The Bram Stoker Megapack (257 page)

To me the anguish was intense. All the misdeeds of my life rose before me, and also every reason why life should be dear. I employed the sailor with my eyes to let me speak, and after a little while he removed the gag, after cautioning me that if I spoke above a whisper, my first syllable should be my last.

I whispered but one argument.

“If you kill me, I shall be sought after. You’re safer as you are with my promise not to inform on you.”

The argument was cogent, and told, and sound logic usually does. So, after a terrible threatening in case of my breaking my pledge, they untied my legs and took off the handcuffs.

Then they brought me into a boathouse by the beach in there brushed me and removed any traces of travel or violence. Next they put me into a pony cart that stood ready by the side of the laneway leading to Chidiock, and drove me into Charmouth, depositing me at my own door. We did not meet a single person by the way.

The last words I heard were the whisper caution of the policeman:

“No one has seen you or us. Go back to your bed and pretend you were never out,” and then they drove off again.

I took the advice, slipped off my boots, and stole upstairs. My wife was still sleeping, so I undressed and got into bed. Lest I should wake her, I pretended to sleep, and soon despite my mental agitation, slept, too.

* * * *

I was awakened by my wife, who was up and dressed.

“Why, Augustus, you are desperately sleepy this morning. It is after 10 o’clock, and breakfast is over long ago. Cousin Jemima would not wait. However, your breakfast is kept hot.”

I woke to broad consciousness, but thought it wise to feign heaviness.

“Never mind—I’ll get up presently.”

“But, my dear, you must get up now or you will miss the ’bus to Bridport. Remember, you promised to get some crabs for Cousin Jemima!”

“Oh, bother Cousin Jemima. There has been enough about crabs for one night.” I said this with a sudden impulse and then stopped.

“Well, dear. I hope you have not had indigestion, too. Cousin Jemima says she has been very poorly and that it must have been from eating the new bread.”

“Indeed!” said I, adding to myself, “I’m glad she suffered, too, for was all through her that I had that terrible ordeal to go through.”

I got up and went downstairs. All was as usual; and presently I began to think I must have been dreaming. The idea grew; and the more I thought the matter over the more unreal and dreamlike it all seemed.

While, however, I was finishing my breakfast the servant came in and said there were two men at the door who had crabs to sell.

“Send them away at once,” I called out, angrily. “I want no crabs.”

The servant went, and return shortly, saying: “If you please, sir, they say that they hope you will buy a crab; they have one which was got between Bridport and Lyme.”

This statement rather staggered me, for I felt a kind of dread that my late assailants had come to look me up. I told the servant I would see to the matter, and went out myself to the door. There stood two men—but not the least like the others. The coast guard was a small man with the big beard, and the policeman was a large man clean shaven. Of these two, one was large and the other small, but the large man had a bushy beard, and the small one was clean shaven. I thought that both men looked at me very hard, so I pretended not to notice anything except the subject of barter, and said as unconcernedly as I could:

“Well, my men, so I hear you have crabs to sell; let me look at them.”

The big man answered: “We have only one left. Here it is!” and, looking at me very searchingly, he produced from a basket a crab with a big left claw and a small right one. I could not help a start of surprise which did not pass unnoticed, so I thought it better to be more unconcerned still, and said:

“No; that’s not good enough. I think I do not care for it.”

As I spoke, my wife approach the door, coming home, and with her my mother-in-law and Cousin Jemima.

The man did not notice them, but the big man said to me, civil enough”

“All right, sir. It does not matter, but I thought it well to show it to you.”

As he was putting the crab back in the basket, Cousin Jemima saw it and came forward quickly.

“What is that, Augustus? Not a crab that you are sending away? You wretch!” the last words
sotto voce
.

After a little haggling she purchase the crab, which, strangely enough, the man seemed unwilling to sell her, and for which I had the additional pleasure of paying.

Cousin Jemima took the crab in triumph to the kitchen, and the men went away toward Axmouth.

When I went back to the sitting room, I was assailed on all sides. Cousin Jemima, in tears, said I had behaved like a brute—that I was sending away the only crab seen for days, just to vex and disappoint her.

My mother-in-law surmised that I did so because I wished to have to go over to Bridport, where, unnoticed I might play billiards and get tipsy, if not meet some “creature.” Her daughter, to a small degree, shared her feelings—particularly the latter.

I maintained a strictly negative position.

* * * *

In the course of the day, the wife of the parson, George Edward Ancey, came to tea—her husband was a justice of the peace, and, as a perpetual resident, was practically the magistrate of the place. In the course of conversation she remarked that George Edward had been very much upset and worried in the morning. That two cases of insubordination had been before him. When was a coast guard, who had affronted his chief boatman before the other men, and who, on being severely censured, resigned on the spot, and had already left the village. The other was a policeman, who had refused to go on duty, and who had been accordingly summarily dismissed. Mr. Ancey regretted his departure, for he has been looked upon as the most trustworthy and active officer in the place.

When these small facts came to my knowledge, I felt more than ever in a perplexity, for their combination and the accurate manner in which they fitted into the history of the morning seemed conclusive proof that the whole thing was not a dream.

* * * *

Before supper time I went for a walk. As I was going out my wife said:

“Be sure to be home in time, Gus. There is a crab for supper and Cousin Jemima’s going to dress herself—”

A walk on the beach did me good, for it cooled my brain, and in the serener atmosphere of the evening I began to believe again that the whole episode of finding Old Hoggen was a dream—a nightmare.

I returned home in a more cheerful humor, and, conscious of security and immunity from fear, felt kindly even to Cousin Jemima and tolerant of her foibles.

At the very threshold of my home my good resolution was tried.

On a chair in the hall sat Cousin Jemima awaiting my arrival, the very picture of grim, aggressive dissatisfaction. As I came in she sniffed—I saw that something was wrong and said nothing. She followed me into the dining room where, supper having just been served, my wife and her mother were seated.

“I said we would not wait a single moment for you, after conduct,” the latter.

“What’s up now?” said I.

“What’s up indeed!”—this with indignant sarcasm. “A nice gentlemanly trick to play upon two ladies whose appetite are not good.”

“O-h-h,” I said, with what I certainly intended to be utmost sarcasm spoken in the most polished way, “then you allude to something I’ve done by letter.”

“By letter? Certainly not! What are you talking about?”

“You said I played a trick on two ladies whose appetites were not good, and I presume I must have done so by letter. Do not see? The someone must be at the long distance from this, for I know no one here answering the description.”

“You brute!” was the comment of Cousin Jemima, while my mother-in-law said nothing, but glared at her daughter, who smiled.

I sat down and tried to make matters a little pleasanter.

“Come now mother,” I said “tell me what I’ve done and what it is all about.”

“The crab,” said Cousin Jemima, in tones at once sepulchral and hysterical.

“Well, what about it?”

“You did it on purpose.”

“What did I do? I am all in surprise.”

Here my wife struck in.

“The fact is, dear, that the crab was a fraud, and mamma and Cousin Jemima, seeing that you were talking to the men, imagine that you got the whole thing up for a joke—that it was, in fact, what you call a ‘plant’.”

“My dear, I am no nearer to the fact than I was. How was the crab a fraud?”

“Well, you see there was something very queer about it. It was quite fresh, you know, and all that, but it had been opened and was all cut to little bits with knives and then put back again, just as if someone has been searching it.”

Here was a staggering proof that I had not dreamed. I almost gasped for breath and felt that I turned white.

The three women notice the change.

“Are you ill, dear?” said my wife.

“He might well be,” said her mother.

“Served him right!” said Cousin Jemima.

I recovered myself in a moment, and laughed as well as I could.

“You are a parcel of sillies, and I know nothing about it. Why, it was you, Cousin Jemima, who bought the crab.”

After a while the conversation changed to other topics. I was now beset by a most extraordinary doubt. Was my whole adventure a dream, or was it not?

I can not tell.

* * * *

Some three months after our return to town, we read in the
South Dorset News
, which some of our seaside friends sent us regularly, the following paragraph:

THE MYSTERY OF MR HOGGEN

“The strange mystery regarding the late Mr. Jabez Hoggen—the Charmouth millionaire—whose disappearance set Dorset and neighboring counties in a blaze, has at last been cleared up. Our readers will of course remember the disappearance early in August last of Mr. Hoggen, whose wealth and eccentricity were fruitful topics of conversation not only in the quiet village of Charmouth, his native place—but through all the neighboring country. Lyme, on the one hand, and Bridport on the other, and the inland towns of Axminster and Chard, were well acquainted with the name of the wealthy eccentric. Mr. Hoggen was very retired and uncommunicative, and it so came to pass that when his disappearance became known not a single person could even guess at any motive or cause for such a fact. No one was in his confidence. It was for a time generally supposed that he had been murdered for the sake of his reputed wealth, and suspicion was by the police baselessly attached to certain of the summer visitors of our pleasant Dorset coast. Our contemporary, the
Bridport Banner
, with that gross bad taste which, equally with its mendacity, characterizes its utterances, suggested—if we remember aright, the ribald shrieking forced upon our ears by some drunken Conservative reeking with the scurrilous falsity of some paltry true blue (?) meeting—for we do not read the rag—that perhaps Mr. Hoggen had in his old age seen the error of his ways, and, overcome with remorse for his adherence to the principles of liberalism, committed suicide. Time had given the lie, as it ever does, to such paltry attacks upon the noble dead. It has come to light that Mr. Hoggen took a passage in the name of Smith for Queensland in the
Tamar Indien
, sailing from Southampton on the 26th of August. We are justified in supposing that the poor gentleman, oppressed with the decadent spirit which allow such vile rags as the Conservative organs to flourish in this once pure soil, and longing for the purer atmosphere where the pollution of atmosphere caused by Conservatism is not, left in sorrow his native shore. He was recognized on board by a native of Charmouth—one Miles Ruddy, a steward on the
Tamar Indien
. It appears that he was much upset by the recognition. The following evening, as the bell was sounding for the putting out of the ship’s lights, a splash was heard, and the dread cry ‘Man Overboard’ was raised. Every effort was made to save the life of the human creature, whose head was seen for a few minutes bobbing up and down among the foam that marked the mighty vessel’s track. But without avail. He never rose, and the ship was compelled to proceed on her course. A muster of the crew and passengers showed that the missing man was Jabez Smith, or, more properly, Jabez Hoggen. The dispositions of the captain and officers of the ship and of several of the chief passengers regarding the events have been registered in Queensland, and we hasten to lay the facts just arrived by the mail before our readers.”

A little time passed, and in some two months there appeared in the same print the following paragraph:

STRANGE HISTORY OF TWO CHARMOUTH MEN.

“The Australian mail just in bring from Victoria the details, as far as they are known, of a romance, unhappily tragic, concerning two late inhabitants of Charmouth. It appears that the two men, but a few months ago well known in our pleasant Dorset village, one having been a policeman and the other a coast guard, had but lately arrived in Melbourne. At first they did not seem of much account, but before long met with a lucky stroke of fortune—alas!—fatal to them. After but a short absence, presumably in the northern gold fields, they had evidently made some wonderfully lucky discoveries of gold pockets, for on their return they made such purchases of land and houses as showed that they must have been at the time possessed of great wealth. Suddenly they had quarreled, for some unknown reason, sold again their property, and together disappeared up country. A few days later the bodies, greatly mutilated, were discovered among the charred ruins of a deserted camp. They had either fought and killed each other, or they had been murdered. The fire of the camp had spread and partially consumed the bodies, so that nothing definite could be ascertained. In this romantic story we may read as we run of the vanity of wealth.”

When I read the paragraph, I felt my mind relieved, for here was assurance to me that I had not dreamed.

* * * *

One evening long afterward I told my wife and her mother and Cousin Jemima the whole story.