It was almost dark when they turned off the main road beyond Wark on to the half-metalled track that led to Black Pockrington. Above them a few stars speckled the sky and the headlamps picked out the gates and occasionally the eyes of a night animal, but everything else was dark and bare, a shape against the skyline. Jessica went into raptures.
'Oh, Lockhart, it's like another world.'
'It is another world,-' said Lockhart.
When finally they breasted the rise of Tombstone Law and looked across the valley at the Hall, it was ablaze with lights in every window.
'Oh how beautiful!' said Jessica, 'Let's stop here for a moment. I want to savour it so.'
She got out and gazed ecstatically at the house. From its peel tower to its smoking chimneys and the lights gleaming from its windows it was everything she had hoped for. As if to celebrate this fulfilment the moon came out from behind a cloud and glinted on the surface of the reservoir and in the distance there came the baying of the Flawse hounds. The reading matter of Jessica's retarded adolescence was making itself manifest.
Chapter eight
It might be said that old Mr Flawse's reading matter made itself manifest next morning in the hall of the peel tower which his grandfather had restored to more than its former elegance. A contemporary of Sir Walter Scott and a voracious reader of his novels, he had turned what had been a fortified byre for cattle into a banqueting hall with plaster chasing and ornamental crests, while from the rafters there hung the tattered and entirely concocted battle-flags of half a dozen fictitious regiments. Time and moths had lent these standards a gauzelike authenticity while rust had etched a handiwork into the suited armour and armoury that they had never possessed when he had bought them. And armour and arms were everywhere. Hel-meted figures stood against the walls and above them, interspersed with the stuffed heads of stags, moose, antelope and bear, and even one tiger, were the swords and battle-axes of bygone wars.
It was in this bellicose setting, with a great fire blazing in the hearth and smoke filtering up among the flags, that Mr Flawse chose to have his will read. Seated before him at a huge oak table were his nearest and supposedly dearest: Lockhart, Mrs Flawse, Jessica in a coma of romance, Mr Bullstrode the solicitor, who was to read the will, two tenant farmers to witness its signature, and Dr Magrew to certify that Mr Flawse was, as he proclaimed, of sound mind.
'The ceremony must be conducted under the most stringent of legal and jurisprudent conditions,' Mr Flawse had instructed, and so it was. He might just as well have added that the late and great Thomas Carlyle would lend the weight of his rhetorical authority to the proceedings, and certainly there were strains of the Sage of Ecchilfeccan in the old man's opening address. His words rang in the rafters and while for legal reasons the will contained few commas, Mr Flawse made good this deficiency by larding his speech with semi-colons.
'You are gathered here today,' he announced raising his coat-tails to the fire, 'to hear the last will and testament of Edwin Tyndale Flawse; once widowed and twice married; father of the late and partially lamented Clarissa Richardson Flawse; grandfather of her illegitimate offspring, Lockhart Flawse, whose father being unknown, I have out of no greatness of heart but that innate and incontrovertible practicality of mind which congenitally the family Flawse numbers most firmly among its features, adopted as my heir in the male line. But of the consequentiality of that anon; 'tis not of such low bestial
matters that I speak; more lofty themes become my song, if song it be that old men sing out of their memories of what might have been; and I am old and near to death.'
He paused for breath and Mrs Flawse stirred expectantly in her seat. Mr Flawse regarded her with a gleaming predatory eye. 'Aye, ma'am, well may you squirm; your turn for dotage won't delay; death's bony finger beckons and we must obey; that black oblivion is our certain destination. Certain beyond all other certainties; the one fixed star in the firmament of man's experience; all else being loose and circumstantial and incoordinate, we can but set our sextant by that star of non-existence, death, to measure what and where we are. Which I being ninety now see shining brighter and more darkly brilliant than before. And so towards the grave we move along the tramlines of our thoughts and deeds, those grooves of character which we, being born with them, are much beholden to and by, but which by virtue of their tiny flaws allow us unintentionally to exercise that little freedom which is man. Aye, is man, is. No animal knows freedom; only man; and that by fault of gene and chemical congeneracy. The rest is all determined by our birth. So like an engine is a man, all steam and fire and pressure building up, he yet must move along predestined lines towards that end which is the end of all of us. Before you stands a semi-skeleton, all bones and skull with but a little spirit to ligature with life these odds and ends. And presently the parchment of my flesh shall break; all spirit flown; and shall my soul awake? I know not nor can ever know till death decides to answer yes or no. Which said I do not dis-esteem myself. I am yet here before you in this hall and you are gathered now to hear my will. My will? A strange word for the dead to claim; their will; when matters of decision are lost to those they leave behind. Their will; the supposition only of a wish. But I forestall that chance by setting forth before you now my will; and will it be in all the many meanings of that word. For I have laid conditions down which you will shortly hear and hearing do or forfeit all that fortune I have left to you.'
The old man paused and looked into their faces before continuing. 'You wonder why I look?' he asked. 'To see one spark of some defiance in your eyes. One spark, that's all, one spark that yet might tell this partial skeleton to go to hell. Which it would at the least be ironical to conclude was indeed my destination. But I see it not; greed snuffs the candle of your courage out. You, ma'am,' he pointed a finger at Mrs Flawse, 'an undernourished vulture has more patience perched upon an upas tree than you with your squat backside on that bench.'
He paused but Mrs Flawse said nothing. Her little eyes narrowed with calculating hatred.
'Does nothing then provoke you to reply? No, but I know your thoughts; time runneth on; the metronome of heartbeats swings more slow and soon my threnody, a little premature perhaps, will cease. The grave I lie in will give you satisfaction. Let me forestall it for you, ma'am. And now the bastard Flawse. Have you defiance, sir, or did your education din it out of you?'
'Go to hell,' said Lockhart. -
The old man smiled. 'Better, better, but prompted all the same. I told you what to say and you obeyed. But here's a better test.' Mr Flawse turned and took a battle-axe from the wall and held it out.
'Take it, bastard,' he said. 'Take the axe.'
Lockhart rose and took it.
'It was the custom of the Norsemen when a man grew old to cleave him headless with an axe,' continued Mr Flawse, 'it was the duty of his eldest son. Now having none but you, a ditch-born bastard grandson, take on the onus of this act and-'
'No,' said Jessica rising from her chair and grabbing the axe from Lockhart. 'I won't have it. You've got no right to put temptation in his way.'
The old man clapped his hands. 'Bravo. Now that's more like it. The bitch has better spirit than the dog. A flicker of spirit but spirit all the same. And I salute it. Mr Bullstrode, read the will.' And exhausted by his rhetoric old Mr Flawse sat down. Mr Bullstrode rose theatrically and opened the will.
'I, Edwin of Tyndale Flawse, being of sound mind and feeble yet sufficient body to sustain my mind, do hereby leave bequeath and devise all my worldly goods chattels property and land to my wife, Mrs Cynthia Flawse, for to have and to hold in trust and in use until her own death demise departure from this place which place being defined more closely is the radius of one mile from Flawse Hall and on condition that she do not sell mortgage rent borrow pledge or pawn a single or multiple of the possessions so bequeathed left and devised and in no way improves alters adds or amends the amenities of the said property possession chattels and house but subsists upon the income alone in recognition of which undertaking she signs herewith this will as being a binding contract to obey its strictures.'