Barrow Hill: The Dark Path The Game
Niki Wienberg
I HAD an extraordinary experience the other evening. I had gone down to stay in Marlborough for a few days, to preach in the chapel and to give some lectures and seminars to the sixth-formers at the College there. I arrived at dusk, and was almost immediately whisked off to attend a school concert, which was excellent.
As we walked back afterwards, with the long Victorian chapel on our left, I looked over to my right, peering through the gloaming, and it was as though some veil of time had been lifted and I was gazing into another age. Instead of the Victorian school buildings and dormitories I was expecting, I saw, rising before me, a great green hill, clearly an earthwork mound or barrow, perfectly shaped, with a glimmering white path spiralling up to its summit, and ancient yews clinging to its sides and around its crown. A little mist drifted by in the half dark, and I felt that I could have been gazing on some corner of Middle-earth, or some fairy mound. I half expected the fair folk to issue from that hill, or to be present at the Hosting of the Sidhe.
As I climbed up the spiralling chalk path to the summit of the Mound that morning, I could see a white horse carved on the flanks of the valley and the sun glinting on the clear waters of the Kennet, the pure chalk stream that rises at Silbury and runs eastward towards the rising sun, down through Marlborough and past this mound.
Even at this date, so remote from its making, I could sense, in that magical alignment of earth, water, and the light of the sun, something of the numinous and sacred geometry marked out by our remote ancestors. Then I gazed from the mound across to the chapel where I would be telling the story of how the Light of Life came to earth, and revealed himself as the true source, offering us a fountain rising in us to eternal life, and I was glad to turn from one sacred place to another.
Camber is a coastal village in a beautiful area of East Sussex on the western edge of the Romney Marsh between Rye and Lydd. Camber it is a popular destination for tourists from all over Europe, in addition to a resident population of around 1,500.
Stilborough. An old-fashioned market-town of some importance in its district,but not the chief town of the county. It was market-day: Thursday: and thestreets wore an air of bustle, farmers and other country people passing andrepassing from the corn-market to their respective inns, or perhaps from theirvisit, generally a weekly one, to the banker's.
In the heart of the town, where the street was wide and the buildings weregood, stood the bank. It was nearly contiguous to the town-hall on the one hand,and to the old church of St. Mark on the other, and was opposite the newmarket-house, where the farmers' wives and daughters sat with their butter andpoultry. For in those days--many a year ago now--people had not leaped up abovetheir sphere; and the farmers' wives would have thought they were going to ruinoutright had anybody but themselves kept market. A very large and handsomehouse, this bank, the residence of its owner and master, Mr. Peter Castlemaine.
No name stood higher than Mr. Peter Castlemaine's. Though of sufficientlygood descent, he was, so to say, a self-made man. Beginning in a small way inearly life, he had risen by degrees to what he now was--to what he had longbeen--the chief banker in the county. People left the county-town to bank withhim; in all his undertakings he was supposed to be flourishing; in realizedfunds a small millionaire.
The afternoon drew to a close; the business of the day was over; the clerkswere putting the last touches to their accounts previously to departing, and Mr.Peter Castlemaine sat alone in his private room. It was a spacious apartment,comfortably and even luxuriously furnished for a room devoted solely to businesspurposes. But the banker had never been one of those who seem to think that ahard chair and a bare chamber are necessary to the labour that brings success.The rich crimson carpet with its soft thick rug threw a warmth of colouring onthe room, the fire flashed and sparkled in the grate: for the month was Februaryand the weather yet wintry.
Before his own desk, in a massive and luxurious arm-chair, sat Mr. PeterCastlemaine. He was a tall, slender, and handsome man, fifty-one years of agethis same month. His hair was dark, his eyes were brown, his good complexion wasyet clear and bright. In manner he was a courteous man, but naturally a silentone; rather remarkably so; his private character and his habits wereunexceptionable.
No one had ever a moment's access to this desk at which he sat: even hisconfidential old clerk could not remember to have been sent to it for any paperor deed that might be wanted in the public rooms. The lid of the desk drew overand closed with a spring, so that in one instant its contents could be hiddenfrom view and made safe and fast. The long table in the middle of the room wasto-day more than usually covered with papers; a small marble slab between Mr.Peter Castlemaine's left hand and the wall held sundry open ledgers piled oneupon another, to which he kept referring. Column after column of figures: thevery sight of them enough to give an unfinancial man the nightmare: but thebanker ran his fingers up and down the rows at railroad speed, for, to him, itwas mere child's-play. Seldom has there existed a clearer head for his work thanthat of Peter Castlemaine. But for that fact he might not have been seated wherehe was to-day, the greatest banker for miles round.
And yet, as he sat there, surrounded by these marks and tokens of wealth andpower, his face presented a sad contrast to them and to the ease and luxury ofthe room. Sad, careworn, anxious, looked he; and, as he now and again paused inhis work to pass his hand over his brow, a heavy sigh escaped him. The more hereferred to his ledgers, and compared them with figures and papers on the deskbefore him, so much the more perplexed and harassed did his face become. In hiseyes there was the look of a hunted animal, the look of a drowning man catchingat a straw, the look that must have been in the eyes of poor Louis Dixhuit whenthey discovered him in his disguise and turned his horses' heads backwards. Atlast, throwing down his pen, he fell back in his chair, and hid his face in hishands.
He remained in this attitude, that told so unmistakably of despair, for someminutes, revolving many things: problems working themselves in and out of hisbrain confusedly, as a man works in and out of a labyrinth, to which he has lostthe clue. A small clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour, five, and thenchimed an air once popular in France. It was a costly trifle that the banker hadbought years ago. Paintings, articles of virtu, objets de luxe, had alwayspossessed attractions for him.
In answer, the door opened, and there entered a little elderly man withsnow-white hair worn long behind, and a good-looking, fair, and intellectualface, its eyes beaming with benevolence. He wore a black tail coat, according tothe custom of clerks of that day, and a white cambric frilled shirt like that ofhis master. It was Thomas Hill; for many years Mr. Peter Castlemaine'sconfidential clerk and right hand.
Mr. Peter Castlemaine pointed to a seat close to him; and his clerk, quiet inall his movements, as in the tones of his voice, took it in silence. For a fullminute they looked at each other; Thomas Hill's face reflecting the uneasinessof his master's. He was the first to speak.
"I could not," breathed Mr. Peter Castlemaine. "I wanted to put itfrom me, Hill, as a thing that could never really be. It has never come so nearas it has come now, Hill; it has never been so real as at this moment ofoutspoken words."
"It was not my place to take the initiative, sir; but I was wishing alwaysthat you would speak to me. I could but place facts and figures before you andpoint to results, compare past balances with present ones, other years'speculations with last year's, and--and give you the opportunity of opening thesubject with me. But you never would open it."
"I have told you why, Hill," said Peter Castlemaine. "I strove to throw thewhole trouble from me. It was a weak, mistaken feeling; nine men out of everyten would have been actuated by it under similar circumstances. And yet," hecontinued, half in soliloquy, "I never was much like other men, and I never knewmyself to be weak."
"I don't know, Hill; I feel so now. This has been to me long as a far-offmonster, creeping onwards by degrees, advancing each day by stealthy steps moreominously near: and now it is close at hand, ready to crush me."
"In the old days, sir, everything you handled turned to gold. You had but totake up a speculation, and it was sure to prove a grand success. Why, sir, yourname has become quite a proverb for luck. If Castlemaine the banker's name is toit, say people of any new undertaking, it must succeed. But for some time pastthings have changed, and instead of success, it has been failure. Sir, it isjust as though your hand had lost its cunning."
"Right, Hill," sighed his master, "my hand seems to have lost its cunning. Itis--I have said it over and over again to myself--just as though some cursepursued me. Ill-luck; nothing but ill-luck! If a scheme has looked fair andpromising to-day, a blight has fallen on it to-morrow. And I, like a fool, as Isee now, plunged into fresh ventures, hoping to redeem the last one. How few ofus are there who know how to pull up in time! Were all known the public wouldsay that the mania of gambling must have taken hold of me----"
"----When it was but the recklessness of a drowning man. Why, Hill--if Icould get in the money at present due to me, money that I think will come in,perhaps shortly, though it is locked up now, we should weather the storm."
"I trust it will be weathered, sir, somehow. At the worst, it will not be abad failure; there'll be twenty shillings in the pound if they will but wait.Perhaps, if you called a private meeting and pointed things out, and showed themthat it is only time you want, they'd consent to let you have it. Matters wouldgo on then, and there'd be no exposure."
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