in the first horror of blackness i came near to letting go the rope and falling from my perch on the blade. my brain went with a swing and turn and a sick wave overwhelmed my heart and flooded all my chest with nausea.
was i trapped after all—and just when confidence seemed established in me? for some evil moments i remained as i was, not daring to move, to look up, even; blinded only by the immediate plunge into cabined night, terrible and profound.
i had left the matches above. there was no rekindling of the lamp possible. up through the darkness i must climb—and how?
then for the first time it occurred to me that my father’s directions had not included the method of the return journey. perhaps he had thought it unnecessary. to clearer senses the means would have been obvious—a scramble, merely, by way of the paddles, while the wheel was held in position by the rope.
in the confusion of my senses i thought that my only way was to swarm up the dangling rope; and, without doubt, such was a means, if an irksome one, of escape. only i should have left the tackle anchored as it was to the wheel. this i did not do, but, moved by a sudden crazy impulse, stooped and turned the button that held all in place.
it was good fortune only that saved me then and there from the full consequences of my act. for, pulled taut as it was, and well out of the perpendicular, the moment it was released the rope swung through the slit like a pendulum, carrying me, frantically clinging to it with one hand, off the paddle. then, before i had time to put out my free hand to ward off the danger, clump against the wheel i came in the return swing, and with such force that i was heavily bruised in a dozen places and near battered from my hold.
clawing and scratching like a drowning cat and rendered half-stupid by the blow, i yet managed to grasp the rope with my other hand, and so dangle there with little more than strength just to cling on. once i sought to ease the intolerable strain on my arms by toeing for foothold on the paddle again, but the wheel, swinging free now, slipped from under me, so that i was nearly jerked from my clutch. then there was nothing for it but to gather breath and pray that power might come to me to swarm up the rope by and by.
drooping my head as i hung panting, the blackness i had thought impenetrable was traversed by the green glint of light below that i have mentioned. the sight revived me in a moment. it was like a draught of water to a fainting soldier. now i felt some connectedness of thought to be possible. with a bracing of all my muscles, i passed my legs about the rope and began toilingly to drag myself upward.
i had covered half the distance, when i felt myself to be going mad. how this was i cannot explain. the fight against material difficulties had hitherto, it seemed, left tremors of the supernatural powerless to move me. now, in a moment, black horror had me by the heart. that i should be down there—clambering from the depths of that secret and monstrous pit, the very neighborhood of which had always filled me with loathing, seemed a fact incredible in its stupendous unnature. this may sound exaggerated. it did not seem so to me then. despite my manhood and my determination, in an instant i was mastered and insane.
still i clung to the rope and crawled upward. then suddenly i saw why night had fallen upon me in one palpable curtain when the lantern was extinguished; for the door of the cupboard was closed.
had it only swung to? but what air was there in the close room beyond to move it?
hanging there, like a lost and fated fiend, a bubble of wild, ugly merriment rose in me and burst in a clap of laughter. i writhed and shrieked in the convulsion of it; the dead vault rung with my hysterical cries.
it ceased suddenly, as it had begun, and, grinding my teeth in a frenzy of rage over the thought of how i had been trapped and snared, i swung myself violently against the door, and, letting go my hold at the same instant, burst it open with the force of my onset and rolled bleeding and struggling on the floor of the room beyond.
after a minute or two i rose into a sitting posture, leaning on one hand, half-stunned and half-blinded. a dense and deadly silence about me; but this was penetrated presently by a fantastic low whispering sound at my back, as if there were those there that discussed my fate. i turned myself sharply about. dull emptiness only of rotting floor and striding rafter, and the gathered darkness of wall corners.
the sense of fanciful murmuring left me, and in its place was born a sound as of something stealthily crossing the floor away from me. at the same instant the door of the room, which i had left open, swung softly to on its hinges, and i was shut in.
then, with a fear that i cannot describe, i knew that the question was to be put to me once more, and that i was destined to die under the torture of it.
i had no hope of escape—no thought that the passion that prompted me to self-effacement might, diverted, carry me to the door in one hard dash for light and liberty. the single direction in which my mind moved unfettered was that bearing upon the readiest means to my purpose—to die, and thereto what offered itself more insistently than the black pit i had but now risen from? a run—a leap—a shattering dive—and the murmuring water and oblivion would have me forevermore.
i turned and faced the dark gulf. i pressed my hands to my bursting temples to still the throb of the arteries that was blinding me. then, spasmodically, my feet moved forward a pace or two; i gave a long, quivering sigh; my arms dropped inert, and a blessed warmth of security gushed over all my being.
pale; luminous; most dear and pitiful, an angel stood before the opening and barred my way. a shadow only—but an angel; a spirit come from the sorrowful past to save me, as i, alas! had never saved her.
i fell on my knees and held out my arms to her, with the drowning tears falling over my cheeks. i could not speak, but only moan like a child for cheer and comfort. and she smiled on me—the angel smiled on me, as dolly, sweet and loving, had smiled of old. oh, god! oh, god! thus to permit her to come from over the desolate waste for solace of my torment!
was all this only figurative of the warring clash of passion and conscience? the presence was to me actual and divine. it led me, or seemed to lead, from the mouthing death—across the room—out by the open door, that none had ever shut; and then it was no longer and i stood alone in the gusty passage.
i stood alone and cured forever of the terror of that mad and gloomy place, whose influence had held me so long enthralled. henceforth i was quit of its deadly malice. i knew it as certainly as that i was forgiven for my share in a most bitter tragedy that had littered the shore of many lives with wreckage. for me, at least, now, the question was answered—answered by the dear ghost of one whose little failings had been washed pure in the bountiful spring of life.
presently, moved by the sense of sacred security in my heart, i passed once more into the room of silence—not with bravado, but strong in the good armor of self-reliance. i closed and locked the door of the cupboard and walked forth again, feeling no least tremor of the nerves—conscious of nothing to cause it. thence i went out to the platform, and, levering up the sluice, heard the water discharge itself afresh into the hollow-booming channel that held the secret of the wheel.
and now, indeed, that my thoughts were capable of some order of progression, that very secret rose and usurped the throne of my mind, deposing all other claimants.
what weird mystery attached to the portrait nailed to the axle? that it was placed there by my father i had little doubt; but for what reason and of whom was it?
i recalled his wild command to me to never make reference to aught my eyes might chance to light upon, other than the treasure i had gone to seek. in that direction, then, nothing but silence must meet me.
of whom was the portrait, and what the mystery?
on the thought, the attenuated voice of old peggy came from the kitchen hard by in a cracked and melancholy stave of her favorite song:
“i washed my penknife in the stream—
heigho!
i washed my penknife in the stream.
and the more i washed it the blood gushed out—
all down by the greenwood side, o!”
old peggy! when had she first established her ghoulish reign over us? had she been employed here in my mother’s time? i only knew that i could not dispart her ancient figure and the mill in my memory.
i pushed open the door and walked into the kitchen. she was sitting darning by the frouzy little window—a great pair of spectacles on her bony nose—and looked at me with an eye affectedly vacant, as if she were a vicious old parrot speculating upon the most opportune moment for a snap at me.
“that’s a pretty song, peggy,” i said.
“and a pretty old ’ooman to sing it,” she answered.
“were you ever young, peggy?”
“not that i remembers. i were barn wi’ a wrinkle in my brow like a furrow-drain, and two good teeth in my headpiece.”
“i dare say. how old were you when you first came here?”
“how old? old enow and young enow to taste wormwood in the sarce gleeted fro’ three winton brats.”
“that’s no answer, you know. what’s your present age?”
“one hundred, mebbe.”
“was modred born when you came?”
“born? eighteen bard months, to my sorrow. a rare gross child, to be sure; wi’ sprawling fat puds like the feet o’ them crocodillies in the show.”
if peggy could be trusted, i had got an answer which barred further pursuit in that direction. she could never, i calculated, have been personally acquainted with my mother or the circumstances of the latter’s death. indeed, i could not imagine her tolerated in a house over which any self-respecting woman presided.
elsewhere i must look for some solution of the puzzle that had added its complexity to a life already laboring under a burden of mystery.
but in the meantime, an older vital question re-reared its head from the very hearthstone of the mill, whereon it had lain so long in stupor that i might have fancied it dead.
