Australian Gothic. Marcus Clarke
my bed. I do not ask your forgiveness, for I have forfeited that of the God who made me.—
Your unhappy uncle,
GEORGE MALBRAITH
I raised my eyes as I finished the perusal of this letter, and saw that the gaze of Cyrus Malbraith was fixed on the dial plate of his watch, and that the hands were approaching the hour I was now awaiting with the strangest feelings.
“What do you think now?” he asked. “The very hour of the month there confessed to was that in which I heard my father’s call and saw his face.”
“I do not know what to think. My God! What is that?”
We both arose to our feet as a heavy fall seemed to take place on the floor above us, and a dreadful sound of scuffling and stamping of feet, as though a deadly struggle for life were going on in that long closed room. We neither spoke or moved until cries and stifled shrieks for mercy gave place to one loud call, and “Cyrus, O Cyrus!” was heard as plainly as though uttered by human lips.
“I am here father; I am coming!” shouted the poor son, as he darted toward the door and opened it just as the very silence of death itself succeeded the previous noise above.
“You forget, you forget!” I cried, as I also ran to the door with the intention of closing it; “you cannot help the dead.” But he waved me off and whispered, “Hush! It is not over,” as the door above opened and heavy steps seemed to bear some heavy burden, tramp, tramp down the stairs and past the open door where we stood.
I don’t know what came over me, but I suppose it was the courage of desperation. The brilliant light from the pair of candles on the table poured out into the landing as I dashed outside and planted myself in the middle of it. My revolver was in my hand, and its muzzle was pointed up the stairs, down which I yet heard the approaching tramp.
“In the name of Heaven, stand back; it is close upon you!” said the horrified watcher; but I saw nothing and only heard the heavy footsteps as they sounded nearer and nearer.
“Where is it? I see nothing!” I said, as a strange rustle seemed to pervade the air around me and my outstretched hand encountered the cold features of a dead body. Yet there was nothing. My hand was stretched into a space fully illuminated by the candles, yet I felt the dead features and the damp hair and heard a faint groan that might have been the last from a dying man’s lips, and then there was a silence unbroken save by my own hard and terrified breathing.
I drew back into the apartment and closed and locked the door behind me. Cyrus had already gone, and was leaning weakly against the window through which the moonlight streamed. He indeed seemed incapable of speech, but all at once he beckoned me to his side.
“Look, is this the end?” he whispered.
I went to his side and looked out. Beneath the tower lay the grass-grown garden with its overgrown shrubberies casting dark, heavy shadows across the white patches of moonlight, and straight down toward the river was an opening in the trees, through which the broad gleam of water was visible as it sparkled in the moonbeams or hid in the shelter of sedge and willow. As I followed the eyes of Cyrus, mine rested on the apparent figure of a man staggering, as it seemed, under a heavy burden that hung limply over his shoulders.
This dead apparition crossed the grass and moved down the vista toward the river, disappearing suddenly by the bank just as the edge of a great cloud touched the moon and covered her up with a pall of sable. It was as though between us and the awful scene a curtain of darkness had been suddenly dropped to shut a deed of blood from the sight of man forever. Cyrus turned and, dropping into his chair, hid his face with his hands.
I did not know what to think or how to persuade myself that I had been the victim of some cheat, for how could my sense of sight as well as my sense of touch be at fault? Had I not felt the touch of cold features, with which my hands yet trembled, in a spot occupied by nothing as my eyes assured me? Had I not heard noises and voices where there was no one? What was I to think or believe?
“I should like to visit that room above us,” I said abruptly, and Cyrus got up and took a light in his hand.
“There is nothing to prevent you, there is the key,” and he handed me a key as he spoke. Seizing the other candle I preceded him, going up the stairs, however, with a tremor I should not like to have avowed.
The door was on the side of the small landing, in exactly the same position as that of the room beneath it, and I satisfied myself that it was fastened before I unlocked it.
“Stop a moment before you open,” said my new friend, as he laid a hand on my arm, “I want to tell you the condition in which I left it a few hours ago when I thoroughly examined it. The room was in perfect order save for the dust of years that lay even upon the dark bed-cover, so that a touch left the impress of fingers upon it and the fingers brought away impurity.”
“You think it will be changed now?” I asked.
“How can I help thinking so? No struggle such as we heard could take place without leaving traces.”
“The struggle was but of sound; I saw nothing on the stairs, though I felt it.”
“But I saw it; I saw the dead face of my father that you felt, and I saw but too well the features of the man who bore the corpse on his shoulder—it was my uncle’s and it was awful in its terror of the burden so close to it.”
I opened the door and we entered, to find that my companion’s suspicion was correct, the room bearing every trace of a mortal struggle in which blood had been spilled. In fact, the tale could almost be gathered from the indications left in the haunted chamber. The bed-clothes were disordered and partly dragged to the floor, as if with the grasp of the victim who had been torn from his slumber to die. A small night-stand was overturned, a chair fallen on its back, and the bits of carpet that had lain decently on the floor were shuffled about and, in one spot, exposed the bare boards, on which red spots and stains were visible as though but a week old. The very atmosphere felt heavy as if with death, and a shudder went through me as though from a chill wind.
“In the name of him who can alone understand these mysteries, let us get out of this!” I exclaimed; and, far more rapidly than I had ascended, I went down again to the comparatively safe shelter of the lower apartment, the door of which I carefully locked, as if that could be any security against the spirits of the tower.
“Are you not a bit nervous?” I asked of my host, as I hastily replenished my glass and emptied it.
“Not in the least. I believe that I have been especially summoned from a far land to avenge my father’s death, and that the things we have seen and heard and felt have been as especially sent to guide me in securing that vengeance.”
“How so? There was nothing to show more than you already know.”
“Oh yes, there was a great deal. I know the particulars now. I know that my father was dragged from his bed and foully murdered, and that his own brother carried the corpse down those stairs and down the avenue toward the river. I shall search in that spot for the remains of a murdered man.”
“You may have a satisfaction in interring the bones,” I said; “but no more, since your uncle is dead.”
“You forget there was an accomplice,” he said impressively.
“Ah, yes, I had forgotten that; but I see now, you think the name of that accomplice is—”
“Richard Neilson. Yes, I do.”
“But you can prove nothing against him?”
“Not yet; but I feel that I shall be able to do so. I was not brought all these long watery miles on a futile errand.”
Now I am going to rejoin the suspected Neilson and the unscrupulous man he had called Dan Whelan. It was between eleven and twelve of the same night that Neilson’s boat containing them both was pushed from the shore at the back of Calandra and rowed into the stream. It was Neilson who handled the sculls, and in the stern sat Whelan, grim and uncompromising-looking,