CHAPTER IV.

THE OAK BEGINS TO GROW.

This is the legend of the planting of Kildhurm's Oak. It has, indeed, been affirmed that the child's words were literally true, and that Lady Kildhurm died actually and not figuratively by her husband's hand. But there is no trustworthy evidence in support of such a charge, and it may therefore be discredited. The fact remains that father and son were never reconciled; not because the latter held to his childish threat, but because Sir Brian conceived an unconquerable dread of him, and would never willingly have him in his presence. All accounts agree in representing this hitherto fearless man as having become a victim to superstitious terrors, and as having lapsed into an altogether morbid state of mind. In his sleep he was often heard to shriek out unintelligible words in a choking voice, and sometimes, in the midst of company, he would have the air of suddenly being confronted with sights and sounds to which none but he were sensible. He would point to the ground with his finger, it is said, muttering and staring, and occasionally drawing back his feet, as if to avoid treading upon some imaginary horror. This latter peculiarity was first noticed in him on the day of his wife's funeral. All the chief personages in the neighbourhood had been invited to the ceremony, and a large concourse of people had assembled out of curiosity. The darksome procession had entered the churchyard of the Gothic church that stood in the midst of the village about a mile from Kildhurm Tower. The coffin was being carried in beneath the arched portal, when Sir Brian set his foot on the first of the seven stone steps which led up thither. All at once, to the surprise and discomfiture of the beholders, he halted abruptly, and then gave back a pace or two. His eyes, meanwhile, were observed to be rigidly fixed on the clean and smooth-worn steps before him. Sir Brian slowly extended his arm, with finger outstretched, and seemed to trace therewith the course of some sluggishly-moving thing that crept towards him along the flags, and which, assuredly, nobody except himself could perceive.

'Look, look! 'tis running down the steps! Merciful God! where should so much come from?' he whispered between his chattering teeth.

Whispered though the words were, they were caught up by those nearest him, and by them communicated to others. An awkward and irresolute pause followed; the funeral _cortège_ wavered, and forsook its narrow regularity, and a group of curious, startled, and questioning faces grouped themselves around the knight, who still glared downward, shivering and distraught. At length the clergyman of the parish, an elderly, stern-visaged man, made his way through the press, and laid his hand upon the stricken man's shoulder.

'Honoured Sir Knight,' said he, 'let not a grief which is most natural, and worthy of all respect, overcome you at this moment; for all the people stand amazed, and know not what to do. Go forward, I entreat you, into the church, that the last sad rites may be performed, and the assembly dismissed.'

Thus admonished, Sir Brian pressed both his hands across his eyes, and made a hurried and desperate attempt to reach the church door. But on the first step he slipped and fell headlong, shrieking out in a voice that rang over the crowd and penetrated to the coffin-bearers within the aisle--

'I am cursed! Her blood is upon me!'

It was an ugly and an ominous spectacle. No further attempt was made to induce him to enter the church, nor is it likely that any such attempt would have succeeded. From his behaviour, and from sundry obscure sentences that fell from him, it was inferred that the arched doorway, to his apprehension, was sentinelled by some grisly phantom that waved him back. And it is worthy of note that from this time to the very end of his life, he never made his way into the house of God, or even would accept the ministrations of any member of the sacred profession. To strive to bring his mind into a religious frame was tantamount to throwing him into one of his fits of superstitious delirium; so that those last words of his wife, on parting with him for ever--'May the blood which thou hast this day shed cause thee to slip and stumble in thy way heavenward!'--would seem to have found a sufficiently ample fulfilment.

The fact that he never saw his wife buried, by the way, may account for the notion which constantly possessed him that she was still in some shape or other (a very appalling one, seemingly) above ground. In other words, the man was haunted for the remainder of his days by a spectre; possibly by more than one: but that is a point not easy to determine, since he was the only person to whom it or they were visible. He contracted a habit of betaking himself at certain hours to that particular point on the cliff where the body of Lady Kildhurm had been found: being thereto impelled, we may suppose, not because the place was agreeable to him--for it is probable that no place in the world was less so--but by that perverse horror which is known by the name of fascination, and which drives the fluttering sparrow into the open jaws of the snake. Having regard to all these eccentricities of his, it is not surprising that he came to be considered as a man accursed--incapable of being of use to any human creature, and therefore to be avoided of all. It must be recollected that this was the beginning of the seventeenth century; nobody allows himself to fall into delusions nowadays. And it will be easy for the philosophers of our enlightened age to account for Sir Brian's mania, and his notions about phantoms, as a result of that astounding buffet on the head which he received from him of the Red Beard; a buffet rude enough, certainly, to have disorganised brains stronger than those of the Knight of Kildhurm. There remains, it is true, the question why such a cause should be followed by such an effect; but to insist upon this would be, perhaps, but the refinement of idle curiosity.

The violent extinction of these two lives--of Lady Kildhurm's and of him of the Red Beard--was suffered to pass without legal inquiries, or at all events without legal penalties. The north of England, at this period, was not in a particularly peaceful or settled condition; and, what is more to the purpose, the red-bearded man was known to have been ardently attached to the Roman Catholic religion; and he was doubtless suspected by some of having affiliations with the authors of the Gunpowder Treason. No one, of course, who set any value upon the security of his own vertebra, would care to espouse the cause of a person of whom such things could be said, especially after taking into consideration the fact that the person was no longer alive. As for Lady Kildhurm, if it were true that she had carried on an intrigue with a traitor and conspirator, what more probable and easy to be believed than that she should have sympathised with his political and religious views into the bargain? For when women give themselves up to love, it is their happiness to give themselves without reservation of soul, mind, or body. Let Lady Kildhurm and her lover, therefore, if they needed avenging, manage the matter for themselves, and in their own way.

And, surely, no one who was present at the deathbed of Sir Brian Kildhurm would have ventured to affirm that the blood of those two was unavenged. But over that grim scene let a veil be drawn. After all, Lady Kildhurm may have been innocent; and if Sir Brian found this out when it was too late, his fate was in no respect an enviable one.