Now although Meg, in a vain endeavour to catch sight of her husband, had braved the flashes of lightning, the terror of the fireball as it burst across the sky made her involuntarily clap her hands over her eyes, and during the destructive seconds of the storm's ferocity that followed, she felt the house shake violently, give a sickening tilt and then shiver, as joists and beams groaned and creaked in their shifting. Built as it was upon the lower level of the sea-wall, the foundations slid with the soil as the waves, bursting through the cellarage weakened it. The front door was torn from its hinges and blown bodily against the staircase, as the sea water gushed through the passage, silting up the floor with a loose deposit of gravel, sand and shell. At the same time the diamond-paned casement through which Meg had been looking, crashed inwards, its heavy leadwork striking her on the head and bearing her to the floor beneath its weight. This was the last wicked prank of the hurricane before departing. There followed what, in contrast to the noise, seemed almost a silence, broken only by the accustomed sound of waves against the Wall.
How long Meg lay there beneath that pile of twisted lead, glass panes and broken plaster, she could not tell, for the injury to her head had left her senseless, but when she recovered she still found herself looking through the casement, and for some time it puzzled her that she could only see the sky—a wild sky of fast-flying clouds lit with the full radiance of the moon. Then she realised that she was lying on the floor with the window resting upon her face. She remembered the storm. Its violence had gone, but in her heart it had left behind its terror, and it was not the thunder-bolt that had made her cover her eyes, nor the noise, nor the rocking house which made this terror so paralysing, but the thought of what it had brought, the thing which she had seen between her fingers, in that awful moment. It was the huge form of a giant, a devil of the storm, who with staring eyes had rushed towards her at the window. She had seen its face plainly, with its great eyes and black beard, for as it rushed, it waved a great lantern above its head, and this swaying light had revealed the horrid face. And its voice—for this thing had brought her a message—was the most terrible of all. The volume of its speech embraced the whole multitudinous din as vowels were formed by mighty waters rolling into hollow places with howling winds to govern them and consonants were framed by cracking timbers and the rasp of grinding stones.
“Clouder is dead. Your house is destroyed. This comes of serving God.” How could she doubt the owner of such a sentiment to be other than the devil himself? He had made himself manifest in the shape of a wooden giant. He had surrounded himself with hellish elements and caused all this destruction because she, in her humble faith, served God. And God, the omnipotent, had given him free license. He had robbed her of husband and home, and God permitted it. She remembered that recently she and Abel had listened to a sermon on Job, preached by the parson, Master Bolden. On the way home from church, she had remarked to Abel that it was a strange story which was hard to believe. Now it was true. God had once more permitted just such an injustice.
Numbed in body and spirit, she gloried in her rebellion; and then she heard a simple, sacred sound which gave the lie to her terror, and which her simple faith was glad to welcome as a comforter. It was the tinkle of the three church bells, rung as on the Sundays to call the faithful to prayer. After all she had been through, she was in no frame of mind to put two and two together, and did not remember that the three bells were not only rung on Sundays to call the parish to 'serve God' but on days and nights of sea danger to summon the Marsh men to 'maintain the Wall'. However, forgetting this, she made a miracle of a mere coincidence.
As the inland farmers of the Marsh were being roused from their beds by the bell's slogan, so did Meg rouse herself from that old oak floor, which though never straight at the best of times was now canted at an alarming angle. With all this calamity, no wonder she had imagined even worse things. Of course, her husband was alive. If he were dead she would have been told by the men, and not by her nightmare of a wooden devil which was nothing more than a frightening dream. She could soon dispel that by looking out of the open space where the window had been. Comforting herself with these suggestions, she looked out.
Though her fears had been acute, they were as nothing to the overwhelming horror that now possessed her. Could she have mastered her physical attributes in order to let out one piercing scream, it might have given her brain a chance of a speedier recovery later on. But what she saw had paralysed her brain. All she knew was that in her attempt to give the devil the lie, the devil had given her the truth, for there, right opposite to her and leaning over the lip of the broken sea-wall, his lantern still alight, was the enormous head and shoulders of the wooden-looking giant. Its staring eyes regarded her with a fixed expression of contempt and hatred, and as she gazed, she listened too and heard a voice beneath her window saying: “Here's a shutter. Help me wrench it off.” There followed a squeaking of iron and a bump of wood, and then the slow, regular tramping of men's feet.
The malignant face told her to come and look at what was going on beneath her window. He swung his lantern invitingly. She was powerless to move, but she knew that they were carrying her Abel away on the shutter, and she guessed he was dead, for she heard a voice which she recognised as the squire's say: “Wait, while I break the news to his wife.” She heard him enter the passage and wondered why his footfalls sounded as though they trod on a beach. The she heard him say: “I'll want a hand here. The stairs are all but gone under this door.” After much whispering and mumbling, and the noise of wood clearance, followed by the effort of someone climbing, she knew the squire was clinging to the crooked doorpost of the bedroom. She was unable to turn round, for the wooden man had her hypnotised, but she knew it was the squire before he spoke, which he did with difficulty.
“My dear Mrs. Clouder,” he began, and then remembered that he had first seen her as the prettiest baby lying in a bassinet before the kitchen fire at the Long White Cottage where the Henley family lived. He recalled how one of the Henley men said: “Well, Master Tony, what do you think of our lobster catch?” He, as a little god fresh from Queen's College, Oxford, had replied: “It's true most babies are as red as boiled lobsters, but you wrong this one. She's pretty.” “Oh, but I was meaning the cradle, Master Tony. Grandpa made it out of two old lobster pots when we heard that little Meg was thinking of living in Dymchurch.”
The squire loved the Henleys, and perhaps Mrs. Clouder best of them all. So thinking of this, he paused and said with emotion: “My poor Meg, I'm afraid you've got to be very brave. Of course, all the village will help you, and you know that I'll always stand by you. You see, my dear child, I've got the worst possible news to break to you. You and I have lost our best friend. We'll have to comfort each other, Meg. You know I had the greatest affection and admiration for the man you loved. Look at me, please, Meg, won't you? It will help me to tell you.”
“But I have been told, Sir Tony,” she answered. “I've been told in a cruel way, not kind like you would do. He told me. Look. He's staring at me. He killed my husband and destroyed my home, and he's gloating on me there, leaning over the sea-wall. Do you see nothing, sir? Or does it only appear to me?”
“I see it very well, Meg,” replied the squire. “But I see nothing malignant in it. You of all people should pity it, for it is a fellow-sufferer—a victim of the storm.”
“It is the maker of the storm. It is the devil. He told me so. And he sent that other brute to warn me. He looked at me with fixed eyes, too. He stared at me like that, before he put out the light and seized me. Don't let him get me, Squire, oh.”
The staring eyes, the monotonous, metallic tone of her voice frightened the squire. He had imagined that he would have to deal with a weeping, hysterical young woman whom he could have taken home to his wife to be mothered. But the deathly still horror which possessed Meg was a symptom altogether more alarming, and he feared that her reason might be affected permanently.
He answered her calmly: “Why, Meg, I really marvel that you, whose menfolk have been sailors since the days of Noah, should fall into such an error. This devil on the sea-wall, as you speak of it is no devil at all, but has, no doubt for years been the pride of every honest sailor behind it, for it is nothing but the wooden figure-head of the ill-fated broken brig, City of London. Your heroic husband and our no less valiant vicar had almost reached it with a life-line, when a great tidal sea wave lifted the ship above them. It is some comfort to know that their death was quick. It is a great comfort to know that their death was heroic. Now, Meg, I have come to take you to the Court House.”
“And leave my home?” she asked, bewildered.
“It is unsafe to stay in it, Meg,” replied the squire. “I will undertake to see that it is guarded by responsible men answerable to myself, and to-morrow we will repair the damage.”
For the first time she cut the spell which the wooden figure held on her, and turning to the squire, asked in a matter-of-fact tone: “Where is—Abel?”
“They are carrying the—they are carrying him,” he corrected, to a shelter for the night. It is customary to use the barn at Sycamore Farm in cases like this. Come, Meg, it is something to know that you bear the name of a man whom the whole of the Marsh will always be honouring. Let me take you to her ladyship.”
Meg took two steps towards him and then turning suddenly looked once more at the figure-head. Then with a pathetic moan she collapsed into the squire's arms. He carried her through the door and lowered her unconscious body to willing hands beneath the broken staircase.
And so in solemn procession were the Clouders carried towards the rookery where the party divided, those bearing Abel's body turning into the Farm Lane, and the squire's party, who carried Meg, going on to the old Court House, where Lady Cobtree and her three daughters busied themselves in preparing a guest-chamber and making ready such remedies as Dr. Sennacharib Pepper prescribed for the unconscious young widow.
Meanwhile a messenger had followed from the sea-wall to say that although a strict watch was being kept upon the abating waves around the wreck, no sign of the vicar's body had appeared. The squire sent back word that the Preventive Officer was to take what steps he thought fit to guard not only the Clouder's tavern, but the wreck itself from pilferage. Neither plank nor beam belonging to the broken brig was to be touched till he invited on the morrow the Lords of the Level to view it. He also enjoined a strict watch to be kept all night and although he thought it likely that all the ship's company must have perished either by fire or water, should any survivor by the grace of God reach Dymchurch Wall in safety, such a person was to be carried to the Court House immediately and information lodged with the doctor, who could attend the said person in his presence. He also sent word to the sexton, who had been roused to ring the tocsin bells, to continue the practice till he received word that the foreman of the Wall was satisfied that sufficient posses of men had assembled to insure safe keeping of the Marsh.
Thanks to the skilful nursing of the ladies at the Court House and the strength of her own youth, it was not long before Meg opened her eyes and looked about her. She saw a beautifully proportioned room of white panelling edged with gold. She saw rich hangings, not only at the windows with their rigidly built-in seats, but also around the four-poster bed in which she lay. The feel of the bedclothes, softer than any material she had ever imagined, the glow of a fire in the grate beneath a carved mantelpiece, and the thickness of the carpet which enabled the pretty little satin shoes with sparkling buckles that were crossing it to make no noise. These shoes peeped out timidly from beneath a beautifully embroidered skirt. Meg's eyes slowly took in the rest of this dainty figure, a beautiful girl dressed as she imagined queens' ladies dressed at court.
As this exquisite being leaned over her and applied a cooling essence to her throbbing head, and the sweet perfume of lavender enveloped her, Meg told herself that she was dead; this was Heaven and that an angel was ministering to her. As she attempted to collect her impaired wits, she remembered a funeral procession in which she was carried to the village churchyard. Somehow, she did not mind this, for the gloom of that walk had resulted in a rest beyond her highest dreams; but, unfortunately, the brain recovering, turned traitor and showed her something which destroyed her heaven and made her shriek in terror. Immediately, three other ministering angels were around her, and one, whose hair was powdered white, asked her of what she was afraid.
“There by the fire. Oh, keep him away. He is all wet, and he'll be pressing my head against his coat.”
The elder woman with the powdered hair, who was none other than Lady Cobtree, patted Meg's hand and asked: “Now, Meg dear, you know me?”
Meg shook her head. “I know him.”
The youngest Miss Cobtree turned fearfully and looked in the direction indicated by Meg's wild eyes. Then, seizing her mother's arm, she whispered: “It is her husband she sees. 'All wet,' she said. Drowned people do appear, they say, to those they love.”
“Is it your husband that you see?” asked Lady Cobtree.
“I am not afraid of Abel; I am only afraid of Mr. Merry,” she said, as she stared and trembled.
“What, that 'wretched Merry' as they call him? You need not fear that he will come to the Court House, unless to be tried for some roguery at the Petty Sessions. The good-for-nothing has more reason to be afraid of the squire than you have to fear such a rogue.”
