Australian Gothic. Marcus Clarke
ashore. A man was standing on the grass in the shelter of some undergrowth—a man stout of form and coarse of face, with worn and dusty attire and tangled hair and beard.
“By—, it is you!” Neilson had said. “The devil helps his own. If of all the world I could have had my wish this moment, I should have wished to see your face.”
“Hold your mad yells!” the man replied, as he stepped into the boat and sat down. “If you had a rope around your neck you would not make such a row. Get in and get home.”
“In trouble again?” asked Neilson, as he obeyed and seized the oars.
“Ay, and will be as long as there is money to be made by a blow. I was at your hut, but guessed you were up the river when I missed the boat. How are things working with you, Dick?”
“Badly,—badly just now, and if ever a man wanted a helping hand I do, and I know you’re game to give it to me, Dan Whelan.”
“Ay am I, ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ is my motto, mate; so spit out your trouble, Dick, for there can’t be listeners on the river. Pull out more into the stream and then go ahead.”
The speaker struck a match as he spoke and lit his pipe, in readiness to listen to Neilson’s story, which was told as the water rippled by them in silvery sparkles, where the nearly full moon crept through the trees to its bosom, and while the sweet breeze from the Bugong Hills softly touched the cheeks of the plotters in a vain attempt to whisper of a sweetness and a purity they could not comprehend. As further events will reveal the result of their plans, I need not enter into them more fully, but leave them in the hut of Neilson at Calandra until a later hour.
“We may as well go upstairs,” Cyrus said to me after we had lingered long in front of the haunted house, and when the moon was beginning to throw her pale light freely over the forest tops. “It is getting late, and I have a story to tell you.”
So I followed him in and up the stairs, after he had carefully seen to the fastenings of the door. There was no light save what struggled through the uncurtained windows on the staircase, and I confess that I did not feel at ease, even though I was no believer in ghosts, and was glad when Cyrus had struck a match and lighted the candles ready placed on the writing-table in the room he had selected to occupy.
“You would never think of living altogether alone in this place?” I said, as he placed a decanter and some refreshments on the table. “Putting spirits entirely out of the question, the loneliness and gloom of this house would set a man crazy.”
“I never meant to be here long,” he answered; “indeed I hope my business will not take many days. You see my preparations are but slight,” and he pointed to his bedding as it lay on the old-fashioned couch I have mentioned before; “but although my belief in spirits is entire, I am not afraid, for I know that those who revisit this house will not harm me.”
“No, I am sure they won’t!” I replied, as though I should say “for there are no such things;” but my new friend looked so solemn as he drew the dusty curtain far back from the window and let the moonlight through the dim panes, that I helped myself to a glass from the decanter, and sat down to hear the story he had promised me.
Cyrus took out his watch and laid it on the table. The hands marked half-past ten as he detached the albert from his vest.
“I am impressed with the belief,” he said seriously, “that whatever of a supernatural seeming occurs here this night will take place between half-past eleven and twelve o’clock, so that I have more time to relate my tale to you than its length will require. Shall I begin?”
“If you will be so obliging. I confess that my curiosity is great.”
“I want to tell you a little of the history of the brothers who both lived and both died in this house. You are already aware that the family name of these gentlemen was Malbraith; the youngest of them, George Malbraith, was a single man; the eldest was a widower, with one son, but a disowned one in consequence of an unhappy marriage to which I need not revert. Mr. Mathew Malbraith was a man of property, and on the disunion and separation between him and his son taking place he took up a closer intimacy with his brother, who was very many years younger than himself, and a poor man. The result of this intimacy was their emigration together to this country and the purchase of this property. There was, however, no house on it then, and Mathew Malbraith designed and had the Moat built, calling it after his English home, and designing to pass the remainder of his days in it, as indeed he eventually did.
“For ten years before his death Mathew Malbraith heard no word of his banished son, yet his brother had betrayed the absent youth so far as to hide all knowledge of the letters he received from him from the unhappy father, who, in his loneliness, repented him sadly of his son’s loss, and would have made him amends in all ways could he only have found out the whereabouts of his ill-used lad. When I tell you that the name of the dead man’s son was Cyrus Malbraith, you will anticipate my story in a measure.”
“Yes,” I replied. “You are the son of Mr. Mathew Malbraith yourself?”
“I am; I am Cyrus Malbraith.”
“Pray go on, for I am more and more interested now that I know that.”
“You are, of course, but now comes the part of my narrative that will most astonish you. I had been for years in San Francisco, the father of a happy family, and in prosperous circumstances, when I, one night, awakened from a strange dream. I had dreamed that I had heard my father’s voice crying aloud to me, ‘Come! O Cyrus!’ and in, as it sounded, the most awful bodily agony. I awoke with my heart beating with abnormal rapidity, and moisture breaking through every pore of my body, and it was some moments before I could compose myself in the belief that I had not really heard my own name uttered loudly.
“Well, I slept again, and was awakened by the same call, but the cry, ‘Cyrus, O Cyrus!’ was fainter. I sprang from my bed and drew on some clothes, determined to keep awake and reason myself out of the nightmare that seemed to have taken possession of me, so I sat down in an armchair by the bed.
“As I sat there, with my hand on my forehead, that felt hot and throbbing, I raised my eyes and saw between me and the door a man’s form lying, as it seemed, upon the floor, with a bruised and bloody face turned toward me with its appealing eyes fixed on mine. The face was my father’s, and I got up to stagger toward the form, but it was gone, and I fell forward on my face to the spot where it had appeared. I was found there insensible, and lay for many weeks after in the grasp of a violent illness, to the approach of which, I was constrained to ascribe the fancied appearance and voice of my parent.”
“Doubtless you were already delirious when you dreamt of the call,” I said.
“I do not think so; nor, I think, will you when you are aware that it was on that very night and at that very hour my poor father was murdered in this house, but it was not for long after that I knew that, or that it was my Uncle George’s hand that struck the death-blow. That news reached me in this letter that was delivered to me in due course by the foreign mail, and the contents of which brought me to Australia—read it.”
He placed the letter before me, and I read—
From The Moat House,
29th October, 18—.
Nephew Cyrus,—I cannot die without confession of my great sin to you before I go hence and am no more. I write this from my death-bed in this house, that my hands desecrated with the blood of my brother, Cain that I am, and was accursed and deprived of hope. Here I lie in grievous and sore pain, and with none to close mine eyes save him who aided me in my crime, and from whom I have to hide the knowledge of this my confession, lest he should with his own hands avenge your father’s death by adding to the stains already upon them that of the poor blood that courses so feebly in the veins of these fingers which I now for the last time hold this pen. In the tower room above this where my bed is we despoiled foully my brother and your unhappy father of his life, and here I expiate in pain of body and despair of soul a deed done on the 29th day of October 18—, at between half-past eleven and twelve o’clock