The Black Robe

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After this, I suppose it is needless to add that I accompanied him to
the ground the next morning as one of his seconds.

V.

WE were punctual to the appointed hour--eight o'clock.

The second who acted with me was a French gentleman, a relative of one
of the officers who had brought the challenge. At his suggestion, we had
chosen the pistol as our weapon. Romayne, like most Englishmen at
the present time, knew nothing of the use of the sword. He was almost
equally inexperienced with the pistol.

Our opponents were late. They kept us waiting for more than ten minutes.
It was not pleasant weather to wait in. The day had dawned damp and
drizzling. A thick white fog was slowly rolling in on us from the sea.

When they did appear, the General was not among them. A tall,
well-dressed young man saluted Romayne with stern courtesy, and said to
a stranger who accompanied him: "Explain the circumstances."

The stranger proved to be a surgeon. He entered at once on the necessary
explanation. The General was too ill to appear. He had been attacked
that morning by a fit--the consequence of the blow that he had received.
Under these circumstances, his eldest son (Maurice) was now on the
ground to fight the duel on his father's behalf; attended by the
General's seconds, and with the General's full approval.

We instantly refused to allow the duel to take place, Romayne loudly
declaring that he had no quarrel with the General's son. Upon this,
Maurice broke away from his seconds; drew off one of his gloves; and
stepping close up to Romayne, struck him on the face with the glove.
"Have you no quarrel with me now?" the young Frenchman asked. "Must
I spit on you, as my father did?" His seconds dragged him away, and
apologized to us for the outbreak. But the mischief was done. Romayne's
fiery temper flashed in his eyes. "Load the pistols," he said. After
the insult publicly offered to him, and the outrage publicly threatened,
there was no other course to take.

It had been left to us to produce the pistols. We therefore requested
the seconds of our opponent to examine and to load them. While this was
being done, the advancing sea-fog so completely enveloped us that the
duelists were unable to see each other. We were obliged to wait for the
chance of a partial clearing in the atmosphere. Romayne's temper had
become calm again. The generosity of his nature spoke in the words which
he now addressed to his seconds. "After all," he said, "the young man is
a good son--he is bent on redressing what he believes to be his father's
wrong. Does his flipping his glove in my face matter to me? I think I
shall fire in the air."

"I shall refuse to act as your second if you do," answered the French
gentleman who was assisting us. "The General's son is famous for his
skill with the pistol. If you didn't see it in his face just now, I
did--he means to kill you. Defend your life, sir!" I spoke quite as
strongly, to the same purpose, when my turn came. Romayne yielded--he
placed himself unreservedly in our hands.

In a quarter of an hour the fog lifted a little. We measured the
distance, having previously arranged (at my suggestion) that the two
men should both fire at the same moment, at a given signal. Romayne's
composure, as they faced each other, was, in a man of his irritable
nervous temperament, really wonderful. I placed him sidewise, in a
position which in some degree lessened his danger, by lessening the
surface exposed to the bullet. My French colleague put the pistol into
his hand, and gave him the last word of advice. "Let your arm hang
loosely down, with the barrel of the pistol pointing straight to the
ground. When you hear the signal, only lift your arm as far as the
elbow; keep the elbow pressed against your side--and fire." We could do
no more for him. As we drew aside--I own it--my tongue was like a cinder
in my mouth, and a horrid inner cold crept through me to the marrow of
my bones.

The signal was given, and the two shots were fired at the same time.

My first look was at Romayne. He took off his hat, and handed it to me
with a smile. His adversary's bullet had cut a piece out of the brim of
his hat, on the right side. He had literally escaped by a hair-breadth.

While I was congratulating him, the fog gathered again more thickly than
ever. Looking anxiously toward the ground occupied by our adversaries,
we could only see vague, shadowy forms hurriedly crossing and recrossing
each other in the mist. Something had happened! My French colleague took
my arm and pressed it significantly. "Leave _me_ to inquire," he said.
Romayne tried to follow; I held him back--we neither of us exchanged a
word.

The fog thickened and thickened, until nothing was to be seen. Once we
heard the surgeon's voice, calling impatiently for a light to help him.
No light appeared that _we_ could see. Dreary as the fog itself, the
silence gathered round us again. On a sudden it was broken, horribly
broken, by another voice, strange to both of us, shrieking hysterically
through the impenetrable mist. "Where is he?" the voice cried, in the
French language. "Assassin! Assassin! where are you?" Was it a woman?
or was it a boy? We heard nothing more. The effect upon Romayne was
terrible to see. He who had calmly confronted the weapon lifted to kill
him, shuddered dumbly like a terror-stricken animal. I put my arm round
him, and hurried him away from the place.

We waited at the hotel until our French friend joined us. After a brief
interval he appeared, announcing that the surgeon would follow him.

The duel had ended fatally. The chance course of the bullet, urged by
Romayne's unpracticed hand, had struck the General's son just above
the right nostril--had penetrated to the back of his neck--and had
communicated a fatal shock to the spinal marrow. He was a dead man
before they could take him back to his father's house.

So far, our fears were confirmed. But there was something else to tell,
for which our worst presentiments had not prepared us.

A younger brother of the fallen man (a boy of thirteen years old) had
secretly followed the dueling party, on their way from his father's
house--had hidden himself--and had seen the dreadful end. The seconds
only knew of it when he burst out of his place of concealment, and fell
on his knees by his dying brother's side. His were the frightful cries
which we had heard from invisible lips. The slayer of his brother
was the "assassin" whom he had vainly tried to discover through the
fathomless obscurity of the mist.

We both looked at Romayne. He silently looked back at us, like a man
turned to stone. I tried to reason with him.

"Your life was at your opponent's mercy," I said. "It was _he_ who was
skilled in the use of the pistol; your risk was infinitely greater than
his. Are you responsible for an accident? Rouse yourself, Romayne! Think
of the time to come, when all this will be forgotten."

"Never," he said, "to the end of my life."

He made that reply in dull, monotonous tones. His eyes looked wearily
and vacantly straight before him. I spoke to him again. He remained
impenetrably silent; he appeared not to hear, or not to understand me.
The surgeon came in, while I was still at a loss what to say or do
next. Without waiting to be asked for his opinion, he observed Romayne
attentively, and then drew me away into the next room.

"Your friend is suffering from a severe nervous shock," he said. "Can
you tell me anything of his habits of life?"

I mentioned the prolonged night studies and the excessive use of tea.
The surgeon shook his head.

"If you want my advice," he proceeded, "take him home at once. Don't
subject him to further excitement, when the result of the duel is known
in the town. If it ends in our appearing in a court of law, it will be a
mere formality in this case, and you can surrender when the time comes.
Leave me your address in London."

I felt that the wisest thing I could do was to follow his advice. The
boat crossed to Folkestone at an early hour that day--we had no time to
lose. Romayne offered no objection to our return to England; he seemed
perfectly careless what became of him. "Leave me quiet," he said;
"and do as you like." I wrote a few lines to Lady Berrick's medical
attendant, informing him of the circumstances. A quarter of an hour
afterward we were on board the steamboat.

There were very few passengers. After we had left the harbor, my
attention was attracted by a young English lady--traveling, apparently,
with her mother. As we passed her on the deck she looked at Romayne with
compassionate interest so vividly expressed in her beautiful face that
I imagined they might be acquainted. With some difficulty, I prevailed
sufficiently over the torpor that possessed him to induce him to look at
our fellow passenger.

"Do you know that charming person?" I asked.

"No," he replied, with the weariest indifference. "I never saw her
before. I'm tired--tired--tired! Don't speak to me; leave me by myself."

I left him. His rare personal attractions--of which, let me add, he
never appeared to be conscious--had evidently made their natural appeal
to the interest and admiration of the young lady who had met him by
chance. The expression of resigned sadness and suffering, now visible
in his face, added greatly no doubt to the influence that he had
unconsciously exercised over the sympathies of a delicate and sensitive
woman. It was no uncommon circumstance in his past experience of the
sex--as I myself well knew--to be the object, not of admiration only,
but of true and ardent love. He had never reciprocated the passion--had
never even appeared to take it seriously. Marriage might, as the phrase
is, be the salvation of him. Would he ever marry?

Leaning over the bulwark, idly pursuing this train of thought, I was
recalled to present things by a low sweet voice--the voice of the lady
of whom I had been thinking.

"Excuse me for disturbing you," she said; "I think your friend wants
you."

She spoke with the modesty and self-possession of a highly-bred woman.
A little heightening of her color made her, to my eyes, more beautiful
than ever. I thanked her, and hastened back to Romayne.

He was standing by the barred skylight which guarded the machinery. I
instantly noticed a change in him. His eyes wandering here and there, in
search of me, had more than recovered their animation--there was a wild
look of terror in them. He seized me roughly by the arm and pointed down
to the engine-room.

"What do you hear there?" he asked.

"I hear the thump of the engines."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing. What do _you_ hear?"

He suddenly turned away.

"I'll tell you," he said, "when we get on shore."




SECOND SCENE.--VANGE ABBEY.--THE FOREWARNINGS

VI.

As we approached the harbor at Folkestone, Romayne's agitation appeared
to subside. His head drooped; his eyes half closed--he looked like a
weary man quietly falling asleep.

On leaving the steamboat, I ventured to ask our charming
fellow-passenger if I could be of any service in reserving places in the
London train for her mother and herself. She thanked me, and said they
were going to visit some friends at Folkestone. In making this reply,
she looked at Romayne. "I am afraid he is very ill," she said, in gently
lowered tones. Before I could answer, her mother turned to her with an
expression of surprise, and directed her attention to the friends whom
she had mentioned, waiting to greet her. Her last look, as they took
her away, rested tenderly and sorrowfully on Romayne. He never returned
it--he was not even aware of it. As I led him to the train he leaned
more and more heavily on my arm. Seated in the carriage, he sank at once
into profound sleep.

We drove to the hotel at which my friend was accustomed to reside when
he was in London. His long sleep on the journey seemed, in some degree,
to have relieved him. We dined together in his private room. When the
servants had withdrawn, I found that the unhappy result of the duel was
still preying on his mind.

"The horror of having killed that man," he said, "is more than I can
bear alone. For God's sake, don't leave me!"

I had received letters at Boulogne, which informed me that my wife
and family had accepted an invitation to stay with some friends at
the sea-side. Under these circumstances I was entirely at his service.
Having quieted his anxiety on this point, I reminded him of what
had passed between us on board the steamboat. He tried to change
the subject. My curiosity was too strongly aroused to permit this; I
persisted in helping his memory.

"We were looking into the engine-room," I said; "and you asked me what I
heard there. You promised to tell me what _you_ heard, as soon as we got
on shore--"

He stopped me, before I could say more.

"I begin to think it was a delusion," he answered. "You ought not to
interpret too literally what a person in my dreadful situation may say.
The stain of another man's blood is on me--"

I interrupted him in my turn. "I refuse to hear you speak of yourself
in that way," I said. "You are no more responsible for the Frenchman's
death than if you had been driving, and had accidentally run over him in
the street. I am not the right companion for a man who talks as you do.
The proper person to be with you is a doctor." I really felt irritated
with him--and I saw no reason for concealing it.

Another man, in his place, might have been offended with me. There was a
native sweetness in Romayne's disposition, which asserted itself even in
his worst moments of nervous irritability. He took my hand.

"Don't be hard on me," he pleaded. "I will try to think of it as you
do. Make some little concession on your side. I want to see how I get
through the night. We will return to what I said to you on board the
steamboat to-morrow morning. Is it agreed?"

It was agreed, of course. There was a door of communication between our
bedrooms. At his suggestion it was left open. "If I find I can't sleep,"
he explained, "I want to feel assured that you can hear me if I call
to you."

Three times in the night I woke, and, seeing the light burning in his
room, looked in at him. He always carried some of his books with him
when he traveled. On each occasion when I entered the room, he was
reading quietly. "I suppose I forestalled my night's sleep on the
railway," he said. "It doesn't matter; I am content. Something that I
was afraid of has not happened. I am used to wakeful nights. Go back to
bed, and don't be uneasy about me."

The next morning the deferred explanation was put off again.

"Do you mind waiting a little longer?" he asked.

"Not if you particularly wish it."

"Will you do me another favor? You know that I don't like London. The
noise in the streets is distracting. Besides, I may tell you I have a
sort of distrust of noise, since--" He stopped, with an appearance of
confusion.

"Since I found you looking into the engine-room?" I asked.

"Yes. I don't feel inclined to trust the chances of another night in
London. I want to try the effect of perfect quiet. Do you mind going
back with me to Vange? Dull as the place is, you can amuse yourself.
There is good shooting, as you know."

In an hour more we had left London.

VII.

VANGE ABBEY is, I suppose, the most solitary country house in England.
If Romayne wanted quiet, it was exactly the place for him.

On the rising ground of one of the wildest moors in the North Riding of
Yorkshire, the ruins of the old monastery are visible from all points of
the compass. There are traditions of thriving villages clustering about
the Abbey, in the days of the monks, and of hostleries devoted to the
reception of pilgrims from every part of the Christian world. Not a
vestige of these buildings is left. They were deserted by the pious
inhabitants, it is said, at the time when Henry the Eighth suppress ed
the monasteries, and gave the Abbey and the broad lands of Vange to his
faithful friend and courtier, Sir Miles Romayne. In the next generation,
the son and heir of Sir Miles built the dwelling-house, helping himself
liberally from the solid stone walls of the monastery. With some
unimportant alterations and repairs, the house stands, defying time and
weather, to the present day.

At the last station on the railway the horses were waiting for us. It
was a lovely moonlight night, and we shortened the distance considerably
by taking the bridle path over the moor. Between nine and ten o'clock we
reached the Abbey.

Years had passed since I had last been Romayne's guest. Nothing, out of
the house or in the house, seemed to have undergone any change in the
interval. Neither the good North-country butler, nor his buxom Scotch
wife, skilled in cookery, looked any older: they received me as if I
had left them a day or two since, and had come back again to live
in Yorkshire. My well-remembered bedroom was waiting for me; and
the matchless old Madeira welcomed us when my host and I met in the
inner-hall, which was the ordinary dining-room of the Abbey.

As we faced each other at the well-spread table, I began to hope that
the familiar influences of his country home were beginning already to
breathe their blessed quiet over the disturbed mind of Romayne. In
the presence of his faithful old servants, he seemed to be capable of
controlling the morbid remorse that oppressed him. He spoke to them
composedly and kindly; he was affectionately glad to see his old friend
once more in the old house.

When we were near the end of our meal, something happened that startled
me. I had just handed the wine to Romayne, and he had filled his
glass--when he suddenly turned pale, and lifted his head like a man
whose attention is unexpectedly roused. No person but ourselves was
in the room; I was not speaking to him at the time. He looked round
suspiciously at the door behind him, leading into the library, and rang
the old-fashioned handbell which stood by him on the table. The servant
was directed to close the door.

"Are you cold?" I asked.

"No." He reconsidered that brief answer, and contradicted himself.
"Yes--the library fire has burned low, I suppose."

In my position at the table, I had seen the fire: the grate was heaped
with blazing coals and wood. I said nothing. The pale change in his
face, and his contradictory reply, roused doubts in me which I had hoped
never to feel again.

He pushed away his glass of wine, and still kept his eyes fixed on the
closed door. His attitude and expression were plainly suggestive of the
act of listening. Listening to what?

After an interval, he abruptly addressed me. "Do you call it a quiet
night?" he said.

"As quiet as quiet can be," I replied. "The wind has dropped--and even
the fire doesn't crackle. Perfect stillness indoors and out."

"Out?" he repeated. For a moment he looked at me intently, as if I had
started some new idea in his mind. I asked as lightly as I could if I
had said anything to surprise him. Instead of answering me, he sprang to
his feet with a cry of terror, and left the room.

I hardly knew what to do. It was impossible, unless he returned
immediately to let this extraordinary proceeding pass without notice.
After waiting for a few minutes I rang the bell.

The old butler came in. He looked in blank amazement at the empty chair.
"Where's the master?" he asked.

I could only answer that he had left the table suddenly, without a word
of explanation. "He may perhaps be ill," I added. "As his old servant,
you can do no harm if you go and look for him. Say that I am waiting
here, if he wants me."

The minutes passed slowly and more slowly. I was left alone for so long
a time that I began to feel seriously uneasy. My hand was on the bell
again, when there was a knock at the door. I had expected to see the
butler. It was the groom who entered the room.

"Garthwaite can't come down to you, sir," said the man. "He asks, if you
will please go up to the master on the Belvidere."

The house--extending round three sides of a square--was only two stories
high. The flat roof, accessible through a species of hatchway, and still
surrounded by its sturdy stone parapet, was called "The Belvidere," in
reference as usual to the fine view which it commanded. Fearing I knew
not what, I mounted the ladder which led to the roof. Romayne received
me with a harsh outburst of laughter--that saddest false laughter which
is true trouble in disguise.

"Here's something to amuse you!" he cried. "I believe old Garthwaite
thinks I am drunk--he won't leave me up here by myself."

Letting this strange assertion remain unanswered, the butler withdrew.
As he passed me on his way to the ladder, he whispered: "Be careful of
the master! I tell you, sir, he has a bee in his bonnet this night."

Although not of the north country myself, I knew the meaning of the
phrase. Garthwaite suspected that the master was nothing less than mad!

Romayne took my arm when we were alone--we walked slowly from end to end
of the Belvidere. The moon was, by this time, low in the heavens; but
her mild mysterious light still streamed over the roof of the house and
the high heathy ground round it. I looked attentively at Romayne. He was
deadly pale; his hand shook as it rested on my arm--and that was all.
Neither in look nor manner did he betray the faintest sign of mental
derangement. He had perhaps needlessly alarmed the faithful old servant
by something that he had said or done. I determined to clear up that
doubt immediately.

"You left the table very suddenly," I said. "Did you feel ill?"

"Not ill," he replied. "I was frightened. Look at me--I'm frightened
still."

"What do you mean?"

Instead of answering, he repeated the strange question which he had put
to me downstairs.

"Do you call it a quiet night?"

Considering the time of year, and the exposed situation of the house,
the night was almost preternaturally quiet. Throughout the vast open
country all round us, not even a breath of air could be heard. The
night-birds were away, or were silent at the time. But one sound was
audible, when we stood still and listened--the cool quiet bubble of a
little stream, lost to view in the valley-ground to the south.

"I have told you already," I said. "So still a night I never remember on
this Yorkshire moor."

He laid one hand heavily on my shoulder. "What did the poor boy say of
me, whose brother I killed?" he asked. "What words did we hear through
the dripping darkness of the mist?"

"I won't encourage you to think of them. I refuse to repeat the words."

He pointed over the northward parapet.

"It doesn't matter whether you accept or refuse," he said, "I hear the
boy at this moment--there!"

He repeated the horrid words--marking the pauses in the utterance of
them with his finger, as if they were sounds that he heard:

"Assassin! Assassin! where are you?"

"Good God!" I cried. "You don't mean that you really _hear_ the voice?"

"Do you hear what I say? I hear the boy as plainly as you hear me. The
voice screams at me through the clear moonlight, as it screamed at me
through the sea-fog. Again and again. It's all round the house. _That_
way now, where the light just touches on the tops of the heather. Tell
the servants to have the horses ready the first thing in the morning. We
leave Vange Abbey to-morrow."

These were wild words. If he had spoken them wildly, I might have shared
the butler's conclusion that his mind was deranged. There was no
undue vehemence in his voice or his manner. He spoke with a melancholy
resignation--he seemed like a prisoner submitting to a sentence that
he had deserved. Remembering the cases of men suffering from nervous
disease who had been haunted by apparitions, I asked if he saw any
imaginary figure under the form of a boy.

"I see nothing," he said; "I only hear. Look yourself. It is in the last
degree improbable--but let us make sure that nobody has followed me from
Boulogne, and is playing me a trick."

We made the circuit of the Belvidere. On its eastward side the house
wall was built against one of the towers of the old Ab bey. On the
westward side, the ground sloped steeply down to a deep pool or tarn.
Northward and southward, there was nothing to be seen but the open moor.
Look where I might, with the moonlight to make the view plain to me, the
solitude was as void of any living creature as if we had been surrounded
by the awful dead world of the moon.

"Was it the boy's voice that you heard on the voyage across the
Channel?" I asked.

"Yes, I heard it for the first time--down in the engine-room; rising and
falling, rising and falling, like the sound of the engines themselves."

"And when did you hear it again?"

"I feared to hear it in London. It left me, I should have told you, when
we stepped ashore out of the steamboat. I was afraid that the noise of
the traffic in the streets might bring it back to me. As you know, I
passed a quiet night. I had the hope that my imagination had deceived
me--that I was the victim of a delusion, as people say. It is no
delusion. In the perfect tranquillity of this place the voice has come
back to me. While we were at table I heard it again--behind me, in the
library. I heard it still, when the door was shut. I ran up here to try
if it would follow me into the open air. It _has_ followed me. We may as
well go down again into the hall. I know now that there is no escaping
from it. My dear old home has become horrible to me. Do you mind
returning to London tomorrow?"