The Castle by the Sea/Chapter 221
CHAPTER XXII
THE CIPHER
WHEN I recovered it was with a dull pain in my head, and a strange perforating pain in my ears. I groped about me, and crawled first in one direction and then in another. Wherever I went I came up against rock, and huge pieces of rock littered my way as I crawled. Then, with returning wits, I remembered the string and began to feel about me. I fancy I was ten minutes before I found this, and getting to my feet followed it up. Soon I ran into more rocks, through which, apparently, the twine went. But by dint of patience and effort I at last found a hole through which I squeezed my body, picked up the string again and pursued it through a clear passage. Thank God at least the road to the cell in which I had left the others remained open.
I hauled in the last of my clue, and called:
"Perdita!"
Voices answered me. They were safe! But the noise of the explosion had rolled over them like thunder, and they were in great distress, having discovered my absence. I told my story.
"Sweetheart!" I said, oblivious of Norroy's presence and I took her in my arms. "Sweetheart, whatever befalls, remember that I love you."
"And I you!" she answered back, and hung on me, and wept a little softly.
"Better luck next time, old man," said Norroy, with his indomitable cheerfulness.
Ah, if I could but think there was any next time! It is true we had provisions which might last us some days, and that the air in those chambers might suffice to supply us with life for some time longer. But what prospect was there of ultimate rescue? Nothing seemed before us save a long drawn-out death. After a little Norroy and I resolved to make excursions in sundry directions, not actuated so much by real hope of finding a way out, as by the mere necessity of doing something. We made use of the string-balls, and for some time occupied ourselves with going to and fro. But a change had come over the labyrinth. It seemed to have shrunk materially in size and variety, so that we constantly were brought up against blind walls, and were driven to other directions. The secret of the maze had perhaps been simpler than I had thought, and apparently one blast had sufficed to block the entrance to the interior. This looked as if, after all, there was only one true exit from the cliff-face; and that had been closed by the débris of earth and rocks in the convulsion of the explosion.
We returned worn out to the cell in which Perdita rested, endeavoring to keep a brave heart. But she broke down a little later, and sobbed like a child, crying out that it was dark and she could not bear it; while I strove to comfort and solace her, and Norroy sat ejaculating oaths dully in the darkness. By and by she composed herself under my ministrations, her sobs ceased, and she listened like a child, as she had cried like a child, to a story I had begun like a child for the benefit of my audience. It was the tale of a child wandering in a lonely forest, and unable to find his way out. Profound night enwrapped the forest and the child was in the heart of it. And first the wolves came out, and their eyes were like points of fire in the circumferent darkness. And the lonely child saw them and was afraid."
"Why was he afraid of the wolves?" asked Perdita. "I should only have been afraid of the darkness."
"He was afraid of the wolves, Perdita, because they were strange things to him. This child was not afraid of the darkness. He knew it could not hurt him. Night is benignant, and in its kindly shadows all the hurts and ills of the day are healed. There is no terror in the darkness to those who are wise. The child was wise. For one thing he knew that light and darkness are but figments of a finite mind, differing infinitesimally; and that all light comes from within, and that the soul may be like a paradise of fairy lights, when all is night without. Give me your hand, Perdita. I will light up that soul of yours. See, at a flash it leaps into broad day. What do you see now? Shut your eyes. Forget."
"I see the sun on the Castle gardens," said Perdita, breathing fast, "and the rhododendrons and the growing Mary-lilies and the sweet-william in Mrs. Lane's garden, and below the estuary and sails on it—ah!" she gulped down something.
"Don't be afraid of the wolves," I whispered. "Don't you see the shore beyond and the light on the woods?"
"Yes," said Perdita, "and the clouds big in heaven, and the blue and—oh, I cannot bear it!" she broke off.
"Go on about the kid," said Norroy. "Seems like a sort of tale I heard when I was a boy."
"No," said L "It's time for lunch. What will you have for lunch, Perdita? Sardines, pâté de foies gras truffles, salmi of duck or—"
I persuaded her to eat a little, and I heard the gurgle of Norroy's bottle—I laughed low and long. It was so funny to think of Norroy's bottled ale. If I could only hypnotize Perdita into sleep!
"I shut my eyes," I said, "and I see a shore and it is rosy with dawn, and the sun goes ever higher, and the shore gets ever brighter. And it is n't far away."
"That's the shore we never reach; it is the shore we dream of," said Perdita, in a low voice.
"Our dreams are best, Perdita," said I.
"Yes, dreams are best," she sighed and crept closer. "You once said I was cynical about ideals. But I'm not really. I believe in ideals. I am glad I have had ideals."
Dreams are best! And only dreams were left for us, all else should
". . . become first a peace out of pain.
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul . . ."
On Perdita's breast it would not be so hard.
"I am quite happy now," whispered Perdita, nestling nearer. "I don't mind now. It was only—the darkness. But I can see quite plainly, and I believe in that shore of yours, dearest."
I pressed her nearer still, for my heart forbade words. Silence fell.... Physical and emotional exhaustion had its way with us, and we passed into oblivion.
A hand on me awoke me.
"I hear something," said Perdita.
I was wide awake, listening. I, too, heard something. It was like a tapping of a hammer on stone. I aroused Norroy and we all three listened. Undoubtedly it was a tapping, low, but distinct, and as if at no great distance. Quickly we fastened the string again to its anchorage, and Norroy and I moved off to grope our way through one of the openings nearest to the direction of the sound. I had gone some steps when a hand touched me, and then felt along my arm and seized my fingers.
"It is I. Don't leave me. Let me come with you. I am not afraid, dearest. I have lost all fear. But I feel strangely excited. Do let me come."
Of course I let her; we went hand in hand, as I edged forward, through the partitions of the rock.
"Hush; stand still, Norroy. Listen!"
Yes, the sound was clearer and louder. I hastened on. Perdita tripped and would have fallen had I not caught her in my arms. Louder and clearer! I thought I could hear the noise of chips falling under the hammer. I wheeled round a black corner and encountered cold clammy air like that of a charnel house. It seemed to get into my throat. I coughed and gasped. Were we to be poisoned as friends were breaking through? I raised my voice and shouted, and the hollow echoes streamed backwards and forwards along the passages, calling and ever calling mockingly, and with increasing faintness in my ears.
Then there was a sudden flare on the hellish darkness, a blinding glare. I shouted again, Perdita was dimly visible by my side, stumbling on. The voices flowed along to us: "Brabazon! Is that you?" and a shriller voice, "Is Miss Forrest there? And Sir Gilbert?"
In another moment we rushed into the area of the lantern and stood revealed.
"Thank God!" said Mr. Toosey, flashing the light on us. "Thank God, we 're in time."
Miss Harvey went off into wild laughter that was half hysterical, and seized Perdita by the arm and kissed her, and put her arm in mine, and shook hands with Norroy all over again and again.
Meanwhile Toosey was rapidly giving me a brief explanation.
"It's the cipher," broke in Miss Harvey. "It was Mr. Toosey's cleverness. He found it out. Oh, my dear, I'm so glad we 've got you again. We thought you were drowned when Hawes told his story. Only we could n't find any trace of you."
"Is Hawes safe?" asked Perdita.
"Yes, yes; he got ashore and thought you'd gone; and he came and told us all. And we resolved to try the caves again. But we could n't get in. The way was all choked up."
"The scoundrels must have blown up the entrance," said Toosey, "when they found we were on their tracks. But no one knows why—"
Oh, well, we should straighten out the tangle directly and in good time. We had each much to learn. But for the moment nothing signified, nothing was of importance save that we were saved.
Yet it was impossible not to learn some of the story there and then; for to our astonishment we discovered that the rescuing party had gained entrance to the underground chambers by a connection with the cellars of the Castle.
"It was the cipher!" again declared Christobel excitedly. We should learn in time. Now it was necessary for us to find our way to that upper air and light from which we had been so long excluded, and which we had never thought to breathe and see again. Mr. Toosey had broken through a thin wall of plaster which had been erected between the Castle cellars and the top of the caverns—no doubt some time after the abandonment by the Norroys of their connection with the illicit trade. And by this we obtained access to a passage off the cellars, and ascended by the aid of the lantern a flight of stone steps. At the top of these we passed through a hole and then to my surprise, I discovered that we were on the secret stairway in the wall leading to the picture gallery. Five minutes afterwards we were in the morning-room, with the full tide of the bright June sunshine rolling in at the open door and windows, and subject to the tender ministrations of Jackman and his wife and Miss Fuller, who hung weepingly on Perdita. Perdita retired with Miss Fuller and Miss Harvey, and I went to the window. I stood there limply, with my hand on the sill, for some time drinking in again all the delights of life and light. I could not speak. My spirit fainted for its very fullness. And Norroy, who had been in that horrible prison longer than I—
"I say, old man, I'm taking some of your whiskey and soda, do you mind?"
I dropped into a chair and fell to laughing weakly. From the information communicated by Toosey and Miss Harvey at a subsequent hour, I am enabled to give this resume of the proceedings during our absence.
Miss Harvey came over in distress on the same evening that Perdita was lost, and found Miss Fuller in tears. The story of that rash and noble sacrifice was related, for the boatman, Hawes, had got back with his tragic tale. It was assumed that Perdita had perished, though Miss Harvey steadfastly and stoutly refused to credit it. But my own fate was in greater doubt, for Perdita had declared that I intended to explore the caves. It was thus the obvious duty of the party to search for me there with the possible chance of receiving some light on Perdita's fate and Norroy's. But the report bruited about the small neighborhood must have come to the ears of the conspirators, and precipitated their murderous action. They had hoped thus to conceal their abominable plans and to dispose of all suspicions forever. The caves were discovered to be blocked and the explorers returned sadly, wondering if the story of my expedition had been true, and divided as to the advisability of pushing the exploration further in that direction. This was where Mr. Toosey came in.
That ingenious spirit, indomitable after a hundred rebuffs, had pored over the copy of the "Novum Organum," catching, maybe, some instinctive gleam of the truth out of that romantic mind of his. In the pursuit of his investigations he had spent two nights in the Castle, having been frankly accepted by the Jackmans, who had a strange faith in him. And, finally, at three in the morning, he knocked at Mrs. Lane's door, roused the household, which included Miss Harvey that night, and unrolled before the ladies in their dressing-gown; his wonderful theory.
It was Miss Harvey who was fired by it, and who insisted that there and then they should go up to the Castle. Her chauffeur was aroused, and the car took the trio up the hill. Jackman and his wife entered into the spirit of this forlorn hope, and the secret passage was tested. You will recall that the cipher ran thus:
3 X 3
20 Staires
R. Wall.
Toosey's wild imagination hit the truth. The secret passage was connected with the smuggling caverns. Heaven knows what inner romantic twist in Jackman's nature had made that staid and matter-of-fact butler an adherent of the extravagant evangelist. Miss Harvey declared that there was something in him that convinced her, and there it must rest. His solution was ingenious. With the anxious party trailing after him he had descended the secret stairs twenty steps. Then on the right wall he had marked out his square of bricks, and had counted three to the right, and then three down, thus arriving at the thirteenth brick. This he had insisted on having removed with a pick, when it was seen that a hollow opened on the other side. Excited by this discovery the men succeeded in enlarging the hole so as to admit of the passage of a body, and Toosey passed through. His investigations now laid bare to him another flight of stairs in the wall, which descended to the level of the cellars, and from which access to these was possible through a blocked doorway. Jackman had broken through this, and then the search seemed to have ended in failure. But Miss Harvey who had followed them, casting her lantern on the other side of the passage, had seen signs of a second doorway. This, too, had been destroyed, and the entrance to the underground galleries had been thus opened. In our prison cell we had lain not more than thirty or forty feet away from the foundations of the Castle; and I saw now how it was that I had been disturbed by the noises I had set down to the death tick. The channels of the caverns had conveyed the sounds of the dwarf and his companion as they mined the ore in the upper chambers.
All this story I pieced together gradually, and when we had recovered from the strain of our incarceration. Immediately after that, we set inquiries going in the neighborhood, inquiries which the detective, engaged by Mrs. Harvey, arrived just in time to superintend. A break-down gang entered the cave at low water, and the bodies of the dwarf and his companion were found in the ruins with which they would have involved us. Later I solved more of the mystery. The fisherman, Dalling, had always been a character of some suspicion at the Point; the dwarf, it turned out, was called Horne, and we learned that he had a brother in London who had "got on." He lived at the group of cottages on the cliff, to which I had once tracked Naylor. I could not doubt that this Horne, who was a practical miner from Cornwall, had made the discovery of ore in the caves, and had communicated with his brother, the commission agent. Hence, the widespread and elaborate plot to oust Norroy, and to obtain possession of the estate. The secret out, the commission agent disappeared, and Mr. Naylor was not heard of for some time. Though we took legal advice it was not considered that we had evidence to establish definitely the connection of either with the kidnapping of Norroy, or the blowing up of the caves. Such is the law!
With our release from our terrible captivity the story should fitly end. Yet there is one thing more to chronicle. Norroy did not have to fight his case, or even to go into court. The action never went farther, and we assumed that Mr. Naylor was afraid that we possessed more evidence than we had. Moreover, if the case had come into court it would not have mattered; for at Norroy Castle rules Lady Norroy, late of New York.
As for me, I have nearly finished my book, but "Studies in Earth," will probably wait some time ere it sees the light. I have other work. My dear Perdita has overwhelmed me with a heap of financial responsibilities, and seems glad to be rid of them. I have told her that she married me under false pretences; for I had wooed and loved a girl whose face was her fortune, and—well, I happen now to love a woman who is of wealth and consequence in the world. Moreover, we have a place which we consider is much superior to the Castle. It may not be so old, and storied, but it is more comfortable, it has sweet gardens, and is within sound of the challenging sea—and it is our own.
I am glad Perdita believed in that shining shore of mine. We watch it often from behind our southern windows, and I hope we shall see it always—even unto the end, and beyond.
THE END