaps it, stretching back, and giving a hand to the other – an old man, who finds some difficulty in the ascent.

Inside the sacred precincts they pause, partly to apportion the tools, but as much to make sure that they have not hitherto been heard. Seen, they could not be, before or now.

Becoming satisfied that the coast is clear, the younger man says in a whisper, —

"It be all right, I think. Every livin' sinner – an' there be a good wheen o' that stripe 'bout here – have gone to bed. As for him, blackest o' the lot, who lives in the house adjoinin', ain't like he's at home. Good as sure down at Llangorren Court, where just now he finds quarters more comfortable. We hain't nothin' to fear, I take it. Let's on to the place. You lay hold o' my skirt, and I'll gie ye the lead. I know the way, every inch o' it."

Saying which he moves off, the other doing as directed, and following step for step.

A few paces further, and they arrive at a grave, beside which they again make stop. In daylight it would show recently made, though not altogether new. A month or so since the turf had been smoothed over it.

The men are now about to disturb it, as evinced by their movements and the implements brought along. But, before going further in their design – body-snatching, or whatever it be – both drop down upon their knees, and again listen intently, as though still in some fear of being interrupted.

Not a sound is heard save the wind, as it sweeps in mournful cadence through the trees along the hill slopes, and nearer below, the rippling of the river.

At length, convinced they have the cemetery to themselves, they proceed to their work, which begins by their spreading out a sheet on the grass close to and alongside the grave – a trick of body-stealers – so as to leave no traces of their theft. That done, they take up the sods with their hands, carefully, one after another; and, with like care, lay them down upon the sheet, the grass sides underneath. Then, seizing hold of the tools – spade and shovel – they proceed to scoop out the earth, placing it in a heap beside.

They have no need to make use of the mattock; the soil is loose, and lifts easily. Nor is their task as excavators of long continuance – even shorter than they anticipated. Within less than eighteen inches of the surface, their tools come into contact with a harder substance, which they can tell to be timber – the lid of a coffin.

Soon as striking it, the younger faces round to his companion, saying, —

"I tolt ye so – listen!"

With the spade's point he again gives the coffin a tap. It returns a hollow sound – too hollow for aught to be inside it!

"No body in there!" he adds.

"Hadn't we better keep on, an' make sure?" suggests the other.

"Sartint we had – an' will."

Once more they commence shovelling out the earth, and continue till it is all cleared from the coffin. Then, inserting the blade of the mattock under the edge of the lid, they raise it up; for it is not screwed down, only laid on loosely – the screws all drawn and gone!

Flinging himself on his face, and reaching forward, the younger man gropes inside the coffin – not expecting to feel any body there, but mechanically, and to see if there be aught else.

There is nothing – only emptiness. The house of the dead is untenanted – its tenant has been taken away!

"I know'd it!" he exclaims, drawing back. "I know'd my poor Mary wor no longer here!"

It is no body-snatcher who speaks thus, but Jack Wingate, his companion being Joseph Preece.

After which, the young waterman says not another word in reference to the discovery they have both made. He is less sad than thoughtful now. But he keeps his thoughts to himself, an occasional whisper to his companion being merely by way of direction, as they replace the lid upon the coffin, cover all up as before, shake in the last fragments of loose earth from the sheet, and restore the grave turf – adjusting the sods with as much exactitude as though they were laying tesselated tiles!

Then, taking up their tools, they glide back to the boat, step into it, and shove off.

On return down stream they reflect in different ways, the old boatman of Llangorren still thinking it but a case of body-snatching, done by Coracle Dick, for the doctors, with a view to earning a dishonest penny.

Far otherwise the thoughts of Jack Wingate. He thinks, nay, hopes – almost happily believes – that the body exhumed was not dead – never has been – but that Mary Morgan still lives, breathes, and has being!

CHAPTER LXI

IN WANT OF HELP

"Drowned? No! Dead before she ever went under the water. Murdered, beyond the shadow of a doubt."

It is Captain Ryecroft who thus emphatically affirms. And to himself, being alone, within his room in the Wyeside Hotel; for he is still in Herefordshire.

More in conjecture, he proceeds, —

"They first smothered, I suppose, or in some way rendered her insensible; then carried her to the place and dropped her in, leaving the water to complete their diabolical work? A double death, as it were; though she may not have suffered its agonies twice. Poor girl! I hope not."

In prosecuting the inquiry to which he has devoted himself, beyond certain unavoidable communications with Jack Wingate, he has not taken any one into his confidence. This partly from having no intimate acquaintances in the neighbourhood, but more because he fears the betrayal of his purpose. It is not ripe for public exposure, far less bringing before a court of justice. Indeed, he could not yet shape an accusation against any one, all that he has learnt now serving only to satisfy him that his original suspicions were correct; which it has done, as shown by his soliloquy.

He has since made a second boat excursion down the bye-channel – made it in the daytime, to assure himself there was no mistake in his observations under the light of the lamp. It was for this he had bespoken Wingate's skiff for the following day; for certain reasons reaching Llangorren at the earliest hour of dawn. There and then to see what surprised him quite as much as the unexpected discovery of the night before – a grand breakage from the brow of the cliff; but not any more misleading him. If the first "sign" observed there failed to blind him, so does that which has obliterated it. No natural rock-slide, was the conclusion he came to, soon as setting eyes upon it; but the work of human hands! And within the hour, as he could see by the clods of loosened earth still dropping down and making muddy the water underneath; while bubbles were ascending from the detached boulder lying invisible below!

Had he been there only a few minutes earlier, himself invisible, he would have seen a man upon the cliff's crest, busy with a crowbar, levering the rock from its bed, and tilting it over – then carefully removing the marks of the iron implement, as also his own footprints!

The man saw him through the blue-grey dawn, in his skiff, coming down the river; just as on the preceding night under the light of the moon. For he thus early astir and occupied in a task as that of Sysiphus, was no other than Father Rogier.

The priest had barely time to retreat and conceal himself, as the boat drew down to the eyot – not this time crouching among the ferns, but behind some evergreens, at a farther and safer distance. Still, near enough for him to observe the other's look of blank astonishment on beholding the debâcle, and note the expression change to one of significant intelligence as he continued gazing at it.

"Un limier veritable!" A hound that has scented blood, and's determined to follow it up, till he find the body whence it flowed. Aha! The game must be got out of his way. Llangorren will have to change owners once again, and the sooner, the better.

At the very moment these thoughts were passing through the mind of Gregoire Rogier, the "veritable bloodhound" was mentally repeating the same words he had used on the night before: "No accident – no suicide – murdered!" adding, as his eyes ranged over the surface of red sandstone, so altered in appearance, "This makes me all the more sure of it. Miserable trick! Not much Mr. Lewin Murdock will gain by it."

So thought he then. But now, days after, though still believing Murdock to be the murderer, he thinks differently about the "trick." For the evidence afforded by the former traces, though slight, and pointing to no one in particular, was, nevertheless, a substantial indication of guilt against somebody; and these being blotted out, there is but his own testimony of their having ever existed. Though himself convinced that Gwendoline Wynn has been assassinated, he cannot see his way to convince others – much less a legal tribunal. He is still far from being in a position openly to accuse, or even name the criminals who ought to be arraigned.

He now knows there are more than one, or so supposes, still believing that Murdock has been the principal actor in the tragedy; though others besides have borne part in it.

"The man's wife must know all about it," he says, going on in conjectural chain; "and that French priest – he probably the instigator of it. Ay! possibly had a hand in the deed itself. There have been such cases recorded – many of them. Exercising great authority at Llangorren – as Jack has learned from his friend Joe – there commanding everybody and everything! And the fellow Dempsey – poacher, and what not – he, too, become an important personage about the place! Why all this? Only intelligible on the supposition that they have had to do with a death by which they have been all benefited. Yes; all four, acting conjointly, have brought it about!

"And how am I to bring it home to them? 'Twill be difficult indeed, if at all possible. Even that slight sign destroyed has increased the difficulty.

"No use taking the 'great unpaid' into my confidence, nor yet the sharper stipendiaries. To submit my plans to either magistrate or policeman might be but to defeat them. 'Twould only raise a hue and cry, putting the guilty ones on their guard. That isn't the way – will not do!

"And yet I must have some one to assist me; for there is truth in the old saw, 'Two heads better than one,' Wingate is good enough in his way, and willing, but he can't help me in mine. I want a man of my own class; one who – Stay! George Shenstone? No! The young fellow is true as steel and brave as a lion, but – well, lacking brains. I could trust his heart, not his head. Where is he who has both to be relied upon? Ha! Mahon! The man – the very man! Experienced in the world's wickedness, courageous, cool – except when he gets his Irish blood up against the Sassenachs – above all, devoted to me, as I know; he has never forgotten that little service I did him at Delhi. And he has nothing to do – plenty of time at his disposal. Yes; the Major's my man!

"Shall I write and ask him to come over here. On second thoughts, no! Better for me to go thither; see him first, and explain all the circumstances. To Boulogne and back's but a matter of forty-eight hours, and a day or two can't make much difference in an affair like this. The scent's cold as it can be, and may be taken up weeks hence 's well as now. If we ever succeed in finding evidence of their guilt, it will, no doubt, be mainly of the circumstantial sort; and much will depend on the character of the individuals accused. Now I think of it, something may be learnt about it in Boulogne itself; or, at all events, of the priest. Since I've had a good look at his forbidding face, I feel certain it's the same I saw inside the doorway of that convent. If not, there are two of the sacerdotal tribe so like, it would be a toss up which is one and which t'other.

"In any case, there can be no harm in my making a scout across to Boulogne, and instituting inquiries about him. Mahon's sister being at school in the establishment will enable us to ascertain whether a priest named Rogier holds relations with it, and we may learn something of the repute he bears. Perchance, also, a trifle concerning Mr. and Mrs. Lewin Murdock. It appears that both husband and wife are well known at Homburg, Baden, and other like resorts. Gaming, if not game, birds, in some of their migratory flights they have made short sojourn at the French seaport, to get their hands in for those grander hells beyond. I'll go over to Boulogne!"

A knock at the door. On the permission to enter, called out, a hotel porter presents himself.

"Well?"

"Your waterman, sir, Wingate, says he'd like to see you, if convenient?"

"Tell him to step up!"

"What can Jack be coming after? Anyhow, I'm glad he has come. 'Twill save me the trouble of sending for him, as I'd better settle his account before starting off." [Jack has a new score against the Captain for boat hire, his services having been retained, exclusively, for some length of time past.] "Besides, there's something I wish to say – a long chapter of instructions to leave with him. Come in, Jack!"

This, as a shuffling in the corridor outside tells that the waterman is wiping his feet on the door-mat.

The door opening, displays him; but with an expression on his countenance very different from that of a man coming to dun for wages due. More like one entering to announce a death, or some event which greatly agitates him.

"What is it?" asks the Captain, observing his distraught manner.

"Somethin' queer, sir; very queer indeed."

"Ah! Let me hear it!" demands Ryecroft, with an air of eagerness, thinking it relates to himself and the matter engrossing his mind.

"I will, Captain. But it'll take time in the tellin'."

"Take as much as you like. I'm at your service. Be seated."

Jack clutches hold of a chair, and draws it up close to where the Captain is sitting – by a table. Then glancing over his shoulder, and all round the room, to assure himself there is no one within earshot, he says, in a grave, solemn voice, —

"I do believe, Captain, she be still alive!"

CHAPTER LXII

STILL ALIVE

Impossible to depict the expression on Vivian Ryecroft's face, as the words of the waterman fall upon his ear. It is more than surprise – more than astonishment – intensely interrogative, as though some secret hope once entertained, but long gone out of his heart, had suddenly returned to it.

"Still alive!" he exclaims, springing to his feet, and almost upsetting the table. "Alive!" he mechanically repeats. "What do you mean, Wingate? And who?"

"My poor girl, Captain. You know."

"His girl – not mine! Mary Morgan – not Gwendoline Wynn!" reflects Ryecroft within himself, dropping back upon his chair as one stunned by a blow.

"I'm almost sure she be still livin'," continues the waterman, in wonder at the emotion his words have called up, though little suspecting why.

Controlling it, the other asks, with diminished interest, still earnestly, —

"What leads you to think that way, Wingate? Have you a reason?"

"Yes, have I; more'n one. It's about that I ha' come to consult ye."

"You've come to astonish me! But proceed!"

"Well, sir, as I ha' sayed, it'll take a good bit o' tellin', and a lot o' explanation beside. But since ye've signified I'm free to your time, I'll try and make the story short's I can."

"Don't curtail it in any way. I wish to hear all!"

The waterman thus allowed latitude, launches forth into a full account of his own life – those chapters of it relating to his courtship of, and betrothal to, Mary Morgan. He tells of the opposition made by her mother, the rivalry of Coracle Dick, and the sinister interference of Father Rogier. In addition, the details of that meeting of the lovers under the elm – their last – and the sad episode soon after succeeding.

Something of all this Ryecroft has heard before, and part of it suspected. What he now hears new to him is the account of a scene in the farmhouse of Abergann, while Mary Morgan lay in the chamber of death, with a series of incidents that came under the observation of her sorrowing lover. The first, his seeing a shroud being made by the girl's mother, white, with a red cross, and the initial letters of her name braided over the breast: the same soon afterwards appearing upon the corpse. Then the strange behaviour of Father Rogier on the day of the funeral; the look with which he stood regarding the girl's face as she lay in her coffin; his abrupt exit out of the room; as afterwards his hurried departure from the side of the grave before it was finally closed up – a haste noticed by others as well as Jack Wingate.

"But what do you make of all that?" asks Ryecroft, the narrator having paused to gather himself for other and still stranger revelations. "How can it give you a belief in the girl being still alive? Quite its contrary, I should say."

"Stay, Captain! There be more to come."

The Captain does stay, listening on. To hear the story of the planted and plucked up flower; of another and later visit made by Wingate to the cemetery in daylight, then seeing what led him to suspect, that not only had the plant been destroyed, but all the turf on the grave disturbed! He speaks of his astonishment at this, with his perplexity. Then goes on to give account of the evening spent with Joseph Preece in his new home; of the waifs and strays there shown him; the counterfeit coins, burglars' tools, and finally the shroud – that grim remembrancer, which he recognised at sight!

His narrative concludes with his action taken after, assisted by the old boatman.

"Last night," he says, proceeding with the relation, "or I ought to say the same mornin' – for 'twar after midnight hour – Joe an' myself took the skiff, an' stole up to the chapel graveyard, where we opened her grave, an' foun' the coffin empty! Now, Captain, what do ye think o' the whole thing?"

"On my word, I hardly know what to think of it. Mystery seems the measure of the time! This you tell me of is strange – if not stranger than any! What are your own thoughts about it, Jack?"

"Well, as I've already sayed, my thoughts be, an' my hopes, that Mary's still in the land o' the livin'."

"I hope she is."

The tone of Ryecroft's rejoinder tells of his incredulity, further manifested by his questions following.

"But you saw her in her coffin? Waked for two days, as I understood you; then laid in her grave? How could she have lived throughout all that? Surely she was dead!"

"So I thought at the time, but don't now."

"My good fellow, I fear you are deceiving yourself. I'm sorry having to think so. Why the body has been taken up again is of itself a sufficient puzzle; but alive – that seems physically impossible!"

"Well, Captain, it's just about the possibility of the thing I come to ask your opinion; thinkin' ye'd be acquainted wi' the article itself."

"What article?"

"The new medicine; it as go by the name o' chloryform."

"Ha! you have a suspicion – "

"That she ha' been chloryformed, an' so kep' asleep – to be waked up when they wanted her. I've heerd say they can do such things."

"But then she was drowned also? Fell from a foot plank, you told me? And was in the water some time?"

"I don't believe it, a bit. It be true enough she got somehow into the water, an' wor took out insensible, or rather drifted out o' herself, on the bank just below, at the mouth o' the brook. But that wor short after, an' she might still ha' ben alive notwithstandin'. My notion be, that the priest had first put the chloryform into her, or did it then, an' knew all along she warn't dead, nohow."

"My dear Jack, the thing cannot be possible. Even if it were, you seem to forget that her mother, father – all of them – must have been cognizant of these facts – if facts?"

"I don't forget it, Captain. 'Stead, I believe they all wor cognizant o' them – leastways, the mother."

"But why should she assist in such a dangerous deception – at risk of her daughter's life?"

"That's easy answered. She did it partly o' herself; but more at the biddin' o' the priest, whom she daren't disobey – the weak-minded creature, most o' her time given up to sayin' prayers and paternosters. They all knowed the girl loved me, and wor sure to be my wife, whatever they might say or do against it. Wi' her willin', I could a' defied the whole lot o' them. Bein' aware o' that, their only chance wor to get her out o' my way by some trick – as they ha' indeed got her. Ye may think it strange their takin' all that trouble; but if ye'd seen her, ye wouldn't. There worn't on all Wyeside so good-lookin' a girl!"

Ryecroft again looks incredulous; not smilingly, but with a sad cast of countenance.

Despite its improbability, however, he begins to think there may be some truth in what the waterman says – Jack's earnest convictions sympathetically impressing him.

"And supposing her to be alive," he asks, "where do you think she is now? Have you any idea?"

"I have – leastways, a notion."

"Where?"

"Over the water – in France – the town o' Bolone."

"Boulogne!" exclaims the Captain, with a start. "What makes you suppose she is there?"