Title: Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre
Author: Walpole, Hugh
Language: English
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PORTRAIT OF A MAN
WITH RED HAIR

A ROMANTIC MACABRE



By

HUGH WALPOLE



_NEW YORK_

_GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY_



COPYRIGHT, 1925,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
COMPANY, INC. (HARPER'S BAZAAR)

PORTRAIT OF A MAN WITH RED HAIR

--A--

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA



TO MY FRIENDS
ETHEL AND ARTHUR FOWLER



DEDICATORY LETTER.


BRACKENBURN,
_April_ 1925.

DEAR ETHEL AND ARTHUR--


It is appropriate, in a way, that I should give you this book when so
much of it was written under your roof. It is a romance, and this has
not been, during the last twenty years, a favourable time for romances.
But I like to give it to you because you know how it was written, in a
very happy summer after a long and arduous lecture tour during which,
more than ever before, I learned to love your country.

I wrote it as a rest and a refreshment, and I will tell you frankly that
I have enjoyed writing it very much. But I do not know whether, in these
stern days, stories are intended to be enjoyed either by the writer of
them or the reader.

I have noticed sometimes that people speak rather scornfully of a story
as "readable." But if it be not first of all "readable" what afterwards
can it be? Surely dead before it is born.

I hope then, and I believe, that this tale is "readable" at least. I
know no more than that what it is--fancy, story allegory, what you will.
I might invoke the great names of Hoffmann and Hawthorne for its
Godfathers. I might recall a story much beloved by me, _Sintram and His
Companions_, did I not, most justly, fear the comparison!

But the word allegory is, in these days, a dangerous one, and some one
will soon be showing me that we have, each one of us, his Sea-Fog, his
White Tower, and that it is the fault of his own weakness if he does not
fling out of the window his Red-Haired man.

No, no, God forbid. This is a tale and nothing but a tale, and all I ask
is that once beginning it you will find it hard to lay down unfinished--

and that you will think of me always as

Your affectionate friend

HUGH.



. . . Within these few restrictions, I think, every writer may be
permitted to deal as much in the wonderful as he pleases; nay, if he
then keeps within the rules of credibility, the more he can surprise the
reader the more he will engage his attention, and the more he will charm
him.

As a genius of the highest rank observes in his fifth chapter of the
Bathos, "The great art of all poetry is to mix truth with fiction, in
order to join the credible with the surprising."

For though every good author will confine himself within the bounds of
probability, it is by no means necessary that his characters or his
incidents should be trite, common, or vulgar; such as happen in every
street, or in every house, or which may be met with in the home articles
of a newspaper. Nor must he be inhibited from showing many persons and
things which may possibly never have fallen within the knowledge of
great part of his readers.

HENRY FIELDING.



CONTENTS

PART I

The Sea Like Bronze

PART II

The Dance Round the Town

PART III

Sea-fog

PART IV

The Tower



PART I: THE SEA LIKE BRONZE. . . .


I


  You're my friend:
  I was the man the Duke spoke to:
  I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke too:
  So here's the tale from beginning to end,
  My friend!

  * *
   *

  Ours is a great wild country;
  If you climb to our castle's top,
  I don't see where your eye can stop;
  For when you've passed the cornfield country,
  Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,
  And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
  And cattle-tract to open-chase,
  And open-chase to the very base
  Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,
  Round about, solemn and slow,
  One by one, row after row,
  Up and up the pine trees go,
  Go, like black priests up, and so
  Down the other side again
    To another greater, wilder country. . . .
  'To another greater, wilder country . . .
  'To another greater . . .'


The soul of Charles Percy Harkness slipped, like a neat white
pocket-handkerchief, out through the carriage window into the
silver-blue air, hung there changing into a tiny white fleck against the
immensity, struggling for escape above the purple-pointed trees of the
dark wood, then, realising that escape was not yet, fluttered back into
the carriage again, was caught by Charles Percy, neatly folded up, and
put away.

The Browning lines--old-fashioned surely?--had yielded it a moment's
hope. Those and some other lines from another outmoded book:

"But the place reasserted its spell, marshalling once again its army,
its silver-belted knights, its castles of perilous frowning darkness,
its meadows of gold and silver streams.

"The old spell working the same purpose. For how many times and for what
intent? That we may be reminded yet once again that there is the step
behind the door, the light beyond the window, the rustle on the stair,
and that it is for these things only that we must watch and wait?"

For Harkness had committed the folly of having two books open on his
knee--a peek at one, a peek at another, a long, eager glance through the
window at the summer scene, but above all a sensuous state of slumber
hovering in the hot scented afternoon air just above him, waiting to
pounce . . . to pounce . . .

First Browning, then this other, the old book in a faded red-brown
cover, "_To Paradise!_ Frederick Lester." At the bottom of the
title-page, 1892--how long ago! How faded and pathetic the old book was!
He alone in all the British Isles at that moment reading it--certainly
no other living soul--and he had crossed to Browning after Lester's
third page.

He swung in mid-air. The open fields came swimming up to him like vast
green waves, gently to splash upon his face, hanging over him, laced
about the telegraph poles, rising and falling with them. . . .

The voice of the old man with the long white beard, the only occupant of
the carriage with him, broke sharply in like a steel knife cutting
through blotting-paper.

"Pardon me, but there is a spider on your neck!"

Harkness started up. The two books slipped to the floor. He passed his
hand, damp with the afternoon warmth, over his cool neck. He hated
spiders. He shivered. His fingers were on the thing. With a shudder he
flung it out of the window.

"Thank you," he said, blushing very slightly.

"Not at all," the old man said severely; "you were almost asleep, and in
another moment it would have been down your back."

He was not the old man you would have expected to see in an English
first-class carriage, save that now in these democratic days you may see
any one anywhere. But first-class fares are so expensive. Perhaps that
is why it is only the really poor who can afford them. The old man, who
was thin and wiry, had large shabby boots, loose and ancient trousers, a
flopping garden straw hat. His hands were gnarled like the knots of
trees. He was terribly clean. He had blue eyes. On his knees was a large
basket and from this he ate his massive luncheon--here an immense
sandwich with pieces of ham like fragments of banners, there a colossal
apple, a monstrous pear--

"Going far?" munched the old man.

"No," said Harkness, blushing again. "To Treliss. I change at Trewth, I
believe. We should be there at 4.30."

"_Should be_" said the old man, dribbling through his pear. "The train's
late. . . . Another tourist," he added suddenly.

"I beg your pardon?" said Harkness.

"Another of these damned tourists. You are, I mean. _I_ lived at
Treliss. Such as you drove me away."

"I am sorry," said Harkness, smiling faintly. "I suppose I _am_ that if
by tourist you mean somebody who is travelling to a place to see what it
is like and enjoy its beauty. A friend has told me of it. He says it is
the most beautiful place in England."

"Beauty," said the old man, licking his fingers--"a lot you tourists
think about beauty--with your char-à-bancs and oranges and babies and
Americans. If I had my way I'd make the Americans pay a tax, spoiling
our country as they do."

"_I_ am an American," said Harkness faintly.

The old man licked his thumb, looked at it, and licked it again. "I
wouldn't have thought it," he said. "Where's your accent?"

"I have lived in this country a great many years off and on," he
explained, "and we don't all say 'I guess' every moment as novelists
make us do," he added, smiling.

Smiling, yes. But how deeply he detested this unfortunate conversation!
How happy he had been, and now this old man with his rudeness and
violence had smashed the peace into a thousand fragments. But the old
man spoke little more. He only stared at Harkness out of his blue eyes,
and said:

"Treliss is too beautiful a place for you. It will do you harm," and
fell instantly asleep.



II


Yes, Harkness thought, looking at the rise and fall of the old man's
beard, it is strange and indeed lamentable how deeply I detest a cross
word! That is why I am always creeping away from things, why, too, I
never make friends--not _real_ friends--why at thirty-five I am a
complete failure--that is, from the point of view of anything real.

I am filled too with self-pity, he added as he opened _To Paradise_
again and groped for page four, and self-pity is the most despicable of
all the vices.

He was not unpleasing to the eye as he sat there thinking. He was
dressed with exceeding neatness, but his clothes had something of the
effect of chain armour. Was that partly because his figure was so slight
that he could never fill any suit of clothes adequately? That might be
so. His soft white collar, his pale blue tie, his mild blue eyes, his
long tranquil fingers, these things were all gentle. His chin protruded.
He was called "gaunt" by undiscerning friends, but that was a poor word
for him. He was too slight for that, too gentle, too unobtrusive. His
hair was already retreating deprecatingly from his forehead. No gaunt
man would smile so timidly. His neatness and immaculate spotless purity
of dress showed a fastidiousness that granted his cowardice an excuse.

For I am a coward, he thought. This is yet another holiday that I am
taking alone. Alone after all these years. And Pritchard or Mason, Major
Stock or Henry Trenchard, Carstairs Willing or Falk Brandon--any one of
these might have wished to go if I had had courage . . . or even
Maradick himself might have come.

The only companions, he reflected, that he had taken with him on this
journey were his etchings, kinder to him, more intimate with him,
rewarding him with more affection than any human being. His seven
etchings--the seven of his forty--Lepère's "Route de St. Gilles,"
Legros's "Cabane dans les Marais," Rembrandt's "Flight into Egypt,"
Muirhead Bone's "Orvieto," Whistler's "Drury Lane," Strang's "Portrait
of Himself Etching," and Meryon's "Rue des Chantres." His seven
etchings.--his greatest friends in the world, save of course Hetty and
Jane his sisters. Yes he reflected, you can judge a man by his friends,
and in my cowardice I have given all my heart to these things because
they can't answer me back, cannot fail me when I most eagerly expect
something of them, are always there when I call them, do not change nor
betray me. And yet it is not only cowardice. They are intimate and
individual as is no other form of graphic art. They are so personal that
every separate impression has a fresh character. They are so lovely in
soul that they never age nor have their moods. My Aldegrevers and
Penczs, he was reflecting. . . . He was a little happier now. . . . The
Browning and _To Paradise_ fell once more to the ground. I hope the old
man does not waken, he thought, and yet perhaps he will pass his
station. What a temper he will be in if he does that, and then I too
shall suffer!

He read a line or two of the Browning:

  Ours is a great wild country;
  If you climb to our castle's top,
  I don't see where your eye can stop . . .

How strange that the book should have opened again at that same place as
though it were that it wished him to read!

And then _To Paradise_ a line or two, now page 376, "And the Silver
Button? Would his answer defy that too? Had he some secret magic? Was he
stronger than God Himself? . . ."

And then, Harkness reflected, this business about being an American. He
had felt pride when he had told the old man that was his citizenship. He
was proud, yes, and yet he spent most of his life in Europe. And now as
always when he fell to thinking of America his eye travelled to his own
home there--Baker at the portals of Oregon. All the big trains passed it
on their way to the coast--three hundred and forty miles from Portland,
fifty from Huntington. He saw himself on that eager arrival coming out
by the 11.30 train from Salt Lake City, steaming in at 4.30 in the
afternoon, an early May afternoon perhaps with the colours violet in the
sky and the mountains elephant-dusk--so quiet and so gentle. And when
the train has gone on and you are left on the platform and you look
about you and find everything as it was when you departed a year
ago--the Columbia Café. The Antlers Hotel. The mountains still with
their snow caps. The Lumber Offices. The notice on the wall of the
café: "You can EAT HERE if you have NO MONEY." The Crabill Hotel. The
fresh sweet air, three thousand five hundred feet up. The soft pause of
the place. Baker did not grow very fast as did other places. It is true
that there had been but four houses when his father had first landed
there, but even now as towns went it was small and quiet and
unprogressive. Strange that his father with that old-cultured New
England stock should have gone there, but he had fled from mankind after
the death of his wife, Harkness's mother, fled with his three little
children, shut himself away, there under the mountains with his books, a
sad, severe man in that long, rambling ramshackle house. Still long,
still rambling, still ramshackle, although Hetty and Jane, who never
moved away from it, had made it as charming as they could. They were
darlings, and lived for the month every year when their brother came to
visit them. But he could not live there! No, he could not! It was exile
for him, exile from everything for which he most deeply cared. But
Europe was exile too. That was the tragedy of it! Every morning that he
waked he thought that perhaps to-day he would find that he was a true
European! But no, it was not so. Away from America, how deeply he loved
his country! How clearly he saw its idealism, its vitality, its
marvellous promise for the future, its loving contact with his own
youthful dreams. But back in America again it seemed crude and noisy and
materialistic. He longed for the Past. Exile in both with his New
England culture that was not enough, his half-cocked vitality that was
not enough. Never enough to permit his half-gods to go! But he loved
America always; he saw how little these Europeans truly knew or cared
about her, how hasty their visits to her, how patronising their
attitude, how weary their stale conventions against her full, bursting
energy. And yet----! And yet----! He could not live there. After two
weeks of Baker, even though he had with him his etchings, his diary in
its dark blue cover, Frazer's _Golden Bough_, and some of the Loeb
Classics, life was not enough. Hetty and Jane bored him with their
goodness and little Culture Club. It was not enough for him that Hetty
had read a very good paper on "Archibald Marshall--the modern Trollope"
to the inhabitants of Baker and Haines. Nevertheless they seemed to him
finer women than the women of any other country, with their cheery
independence, their admirable common sense, their warm hearts, their
unselfishness, but--it was not enough--no, it was not enough . . . What
he wanted . . .



III


The old man awoke with a start.

"And when you come to this Prohibition question," he said, "the
Americans have simply become a laughing stock. . . ."

Harkness picked up the Browning firmly. "If you don't mind," he
remarked, "I have a piece of work here of some importance and I have but
little time. Pray excuse me. . . ."



IV


How had he dared? Never in all his life had he spoken to a stranger so.
How often had he envied and admired those who could be rude and
indifferent to people's feelings. It seemed to him that this was a
crisis with him, something that he would never forget, something that
might alter all his life. Perhaps already the charm of which Maradick
had spoken was working. He looked out of his window and always,
afterwards, he was to remember a stream that, now bright silver, now
ebony dark, ran straight to him from the heart of an emerald green field
like a greeting spirit. It laughed up to his window and was gone.

He had asserted himself. The old man with the beard was reading the
_Hibbert Journal._ Strange old man--but defeated! Harkness felt a
triumph. Could he but henceforward assert himself in this fashion, all
might be easy for him. Instead of retreating he might advance, stretch
out his hand and take the things and the people that he wanted as he had
seen others do. He almost wished that the old man might speak to him
again, that he might once more be rude.

He had had, ever since he could remember, the belief that one day,
suddenly, some magic door would open, some one step before him, some
magic carpet unroll at his feet, and all life would be changed. For many
years he had had no doubt of this. He would call it, perhaps, the coming
of romance, but as he had grown older he had come to distrust both
himself and life. He had always been interested in contemporary
literature. Every new book that he opened now seemed to tell him that he
was extremely foolish to expect anything of life at all. He was
swallowed by the modern realistic movement as a fly is swallowed by an
indifferent spider. These men, he said to himself, are very clever. They
know so much more about everything than I do that they must be right.
They are telling the truth at last about life as no one has ever done it
before. But when he had read a great many of these books (and every word
of Mr. Joyce's _Ulysses_), he found that he cared much less about truth
than he had supposed. He even doubted whether these writers were telling
the truth any more than the naïve and sentimental Victorians; and when
at last he heard a story all about an American manufacturer of washing
machines whose habit it was to strip himself naked on every possible
occasion before his nearest and dearest relations and friends, and when
the author told him that this was a typical American citizen, he,
knowing his own country people very well, frankly disbelieved it. These
realists, he exclaimed, are telling fairy stories quite as thoroughly as
Grimm, Fouqué, and De la Mare; the difference is that the realistic
fairy stories are depressing and discouraging, the others are not. He
determined to desert the realists and wait until something pleasanter
came along. Since it was impossible to have the truth about life anyway
let us have only the pleasant hallucinations. They are quite as likely
to be as true as the others.

But he was lonely and desolate. The women whom he loved never loved him,
and indeed he never came sufficiently close to them to give them any
encouragement. He dreamt about them and painted them as they certainly
were not. He had his passions and his desires, but his Puritan descent
kept him always at one remove from experience. He never, in fact, seemed
to have contact with anything at all--except Baker in Oregon, his two
sisters, and his forty etchings. He was so shy that he was thought to be
conceited, so idealistic that he was considered cynical, so chaste that
he was considered a most immoral fellow with a secret double life. Like
the hero of "Flegeljahre," he "loved every dog and wanted every dog to
love him," but the dogs did not know enough about him to be interested;
he was so like so many other immaculately-dressed, pleasant-mannered,
and wandering American cosmopolitans that nobody had any permanent
feeling for him--fathered by Henry James, uncled by Howells, aunted
(severely) by Edith Wharton--one of a million cultured, kindly
impersonal Americans seen as shadows by the matter-of-fact unimaginative
British. Who knew or cared that he was lonely, longing for love, for
home, for some one to whom he might give his romantic devotion? He was
all these things, but no one minded.

And then he met James Maradick.



V


The meeting was of the simplest. At the Reform Club one day he was
lunching with two men, one a novelist, Westcott, whom he knew very
slightly, the other a fellow American. Westcott, a dark thick-set man of
about forty, with a reputation that without being sensational was solid
and well merited, said very little. Harkness liked him and recognised in
him a kindly shyness rather like his own. After luncheon they moved into
the big smoking-room upstairs to drink their coffee.

A large, handsome man of between fifty and sixty came up and spoke to
Westcott. He was obviously pleased to see him, putting his hand on his
shoulder, looking at him with kindly, smiling eyes. Westcott also
flushed with pleasure. The big man sat down with them and Harkness was
introduced to him. His name was Maradick--Sir James Maradick. A strange,
unreal kind of name for so real and solid a man. As he sat forward on
the sofa with his heavy shoulders, his deep chest, his thick neck,
red-brown colour, and clear open gaze, he seemed to Harkness to be the
typical rather naïve friendly but cautious British man of business.

That impression soon passed. There was something in Maradick that almost
instantly warmed his heart. He responded--as do all American
men--immediately, even emotionally, to any friendly contact. The
reserves that were in his nature were from his superficial
cosmopolitanism; the native warm-hearted, eager and trusting Americanism
was as real and active as it ever had been. It was, in five minutes, as
though he had known this large kindly man always. His shyness dropped
from him. He was talking eagerly and with great happiness.

Maradick did not patronise, did not check that American spontaneity with
traditional caution as so many Englishmen do; he seemed to like Harkness
as truly as Harkness liked him.

Westcott had to go. The other American also departed, but Maradick and
Harkness sat on there, amused, and even absorbed.

"If I am keeping you----" Harkness said suddenly, some of his shyness
for a moment returning.

"Not at all," Maradick answered. "I have nothing urgent this afternoon.
I've got the very place for you, I believe."

They had been speaking of places. Maradick had travelled, and together
they found some of the smaller places that they both knew and
loved--Dragör on the sea beyond Copenhagen, the woods north of
Helsingfors, the beaches of Ischia, the enchantment of Girgente with the
white goats moving over carpets of flowers through the ruined temples,
the silence and mystery of Mull. He knew America too--the places that
foreigners never knew; the teeth-shaped mountains at Las Cruces, the
lovely curve of Tacoma, the little humped-up hill of Syracuse, the
purple horizons beyond Nashville, the lone lake shore of Marquette----

"And then in this country there is Treliss," he said softly, staring in
front of him.

"Treliss?" Harkness repeated after him, liking the name.

"Yes. In North Cornwall. A beautiful place."

He paused--sighed.

"I was there more than ten years ago. I shall never go back."

"Why not?"

"I liked it too well. I daresay they've spoiled it now as they have many
others. Thanks to wretched novelists, the railway company and
char-à-bancs, Cornwall and Glebeshire are ruined. No, I dare not go
back."

"Was it very beautiful?" Harkness asked.

"Yes. Beautiful? Oh yes. Wonderful. But it wasn't that. Something
happened to me there."[1]

"So that you dare not go back?"

"Yes. Dare is the word. I believe that the same thing would happen
again. And I'm too old to stand it. In my case now it would be
ludicrous. It was nearly ludicrous then." Harkness said nothing. "How
old are you? If it isn't an impertinence----"

"Thirty-five? You're young enough. I was forty. Have you ever noticed
about places----?" He broke off. "I mean---- Well, you know with people.
Suppose that you have been very intimate with some one and then you
don't see him or her for years, and then you meet again--don't you find
yourself suddenly producing the same set of thoughts, emotions, moods
that have, perhaps, lain dormant for years, and that only this one
person can call from you? And it is the same with places. Sometimes of
course in the interval something has died in you or in them, and the
second meeting produces nothing. Hands cross over a grave. But if those
things haven't died how wonderful to find them all alive again after all
those years, how you had forgotten the way they breathed and spoke and
had their being; how interesting to find yourself drawn back again into
that old current, perilous perhaps, but deep, real after all the
shams----"

He broke off. "Places do the same, I think," he said. "If you have the
sort of things in you that stir them they produce in their turn _their_
things . . . and always will for your kind . . . a sort of secret
society; I believe," he added, suddenly turning on Harkness and looking
him in the face, "that Treliss might give you something of the same
adventure that it gave me--if you want it to, that is--if you need it.
Do you _want_ adventure, romance, something that will pull you right out
of yourself and test you, show you whether you _are_ real or no, give
you a crisis that will change you for ever? Do you want it?"

Then he added quietly, reflectively. "It changed _me_ more than the war
ever did."

"Do I _want_ it?" Harkness was breathing deeply, driven by some
excitement that he could not stop to analyse. "I should say so. I want
nothing so much. It's just what I need, what I've been looking for----"

"Then go down there. I believe you're just the kind--but go at the right
time. There's a night in August when they have a dance, when they dance
all round the town. That's the time for you to go. That will liberate
you if you throw yourself into it. It's in August. August the---- I'm
not quite sure of the date. I'll write to you if you'll give me your
address."

Soon afterwards, with a warm clasp of the hand, they parted.


[Footnote 1: See _Maradick at Forty._]



VI


Two days later Harkness received a small parcel. Opening it he
discovered an old brown-covered book and a letter.

The letter was as follows:


DEAR Mr. HARKNESS--In all probability in the cold light of reason, and
removed from the fumes of the Reform Club, our conversation of yesterday
will seem to you nothing but foolishness. Perhaps it was. The merest
chance led me to think of something that belongs, for me, to a life
quite dead and gone; not perhaps as dead, though, as I had fancied it.
In any case, I had not, until yesterday, thought directly of Treliss for
years.

Let us put it on the simplest ground. If you want a beautiful place,
near at hand, for a holiday, that you have not yet seen, here it
is--Treliss, North Cornwall--take the morning train from Paddington and
change at Trewth. If you will be advised by me you really should go down
for August 6th, when they have their dance. I could see that you are
interested in local customs, and here is a most entertaining one
surviving from Druid times, I believe. Go down on the day itself and let
that be your first impression of the place. The train gets you in
between five and six. Take your room at the "Man-at-Arms" Hotel, ten
years ago the most picturesque inn in Great Britain. I cannot, of
course, vouch for what it may have become. I should get out at Trewth,
which you will reach soon after four, and walk the three miles to the
town. Well worth doing.

One word more. I am sending you a book. A completely forgotten novel by
a completely forgotten novelist. Had he lived he would, I think, have
done work that would have lasted, but he was killed in the first year of
the war and his earlier books are uncertain. He hadn't found himself.
This book, as you will see from the inscription, he gave me. I was with
him down there. Some things in it seem to me to belong especially to the
place. Pages 102 and 236 will show you especially what I mean. When you
are at the "Man-at-Arms" go and look at the Minstrels' Gallery, if it
isn't pulled down or turned into a jazz dancing-hall. That too will show
you what I mean.

Or go, as perhaps after all is wiser, simply to a beautiful place for a
week's holiday, forgetting me and anything I have said.

Or, as is perhaps wiser still, don't go at all. In any case I am your
debtor for our delightful conversation of yesterday.--Sincerely yours,

JAMES MARADICK.


What Maradick had said occurred. As the days passed the impression
faded. Harkness hoped that he would meet Maradick again. He did not do
so. During the first days he watched for him in the streets and in the
clubs. He devised plans that would give him an excuse to meet him once
more; the simplest of all would have been to invite him to luncheon. He
knew that Maradick would come. But his own distrust of himself now as
always forbade him. Why should Maradick wish to see him again? He had
been pleasant to him, yes, but he was of the type that would be
agreeable to any one, kindly, genial, and forgetting you immediately.
But Maradick had not forgotten him. He had taken the trouble to write to
him and send him a book. It had been a friendly letter too. Why not ask
Westcott and Maradick to dinner? But Westcott was married. Harkness had
met his wife, a charming and pretty English girl, younger a good deal
than her husband. Yes, all right about Mrs. Westcott, but then Harkness
must ask another woman. Maradick, he understood, was a widower. The
thing was becoming a party. They would have to go somewhere, to a
theatre or something. The thing was becoming elaborate, complicated, and
he shrank from it. So he always shrank from everything were he given
time to think.

He paid all the gentle American's courtesy and attention to fine details
of conduct. Englishmen often shocked him by their casual inattention,
especially to ladies. He must do social things elaborately did he do
them at all. He was gathering around him already some of the fussy
observances of the confirmed bachelor. And therefore as Maradick became
to him something of a problem, he put him out of his mind just as he had
put so many other things and persons out of his mind because he was
frightened of them.

Treliss too, as the days passed, lost some of the first magic of its
name. He had felt a strange excitement when Maradick had first mentioned
it, but soon it was the name of a beautiful but distant place, then a
seaside resort, then nowhere at all. He did not read Lester's book.

Then an odd thing occurred. It was the last day in July and he was still
in London. Nearly every one had gone away--every one whom he knew. There
were still many millions of human beings on every side of him, but
London was empty for himself and his kind. His club was closed for
cleaning purposes, and the Reform Club was offering him and his
fellow-clubmen temporary hospitality.

He had lunched alone, then had gone upstairs, sunk into an armchair and
read a newspaper. Read it or seemed to read it. It was time that he went
away. Where should he go? There was an uncle who had taken a
shooting-box in Scotland. He did not like that uncle. He had an
invitation from a kind lady who had a large house in Wiltshire. But the
kind lady had asked him because she pitied him, not because she liked
him. He knew that very well.

There were several men who would, if he had caught them sooner, have
gone with him somewhere, but he had allowed things to drift and now they
had made their own plans.

He felt terribly lonely, soused suddenly with that despicable self-pity
to which he was rather too easily prone. He thought of Baker--Lord! how
hot it must be there just now! He was half asleep. It was hot enough
here. Only one other occupant of the room, and he was fast asleep in
another armchair. Snoring. The room rocked with his snores. The papers
laid neatly one upon another wilted under the heat. The subdued London
roar came from behind the windows in rolling waves of heat. A faint
iridescence hovered above the enormous chairs and sofas that lay like
animals panting.

He looked across the long room. Almost opposite him was a square of wall
that caught the subdued light like a pool of water. He stared at it as
though it had demanded his attention. The water seemed to move, to
shift. Something was stirring there. He looked more intently. Colours
came, shapes shifted. It was a scene, some place. Yes, a place. Houses,
sand, water. A bay. A curving bay. A long sea-line dark like the stroke
of a pencil against faint egg-shell blue. Water. A bay bordered by a
ring of saffron sand, and behind the sand, rising above it, a town. Tier
on tier of houses, and behind them again in the farthest distance a
fringe of dark wood. He could even see now little figures, black spots,
dotted upon the sand. The sea now was very clear, shimmering
mother-of-pearl. A scattering of white upon the shore as the long
wave-line broke and retreated. And the houses tier upon tier. He gazed,
filled with an overwhelming breathless excitement. He was leaning
forward, his hands pressing in upon the arms of the chair. It stayed,
trembling with a kind of personal invitation before him. Then, as though
it had nodded and smiled farewell to him, it vanished. Only the wall was
there.

But the excitement remained, excitement quite unaccountable.

He got up, his knees trembling. He looked at the stout bellying occupant
of the other chair, his mouth open, his snores reverberant.

He went out. Six days later he was in the train for Treliss.



VII


Now too, of course, he had his reactions just as he always had. He could
explain the thing easily enough; for a moment or two he had slept, or,
if he had not, a trick of light on that warm afternoon and his own
thoughts about possible places had persuaded him.

Nevertheless the picture remained strangely vivid--the sea, the shore,
the rising town, the little line of darkening wood. He would go down
there, and on the day that Maradick had suggested to him. Something
might occur. You never could tell. He packed his etchings--his St.
Gilles, Marais, his Flight into Egypt and Orvieto, his Whistler and
Strang and Meryon. They would protect him and see that he did nothing
foolish.

He had special confidence in his St. Gilles.

He had intended to read the Lester book all the way, but as we have
seen, managed only a bare line or two; the Browning he had not intended
even to have with him, but in some fashion, with the determined resolve
that books so often show, it had crept into his bag and then was on his
knee, he knew not whence, and soon out of self-defence against the old
man he was reading "The Flight of the Duchess," carried away on the
wings of its freedom, strength and colour.

Nevertheless, that is the kind of man I am, he thought, even the books
force me to read them when I have no wish. And soon he had forgotten the
old man, the carriage, the warm weather. How many years since he had
read it? No matter. Wasn't it fine and touching and true? When he came
to the place:

  . . . the door opened and more than mortal
  Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
  All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
  The Duchess--I stopped as if struck by palsy.
  She was so different, happy and beautiful
  I felt at once that all was best,
  And that I had nothing to do, for the rest
  But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful.
  Not that, in fact, there was any commanding,
  --I saw the glory of her eye
  And the brow's height and the breast's expanding,
  And I was hers to live or to die.

"Hurrah!" Harkness cried.

"I beg your pardon?" the old man said, looking up.

Harkness blushed. "I was reading something rather fine," he said,
smiling.

"You'd better look out for what you're reading, to whom you're speaking,
where you're walking, what you're eating, everything, when you're in
Treliss," he remarked.

"Why? Is it so dangerous a place?" asked Harkness.

"It doesn't like tourists. I've seen it do funny things to tourists in
my time."

"I think you're hard on tourists," Harkness said. "They don't mean any
harm. They admire places the best way they can."

"Yes, and how long do they stay?" the old man replied. "Do you think you
can know a place in a week or a month? Do you think a real place likes
the dirt and the noise and the silly talk they bring with them?"

"What do you mean by a real place?" Harkness asked.

"Places have souls just like people. Some have more soul and some have
less. And some have none at all. Sometimes a place will creep away
altogether, it is so disgusted with the things people are trying to do
to it, and will leave a dummy instead, and only a few know the
difference. Why, up in the Welsh hills there are several places that
have gone up there in sheer disgust the way they've been treated, and
left substitutes behind them. Parts of London, for instance. Do you
think that's the real Chelsea you see in London? Not a bit of it. The
real Chelsea is living--well, I mustn't tell you where it is living--but
you'll never find it. However, Americans are the last to understand
these things. I am wasting my breath talking."

The train had drawn now into Drymouth. The old man was silent, looking
out at the hurrying crowds on the platform. He was certainly a pessimist
and a hater of his kind. He was looking out at the innocent people with
a lowering brow as though he would slaughter the lot of them had he the
power. "Old Testament Moses" Harkness named him. After a while the train
slowly moved on. They passed above the mean streets, the boardings with
the cheap theatres, the lines with the clothes hanging in the wind, the
grimy windows. But even these things the lovely sky, shining,
transmuted.

They came to the river. It lay on either side of the track, a broad
sheet of lovely water spreading, on the left, to the open sea. The
warships clustered in dark ebony shadows against the gold; the hills
rose softly, bending in kindly peace and happy watchfulness.

"Silence! We're crossing!" the old man cried. He was sitting forward,
his gnarled hands on his broad knees, staring in front of him.

The train drew in to a small wayside station, gay with flowers. The
trees blew about it in whispering clusters. The old man got up, gathered
his basket and lumbered out, neither looking at nor speaking to
Harkness.

He was alone. He felt an overwhelming relief. He had not liked the old
man and very obviously the old man had not liked him. But it was not
only that he was alone that pleased him. There was something more than
that.

It was indeed as though he were in a new country. The train seemed to be
going now more slowly, with a more casual air, as though it too felt a
relief and did not care what happened--time, engagements, schedules, all
these were now forgotten as they went comfortably lumbering, the curving
fields embracing them, the streams singing to them, the little houses
perched on the clear-lit skyline smiling down upon them.

It would not be long now before they were in Trewth, where he must
change. He took his two books and put them away in his bag. Should he
send the bag on and walk as Maradick had advised him? Three miles. Not
far, and it was a most lovely day. He could smell the sea now through
the windows. It must be only over that ridge of hill. He was strangely,
oddly happy. London seemed far, far away. America too. Any country that
had a name, a date, a history. This country was timeless and without a
record. How beautifully the hills dipped into valleys. Streams seemed to
be everywhere, little secret coloured streams with happy thoughts.
Everything and every one surely here was happy. Then suddenly he saw a
deserted mine tower like a gaunt and ruined temple. Haggard and fierce
it stood against the skyline, and, as Harkness looked back to it, it
seemed to raise an arm to heaven in desperate protest.

The train drew into Trewth.



VIII


Trewth was nothing more than a long wooden platform open to all the
winds of heaven, and behind it a sort of shed with a ticket collector's
box in one side of it.

Harkness was annoyed to see that others besides himself climbed out and
scattered about the platform waiting for the Treliss train to come in.

He resented these especially because they were grand and elegant, two
men, long, thin, in baggy knickerbockers, carrying themselves as though
all the world belonged to them with that indifferent assurance that only
Englishmen have; a large, stout woman, quietly but admirably dressed,
with a Pekinese and a maid to whom she spoke as Cleopatra to Charmian.
Five boxes, gun-cases, magnificent golf-bags, these things were
scattered about the naked bare platform. The wind came in from the sea
and sported everywhere, flipping at the stout lady's skirts, laughing at
the elegant sportsmen's thin calves, mocking at the pouting Pekinese. It
was fresh and lovely: all the cornfields were waving invitation.

It was characteristic of Harkness that a fancied haughty glance from the
sportsmen's eye decided him. He's laughing at my clothes, Harkness
thought. How was it that Englishmen wore old things so carelessly and
yet were never wrong? Harkness bought his clothes from the best London
tailors, but they were always finally a little hostile. They never
surrendered to his personality, keeping their own proud reserve.

I'll walk, he thought suddenly. He found a young porter who, in anxious
fashion, so unlike American porters who were always so superior to the
luggage that they conveyed, was wheeling magnificent trunks on a very
insecure barrow.

"These two boxes of mine," Harkness said, stopping him. "I want to walk
over to Treliss. Can they be sent over?"

"Happen they can," said the young porter doubtfully.

"They are labeled to the 'Man-at-Arms' Hotel," Harkness said.

"They'll be there as soon as you will," said the young porter, cheered
at the sight of an American tip which he put in his pocket, thinking in
his heart that these foreigners were "damn fools" to throw their money
around as they did. He advanced towards the stout lady hopefully. She
might also prove to be American.

Harkness plunged out of the station into the broad white road. A sign
pointed "Treliss--Three Miles." So Maradick had been exactly right.

As he left the village behind him and strode on between the cornfields
he felt a marvellous freedom. He was heading now directly for the sea.
The salt tang of it struck him in the face. Larks were circling in the
blue air above him, poppies scattered the corn with plashes of crimson.
Here and there gaunt rocks rose from the heart of the gold. No human
being was in sight.

His love of etching had given him something of an etcher's eye, and he
saw here a spreading tree and a pool of dark shadow, there a distant
spire on the curving hill that he thought would have caught the fancy of
his beloved Lepère, or Legros. Here a wayside pool like brittle glass
that would have enchanted Appian, there a cottage with a sweeping field
that might have made Rembrandt happy.

He seemed to be in unison with the whole of nature, and when the road
left the fields and dived into the heart of a common his happiness was
complete. He stood there, his feet pressing in upon the rough springing
turf. A lark, singing above him, came down as though welcoming him, then
circled up and up and up. He raised his head, staring into the pale
faint blue until he seemed himself to circle with the bird, the turf
pressing him upwards, his hands lifting him, he swinging into spaceless
ecstasy. Then his gaze fell again and swung out beyond, and--there was
the sea.

The Down ran in a green wave to the blue line of the sky, but in front
of him it split, breaking into brown rocky patches, and between the
brown curves a pool of purple sea lay like water in a cup.

He walked forward, deserting for a moment the road. He stood at the edge
of the cliff and looked down. The tide was high and the line of the sea
slipped up to the feet of the cliff, splashed there its white fringe of
spray, then very gently fell back. Sea-pinks starred the cliffs with
colour. Sea-gulls whirled, fragments of white foam, against the blue.
Just below him one bird sat, its head cocked, waiting. With a shrill cry
of vigour and assurance it flashed away, curving, circling, bending,
dipping, as though it were showing to Harkness what it could do.

He walked along the cliff path happier than he had been for many, many
months. This was enough were there no more than this. For this at least
he must thank Maradick--this peace, this air, this silence. . . .

Turning a bend of the cliff he saw the town.



IX


It was absolutely the town of his vision. He saw, with a strange
tightening of his heart as though he were being warned of something,
that was so. There was the curving bay with the faint fringe of white
pencilling the yellow sand, there the houses rising tier on tier above
the beach, there the fringe of dusky wood.

What did it mean? Why had he a clutch of terror as though some one was
whispering to him that he must turn tail and run? Nothing could be more
lovely than that town basking in the mellow afternoon light, and yet he
was afraid at the sight of it--afraid so that his content and happiness
of a moment ago were all gone and of a sudden he longed for company.

He was so well accustomed to his own reactions and so deeply despised
them that he shrugged his shoulders and walked forward. Never, it
seemed, was it possible for him to enjoy anything for more than a
moment. Trouble and regret always came. But this was not regret, it was
rather a kind of forewarning. He did not know that he had ever before
looked on a place for the first time with so odd a mingling of
conviction that he had already seen it, of admiration for its beauty,
and of some sort of alarmed dismay. Beautiful it was, more Italian than
English, with its white walls, its purple sea and warm scented air.

So peaceful and of so happy a tranquillity. He tried to drive his fear
from him, but it hung on so that he was often turning back and looking
behind him over his shoulder.

He struck the road again. It curved now, white and broad, down the hill
toward the town. At the very peak of the hill before the descent began a
man was standing watching something.

Harkness walked forward, then also stood still. The man was so deeply
absorbed that his absorption held you. He was standing at the edge of
the road and Harkness must pass him. At the crunch of Harkness's step on
the gravel of the road the man turned and looked at him with startled
surprise. Harkness had come across the soft turf of the Down, and his
sudden step must have been an alarm. The fellow was broad-shouldered,
medium height, clean-shaven, tanned, young, under thirty at least,
dressed in a suit of dark blue. He had something of a naval air.

Harkness was passing, when the man said:

"Have you the right time on you, sir?" His voice was fresh, pleasant,
well-educated.

Harkness looked at his watch. "Quarter past five," he said. He was
moving forward when the man, hesitating, spoke again:

"You don't see any one coming up the road?"

Harkness stared down the white, sun-bleached expanse.

"No," he said after a moment, "I don't."

They looked for a while standing side by side silently.

After all he wasn't more than a boy--not a day more than
twenty-five--but with that grave reserved look that so many British boys
who were old enough to have been in the war had.

"Sure you don't see anybody?" he asked again, "coming up that farther
bend?"

"No," said Harkness, shading his eyes with his hand against the sun;
"can't say as I do."

"Damn nuisance," the boy said. "He's half an hour late now."

The boy stood as though to attention, his figure set, his hands at his
side.

"Ah, there's some one," said Harkness. But it was only an old man with
his cart. He slowly pressed up the hill past them urging his horses with
a thick guttural cry, an old man brown as a berry.

"I beg your pardon," the boy turned to Harkness. "You'll think it an
awful impertinence--but--are you in a terrible hurry?"

"No," said Harkness, "not terrible. I want to be at the 'Man-at-Arms' by
dinner time. That's all."

"Oh, you've got lots of time," the boy said eagerly. "Look here. This is
desperately important for me. The man ought to have been here half an
hour ago. If he doesn't come in another twenty minutes I don't know what
I shall do. It's just occurred to me. There's another way up this
hill--a short cut. He may have chosen that. He may not have understood
where it was that I wanted him to meet me. Would you mind--would you do
me the favour of just standing here while I go over the hill there to
see whether he's waiting on the other side? I won't be away more than
five minutes; I'd be so awfully grateful."

"Why, of course," said Harkness.

"He's a fisherman with a black beard. You can't mistake him. And if he
comes if you'd just ask him to wait for a moment until I'm back."

"Certainly," said Harkness.

"Thanks most awfully. Very decent of you, sir."

The boy touched his cap, climbed the hill and vanished.

Harkness was alone again--not a sound anywhere. The town shimmered below
him in the heat. He waited, absorbed by the picture spread in front of
him, then apprehensive again and conscious that he was alone. The alarm
that he had originally felt at sight of the town had not left him.
Suppose the boy did not return? Was he playing some joke on him perhaps?
No, whatever else it was, it was not that. The boy had been deeply
serious, plunged into some crisis that was of tremendous importance to
him.

Harkness decided that he would wait until the shadow of a solitary tree
to his right reached him and then go. The shadow crept slowly to his
feet. At the same moment a figure turned the bend, a man with a black
beard. He was walking quickly up the hill as though he knew that he was
late.

Harkness went forward to meet him. The man stopped as though surprised.
"I beg your pardon," said Harkness; "were you expecting to meet some one
here?"

"I was--yes," said the man.

"He will be back in a moment. He was afraid that you might come up the
other way. He went over the hill to see."

"Aye," said the man, standing, his legs apart, quite unconcerned. He was
a handsome fellow, broad-shouldered, wearing dark blue trousers and a
knitted jersey. "You'll be a friend of Mr. Dunbar's maybe?"

"No, I'm not," Harkness explained. "I was passing and he asked me to
wait for a moment and catch you if you came while he was away."

"Aye," said the fisherman, taking out a large wedge of tobacco and
filling his pipe, "I'm a bit later than I said I'd be. Wife kept me."

"Fine evening," said Harkness.

"Aye," said the man.

At that moment the boy came over the hill and joined them. "Very good of
you, sir," he said. "You're late, Jabez!"

"Good night," said Harkness, and moved down the hill. He could see the
two in urgent conversation as he moved forward. The incident occupied
his mind. Why had the matter seemed of such importance to the boy? Why a
meeting so elaborately appointed out there on the hillside? The
fisherman too had seemed surprised that he, a stranger, should be
concerned in the matter.

Had he been in America the affair would have been at once
explained--boot-legging of course. But here in England. . . .



X


When he reached the bottom of the hill he found that he was in the
environs of the town. He was walking now along a road shaded by thick
trees and close to the seashore.

The cottages, white-washed, crooked and, many of them, thatched, ran
down to the road, their gardens like little coloured carpets spreading
in front of them. The evening air was thick with the scent of flowers,
above all of roses. He had never smelt such roses, no, not in
California.

There was a breeze from the sea, and it seemed to blow the roses into
his very heart, so that they seemed to be all about him, dark crimson,
burning white, scattering their petals over his head. He could hear the
tune of the sea upon the sand beyond the trees.

He stood for a moment inhaling the scent--delicious, wonderful. He
seemed to be crushing multitudes of the petals between his hands.

After a while the road broke away and he saw a path that led directly
through the trees to the sea.

So soon as he had taken some steps across the soft sand he seemed to be
alone in a world that was watching every movement that he made. It was
as though he were committing some intrusion. He stopped and looked
behind him: the thin line of trees had retreated, the cottages vanished.
Before him was a waste of yellow sand, the deep purple of the sea rose
like a wall to his right, hiding, as it were, some farther scene, the
sky stretching over it a pale blue curtain tightly held.

A mist was rising, veiling the town. No living person was in sight. He
reached a stretch of hard firm sand, thin rivulets of water lacing it.
The air was wonderfully mild and sweet.

Never before in his life had he known such a feeling of anticipation. It
was as though he knew the stretch of sand to be the last brook to cross
before he would come into some mysterious country.

How commonplace this will all seem to me to-morrow, he said to himself,
when, over my eggs and bacon at a prosperous modern hotel, I shall be
reading my _Daily Mail_ and hearing of the trippers at Eastbourne and
who has taken "shooting" in Scotland and whether Yorkshire has beaten
Surrey at cricket. He wanted to keep this moment, not to enter the town,
even he had a mad impulse to walk on the sand for an hour, to see the
colour fade from the sky and the sea change to a ghostly grey, then to
return up the hill to Trewth and catch the night train back to London.

It would be wonderful like that; to have only the impression of the walk
from the station, the talk with the boy on the hill, the scent of the
roses and the afternoon sky. Everything is destroyed if you go into it
too closely, or it is so for me. I should have a memory that would last
me all my life.

But now the town was advancing towards him. His steps made no sound so
that it seemed that he himself stood still, waiting to be seized. He
took one last look at the sea. Then he was caught up and the houses
closed about him.



XI


Six was striking from some distant clock as he started up the street. At
the bottom of the hill there were fishermen's cottages, nets spread out
on the stones to dry, some boats drawn up above a wooden jetty. Then, as
the street spread out before him, some little shops began. Figures were
passing hither and thither all transmuted in the afternoon light.
Maradick need not have feared, he thought, this town has not been
touched at all.

As he advanced yet further the houses delighted him with their broad
doorways, their overhanging eaves, crooked roof and worn flights of
steps. He came to a place where wooden stairs led to an upper path that
ran before a higher row of houses and under the steps there were shops.

He could feel a stir and bustle in the place as though this were a night
of festivity. Groups were gathered at corners, women stood in doorways
laughing and whispering, a group of children was marching, wearing
cocked hats of paper, beating on a wooden box and blowing on penny
trumpets.

Then on coming into the Square he paused in sheer delighted wonder. This
stands on a raised plateau above the sea, and the town hall, solid and
virtuous above its flight of wide grey steps, is its great glory.
Streets seemed to tumble in and out of the Square on every side. On a
far corner there was a merry-go-round and there were booths and wooden
trestles, some tents and flags waving above them. But just now it was
almost deserted, only a man or two, some children playing in and out of
the tents, a dog hunting among the scraps of paper that littered the
cobbles.

A church of Norman architecture filled the right side of the Square, and
squeezed between its grey walls and the modern town hall was a tall old
tower of infinite age, with thin slits of windows and iron bars that
pushed out against the pale blue sky like pointing fingers.

There were houses in the Square that were charming, houses with queer
bow-windows and protruding doors like pepper-pots, little balconies, and
here and there old carved figures on the walls, houses that Whistler
would have loved to etch. Harkness stopped a man.

"Can you tell me where I shall find the 'Man-at-Arms' Hotel?" he asked.

"Why, yes," the man answered as though he were surprised that Harkness
should not know. "Straight up that street in front of you. You'll find
it at the top."

And he did find it at the top after what seemed to him an endless climb.
The houses fell away. An iron gate was in front of him as though he were
entering some private residence. Going up a long drive he passed
beautiful lawns that shone like silk, to the right the grass fell away
to a pond fringed with trees. Flowers were around him on every side and
again in his nostrils was the heavy scent of innumerable roses.

The drive swept a wide circle before the great eighteenth-century house
that now confronted him. But it is not a hotel at all, he thought, and
he would have turned back had not, at that moment, a large hotel omnibus
swept up to the door and discharged a chattering heap of men and women,
who scattered over the steps screaming about their luggage, collecting
children. The spell was broken. He had not realized how alone he had
been during the last hour and with what domination his imagination had
been working, creating for him a world of his own, encouraging in him
what hopes, fears and anticipations!

He slipped in after the rest and stood shyly in the hall while the
others made their wants triumphantly felt. A man of about forty, stout
and round like an egg, but very shinily dressed, came forward and,
bending and bowing, smiled at the women and spoke deferentially to the
men.

This must be Mr. Bannister--"the King of the Castle" Maradick had told
him in the Club. Not the original Mr. Bannister who has made the place
what it is. He is, alas, dead and gone. Had he been still there and you
had mentioned my name he would have done wonders for you. I don't know
this fellow, and for all I know he may have ruined the place.

However, the original Bannister could not have been politer. Harkness
was always afraid of hotel officials, and it was only when the invasion
had broken up and begun to scatter that he came forward. But Mr.
Bannister knew all about him--indeed was expecting him. His luggage had
already arrived. He should be shown his room, and Mr. Bannister did hope
that it would be. . . . If anything in the least wasn't . . .

Harkness started upstairs. There is a lift here, but if the gentleman
doesn't mind. . . . His room is only on the second floor and instead of
waiting. . . . Of course the gentleman doesn't mind. And still less does
he mind when he sees his room.

This is mine absolutely, Harkness said, as though it had been waiting
for me for years and years with its curved bow-window, its view over
that enchanting garden and the line of sea beyond, its white wall
unbroken by those coloured prints that hotel managers in my own country
find it so necessary always to provide. Those chintz curtains with the
roses are delicious. Just enough furniture. "There is no private bath of
course?"

"The bathroom is just across the passage. Very convenient," said the
man.

"Yes, in England we haven't reached the private bathroom yet, although
we are supposed to be so fond of bathing."

"No, sir," said the man. "Anything else I can do for you?"

"No, thank you," said Harkness, smiling, as he looked on the white
sunlit walls and checking the tip that, American fashion, he was about
to give. "How strong the smell of the roses. It is very late for them,
isn't it?"

"They are just about over, sir."

"So I should have thought."

Left alone he slowly unpacked. He liked unpacking and putting things
away. It was packing that he detested. He had a few things with him that
he always carried when he travelled--a red leather writing-case, a
little Japanese fisherman in coloured ivory, two figures in red amber,
photographs of his sisters in a silver frame. He put out these little
things on a table of white wood near his bed, not from any affectation,
but because when they were there the room seemed to understand him, to
settle about him with a little sigh as though it granted him
citizenship--for so long as he wished to stay. Then there were his
prints. He took out four, the Lepère "St. Gilles," Strang's "Etcher,"
the Rembrandt "Flight into Egypt" and the Whistler "Drury Lane." The
Strang he had on one side of the looking-glass, the "Drury Lane" on the
other, the "Flight into Egypt" at the back of the writing-table, whither
he might glance across the room at it as he lay in bed, the "St. Gilles"
close to him near to the red writing-case and the ivory fisherman.

He sighed with satisfaction as, sitting down on his bed, he looked at
them. He felt that he needed them to-night as he had never needed them
before. The sense of excited anticipation that had increased with him
all day was now surely approaching its climax. That excitement had in it
the strangest mixture of delight, sensuous thrill and something that was
nothing but panicky terror. Yes, he was frightened. Of what? Of whom? He
could not tell. But only as he looked across the room at those familiar
scenes, at the massive dark tree of the "St. Gilles" with the hot road,
the high comfortable hedge, the happy figures, at the adorable face of
the donkey in the Rembrandt, at the little beings so marvellously placed
under the dancing butterfly in the Whistler, at the strong, homely,
friendly countenance of Strang himself, he felt as he had so often felt
before, that those beautiful things were trying themselves to reassure
him, to tell him, that they did not change nor alter and that where he
would be there they would be too.

He took Maradick's letter from his pocket and read it again. Here he
was--now what must happen next? He would dress now at once for dinner
and then walk in the garden before the light began to fail. Or no.
Wasn't he to go down into the town after dinner and to see this dance,
to share in it even? Hadn't Maradick said that was what, above all else,
he must do?

And then what was this about a Minstrels' Gallery somewhere? He would
have a bath, change his linen, and then begin his explorations. He
undressed, found the bathroom, enjoyed himself for twenty minutes or
more, then slipped back across the passage into his room again. It was
now nearly seven o'clock. As he was dressing the sun was getting low in
the sky. A beam of sunshine caught the intent gaze of Strang, who seemed
to lean across his etching board as though to tell him, to reassure him,
to warn him. . . .

He slipped out of his room and began his explorations.



XII


For a while he wandered, lost in a maze of passages. He understood that
the Minstrels' Gallery was at the top of the house. He did not use the
lift, but climbed the stairs, meeting no one; then he was on a floor
that must, he thought, be servants' quarters. It had another air,
something less arranged, less handsome, old-fashioned, as though it were
even now as it had been two hundred years ago--a survival as the old
grey tower in the market-place was a survival.

For a little while he stood hesitating. The passage was dark and he did
not wish to plunge into a servant's room. Strange that up here there was
no sound at all--an absolute deathly stillness!

He walked down to the end of the passage then, turning, came to a door
that was larger than the others. He could see as he looked at it more
closely that there was some faint carving on the woodwork above it. He
turned the handle, entered the room, then stopped with a little cry of
surprise and pleasure.

Truly Maradick had been right. Here was a room that, if there was
nothing more to come, made the journey sufficiently of value. An
enchanting room! On the left side of it were broad bright windows, and
at the farther end, under the Minstrels' Gallery, windows again. There
were no curtains to the windows--the whole room had an empty deserted
air--but the more for that reason the place was illuminated with the
glow of the evening light. The first thing that he realised was the
view--and what a view!

The windows were deep set and hung forward, it seemed, over the hill, so
that town, gardens, trees, were all lost and you saw only the sea.

At this hour you seemed to swing in space; the division lost between sea
and sky in the now nearly horizontal rays of the sun--only a golden glow
covering the blue with a dazzling blaze of colour. He stood there
drinking it in, then sat in one of the window-seats, his hands clasped,
lost in happiness.

After a while he turned back to the room. Flecks of dust, changed into
gold by the evening light, floated in mid-air. The room was disregarded
indeed. The walls were panelled. The little Minstrels' Gallery was
supported on two heavy pillars. The floor was bare of carpet and had
even a faint waxen sheen, as though, in spite of the room's general
neglect, it was used, once and again, for dances.

But what pathos the room had! He did not know that almost fifteen years
before Maradick had felt that same thing. How vastly now that pathos was
increased, how greatly since Maradick's day the world's history had
relentlessly cut away those earlier years. He saw that round the
platform of the gallery was intricate carving, and, going forward more
closely to examine, saw that in every square was set the head of a
grinning lion. Some high-backed, quaintly-shaped chairs, that looked as
though they might be of great age, were ranged against the wall.

Being now right under the gallery he saw some little wooden steps. He
climbed up them and then from the gallery's shadow looked down across
the room. How clearly he could picture that old scene, something
straight from Jane Austen with Miss Bates and Mrs. Norris, stiff-backed,
against the wall, and Anne Elliott and Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Collins and
the rest. The fiddlers scraping, the negus for refreshment, the night
darkening, the carriages with their lights gathering. . . .

The door at the far end of the room closed with a gentle click. He
started, not imagining that any one would choose that room at such an
hour.

Two figures were there in the shadow beyond the end room. The light fell
on the man's face--Harkness could see it very clearly. The other was a
woman wearing a white dress. He could not see her face.

For an instant they were silent, then the man said something that
Harkness could not hear.

The girl at once broke out: "No, no. Oh, please, Herrick."

She must be a very young girl. The voice was that of a child. It had in
it a desperate note that held Harkness's attention instantly.

The man said something again, very low.

"But if you don't care," the girl's voice pleaded, "then let me go back.
Oh, Herrick, let me go! Let me go!"

"My father does not wish it."

"But I am not married to your father. It is to you."

"My father and I are the same. What he says I must do, I do."

"But you can't be the same." Her voice now was trembling in its urgency.
"No one could love their father more than I do and yet we are not the
same."

"Nevertheless you did what your father asked you to do. So must I."

"But I didn't know. I didn't know. And he didn't know. He has never seen
me frightened of anything, and now I am frightened. . . . I've never
said I was to any one before, but now . . . now . . ."

She was crying, softly, terribly, with the terrified crying of real and
desperate fear.

Harkness had been about to move. He did not, unseen and his presence
unrealised, wish to overhear, but her tears checked him. Although he
could not see her he had detected in her voice a note of pride. He
fancied that she would wish anything rather than to be thus seen by a
stranger. He stayed where he was. He could see the man's face, thin,
white, the nose long pointed, a dark, almost grotesque shadow.

"Why are you frightened?"

"I don't know. I can't tell. I have never been frightened before."

"Have I been unkind to you?"

"No, but you don't love me."

"Did I ever pretend to love you? Didn't you know from the very first
that no one in the world matters to me except my father?"

"It is of your father that I am afraid. . . . These last three days in
that terrible house. . . . I'm so frightened, Herrick. I want to go home
only for a little while. Just for a week before we go abroad."

"All our plans are made now. You know that we are sailing to-morrow
evening."

"Yes, but I could come afterwards. . . . Forgive me, Herrick. You may do
anything to me if I can only go home for just some days. . . . You may
do anything. . . ."

"I don't want to do anything, Hesther. No one wishes to do you any harm.
But whatever my father wishes that every one must do. It has always been
so."

She seemed to be seized by an absolute frenzy of fear; Harkness could
see her white shadow quivering. It appeared to him as though she caught
the man by the arm. Her voice came in little breathless stifled cries,
infinitely pitiful to hear.

"Please, please, Herrick. I dare not speak to your father. I don't dare.
I don't dare. But you--let me go--Oh! let me go--just this once,
Herrick. Only this once. I'll only be home for a few days and then I'll
come back. Truly I'll come back. I'll just see father and Bobby and then
I'll come back. They'll be missing me. I know they will. And I'll be
going to a foreign country--such a long way. And they'll be wanting me.
Bobby's so young, Herrick, only a baby. He's never had any one to do
anything for him but me. . . ."

"You should have thought of that before you married me, you cannot leave
me now."

"I won't leave you. I've never broken my word to any one. I won't break
it now. It's only for a few days."

"How can you be so selfish, Hesther, as to want to upset every one's
plans just for a whim of your own? For myself I don't care. You could go
home for ever for all I care. I didn't want to marry any one. But what
my father wished had to be."

She clung to him then, crying again and again between her sobs:

"Oh, let me go home! Let me go home! Let me go home!"

Harkness fancied that the man put his hands on her shoulders. His voice,
cold, lifeless, impersonal, crossed the room.

"That is enough. He is waiting for us downstairs. He will be wondering
where we are."

The little white shadow seemed to turn to the window, towards the
limitless expanse of sunlit sea. Then a voice, small, proud, empty of
emotion, said:

"Father wished me----"

Harkness was once more alone in the room.



XIII


They had gone but the girl's fear remained. It was there as truly as the
two figures had been and its reality was stronger than their reality.

Harkness had the sense of having been caught, and it was exactly as
though now, as he stood alone there in the gallery staring down into the
room, some Imp had touched him on the shoulder, crying, "Now you're in
for it! Now you're in for it! The situation has got you now."

He was, of course, not "in for it" at all. How many such conversations
between human beings there were: it simply was that he had happened
against his will to overhear a fragment of one of them. Yes, "against
his will." How desperately he wished that he hadn't been there. What
induced them to choose that room and that time for their secret
confidences? He felt still in the echo of their voices the effect of
their urgency.

They had chosen that room because there was some one watching their
every movement and they had had only a few moments. The child--for
surely she could not be more--had almost driven her companion into that
two minutes' conversation, and Harkness could realise how desperate she
must have been to have taken such a course.

But after all it _was_ no business of his! Girls married every day men
whom they did not love and, although apparently in this case, the man
also did not love her and they were both of them in evil plight, still
that too had happened before and nothing very terrible had come of it.

It _was_ no business of his, and yet he did wish, all the same, that he
could get the ring of the girl's voice out of his ears. He had never
been able to bear the sight, sound or even inference of any sort of
cruelty to helpless humans or to animals. Perhaps because he was so
frantic a coward himself about physical pain! And yet not altogether
that. He had on several occasions taken risks of pretty savage pain to
himself in order to save a horse a beating or a dog a kicking.
Nevertheless, those had been spontaneous emotions roused at the instant;
there was something lingering, a sad and tragic echo, in the voice that
was still with him.

The very pathos of the room that he was in--the lingering of so many old
notes that had been rung and rung again, notes of anticipation, triumph,
disappointment, resignation, made this fresh, living sound the harder to
escape.

By Jupiter, the child _was_ frightened--that was the final ringing of it
upon Harkness's heart and soul. But he was going to have his life
sufficiently full were he to step in and rescue every girl frightened by
matrimony! Rescue! No, there was no question of rescue. It wasn't, once
again, his affair. But he did wish that he could just take her hand and
tell her not to worry, that it would all come right in the end. But
would it? He hadn't at all cared for the fragment of countenance that
fellow had shown to him, and he had liked still less the tone of his
voice, cold, unfeeling, hard. Poor child! And suddenly the thought of
his Browning's "Duchess" came to him:

  I was the man the Duke spoke to:
  I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke too;
  So, here's the tale from beginning to end,
  My friend!

Well, here was a tale with which he had definitely nothing to do. Let
him remember that. He was here in a most beautiful place for a
holiday--that was his purpose, that his intention--what were these
people to him or he to them?

Nevertheless the voice lingered in his ear, and to be rid of it he left
the room. He stepped carefully down the wooden steps, and then at the
bottom of them, under the dark lee of the gallery, he paused. He was so
foolishly frightened that he could not move a step.

He waited. At last he whispered "Is any one there?"

There was no answer. He pushed his way then out of the shadow, his heart
drumming against his shirt. There was no one there. Of course there was
not.

In his room once more with his friend Strang and the Rembrandt Donkey to
take him home he sat on his bed holding his hands between his knees.

He was positively afraid of going down to dinner. Afraid of what? Afraid
of being drawn in. Drawn into what? That was precisely what he did not
know, but something that ever since his first glimpse of Maradick at the
Reform Club had been preparing. It was that he saw, as he sat there
thinking of it, that he feared--this Something that was piling up
outside him and with which he had nothing to do at all.

Why should he mind because he had heard a girl say that she was
frightened and wanted to go home? And yet he did mind--minded terribly
and with increasing violence from every moment that passed. The thought
of that child without a friend and on the very edge of an experience
that might indeed be fatal for her, the thought of it was more than he
could endure.

He was clever at escaping things did they only give him a moment's
pause, but in this case the longer he thought about it the harder it was
to escape from. It was as though the girl had made her personal appeal
to himself.

But what an old scamp her father must be, Harkness thought, to give her
up like this to a man for whom she has no love, who doesn't love her.
Why did she do it? And what kind of a man is the father-in-law of whom
she is so afraid and who dominates his son so absolutely? In any case I
must go down to dinner. I must just take what comes. . .

Yes, but his prudence whispered, don't meddle in this affair actively.
It isn't the kind of thing in which you are likely to distinguish
yourself.

"No, by Jove, it isn't."

"Well, then, be careful."

"I mean to be." Then suddenly the girl's voice came sharp and clear.
"Damn it, I'll do anything I can," he cried aloud, jumped from the bed
and went downstairs.



XIV


As he went downstairs he felt a tremendous sense of liberation. It was
as though he had, after many hesitations and fears, passed through the
first room successfully and closed the door behind him. Now there was
the second room to be confronted.

What he immediately confronted was the garden of the hotel. The sun was
slowly setting in the west, and great amber clouds, spreading out in
swathes of colour, ate up the blue.

The amber flung out arms as though it would embrace the whole world. The
deep blue ebbed from the sea, was pale crystal, then from length to
length a vast bronze shield. The amber receded as though it had done its
work, and myriads of little flecks of gold ran up into the pale
blue-white, thousands of scattered fragments like coins flung in some
God-like largesse.

The bronze sea was held rigid as though it were truly of metal. The town
caught the gold and all the windows flashed. In the fresh evening light
the grass of the lawn seemed to shine with a fresh iridescence--the
farther hills were coldly dark.

Several people were walking up and down the gravel paths pausing before
going in to dinner. In the golden haze only those things stood out that
were more important for the scene, nature, as always, being more
theatrical than any man-contrived theatre. The stage being set, the
principal actor made his entrance.

A window running to the gravel path caught the level rays of the setting
sun. A man stepped before this, stopping to light a cigarette and then,
being there, stayed like an oriental image staring out into the garden.

Harkness looked casually, then looked again, then, fascinated, remained
watching. He had never before seen such red hair nor so white a face,
nor so large a stone as the green one that shone in a ring on the finger
of his raised hand. He was lighting his cigarette--it was after this
that he fell into rigid immobility, and the fire of the match caught the
ring until, like a great eye, it seemed to open, wink at Harkness, and
then regard him with a contemptuous stare.

The man's hair was _en brosse_, standing straight on end as Loge's used
to do in the old pre-war Bayreuth "Ring." It was, like Loge's, a flaming
red, short, harsh, instantly arresting. Evening dress. One small black
pearl in his shirt. Very small feet in shining shoes.

There had stuck in Harkness's mind a phrase that he had encountered once
in George Moore's description of Verlaine in _Memories and Opinions_--"I
shall not forget the glare of the bald prominent forehead (_une tête
glabre_). . . ." That was the phrase now, _une tête glabre_--the
forehead glaring like a challenge, the red hair springing from it like
something alive of its own independence. For the rest this interesting
figure had a body round, short and fat like a ball. Over his protruding
stomach stretched a white waistcoat with three little plain black
buttons.

The colour of his face had an unnatural pallor, something theatrical
like the clown in _Pagliacci_, or again, like one of Benda's masks. Yes,
this was the truer comparison, because through the mask the eyes were
alive and beautiful, dark, tender, eloquent, but spoilt because above
them the eyebrows were so faint as to be scarcely visible. The mouth in
the white of the face was a thin hard red scratch. The eyes stared into
the garden. The body soon became painted into the window behind it, the
round short limbs, the shining shoes, the little black pearl in the
gleaming shirt.

Harkness, from the shadow where he stood, looked and looked again. Then,
fearing that he might be perceived and his stare be held offensive, he
moved forward. The man saw him and, to Harkness's surprise, stepped
forward and spoke to him.

"I beg your pardon," he said; "but do you happen to have a light? My
cigarette did not catch properly and I have used my last match."

Here was another surprise for Harkness. The voice was the most beautiful
that he had ever heard from man. Soft, exquisitely melodious, with an
inflection in it of friendliness, courtesy and culture that was
enchanting. Absolutely without affectation.

"Why, yes. Certainly," said Harkness.

He felt for his little gold matchbox, found it, produced a match and,
guarding it with his hand, struck it. In the light the other's forehead
suddenly sprang up again like a live thing. For an instant two of his
fingers rested on Harkness's hand. They seemed to be so soft as to be
quite boneless.

"Thank you. What an exquisite evening!"

"Yes," said Harkness. "This is a very beautiful place."

"Yes," said the other, "is it not? And this is incidentally the best
hotel in England."

The voice was so beautiful to Harkness, who was exceedingly sensitive to
sound, that his only desire was that by some means he should prolong the
conversation so that he might indulge himself in the luxury of it.

"I have only just arrived," he said; "I came only an hour ago, and it is
my first visit."

"Is that so? Then you have a great treat in store for you. This is
splendid country round here, and although every one has been doing their
best to spoil it there are still some lovely places. Treliss is the only
town in Southern England where the place is still triumphant over modern
improvements."

There was a pause, then the man said:

"Will you be here for long?"

"I have made no plans," Harkness replied.

"I wish I could show you around a little. I know this country very well.
There is nothing I enjoy more than showing off some of our beauties.
But, unfortunately, I leave for abroad early to-morrow morning."

Harkness thanked him. They were soon talking very freely, walking up and
down the gravel path. The exquisite modulation of the man's voice, its
rhythm, gentleness, gave Harkness such delight that he could listen for
ever. They spoke of foreign countries. Harkness had travelled much and
remembered what he had seen. This man had been apparently everywhere.

Suddenly a gong sounded. "Ah, there's dinner." They paused. The stranger
said: "I beg your pardon. You tell me that you are American, and I know
therefore that you are not hampered by ridiculous conventionalities. Are
you alone?"

"I am," said Harkness.

"Well, then--why not dine with us? There is myself, my son and a
charming girl to whom he has lately been married. Do me that pleasure.
Or, if people are a bore to you be quite frank and say so."

"I shall be delighted," said Harkness.

"Good. My name is Crispin."

"Harkness is mine."

They walked in together.



XV


He had, as he walked into the hall, an overwhelming sense that
everything that was occurring to him had happened to him before, and it
was only part of this dream-conviction that Crispin should pause and
say:

"Here they are, waiting for us," and lead him up to the girl who, half
an hour before, had been with him in the little gallery. He had even a
moment of protesting panic crying to the little imp whose voice he had
already heard that evening: "Let me out of this. I am not so passive as
you fancy. It is a holiday I am here for. There is no knight errantry in
me--you have caught the wrong man for that."

But the girl's face stopped him. She was beautiful. He had from the
first instant of seeing her no doubt of that, and it was as though her
voice had already built her up for him in that dim room.

Straight and dark, her face had child-like purity in its rounded cheeks,
its large brow and wondering eyes, its mouth set now in proud
determination, but trembling a little behind that pride, its cheeks very
soft and faintly coloured. Her hair was piled up as though it were only
recently that it had come to that distinction. She was wearing a very
simple white frock that looked as though it had been made by some little
local dressmaker of her own place. She had been proud of it, delighted
with it, Harkness could be sure, perhaps only a week or two ago. Now
experiences were coming to her thick and fast. She was clutching them
all to her, determined to face them whatever they might be, finding
them, as Harkness knew from what he had overheard, more terrible than
she had ever conceived.

She had been crying, as he knew, only half an hour ago, but now there
were no traces of tears, only a faint shell-like flush on her cheeks.

The man standing beside her was not much more than a boy, but Harkness
thought that he had seldom perceived an uglier countenance. A large
broad nose, a long thin face like a hatchet, grey colourless eyes and a
bony body upon which the evening clothes sat awkwardly, here was
ugliness itself, but the true unpleasantness came from the cold
aloofness that lay in the unblinking eyes, the hard straight mouth.

"He might be walking in his sleep," Harkness thought, "for all the life
he's showing. What a pair for the girl to be in the hands of!" Harkness
was introduced:

"Hesther, my dear, this is Mr. Harkness who is going to give us the
pleasure of dining with us. Mr. Harkness, this is my boy, Herrick."

The little man led the way, and it was interesting to perceive the
authoritative dignity with which he moved. He had a walk that admirably
surmounted the indignities that the short legs and stumpy body would, in
a less clever performer, have inevitably entailed. He did not strut, nor
trot, nor push out his stomach and follow it with proud resolve.

His dignity was real, almost regal, and yet not absurd. He walked
slowly, looking about him as he went. He stopped at the entrance of the
dining-hall now crowded with people, spoke to the head waiter, a stout
pompous-looking fellow, who was at once obsequious, and started down the
room to a reserved table.

The diners looked up and watched their progress, but Harkness noticed
that no one smiled. When they came to their table in the middle of the
room, Mr. Crispin objected to it and they were at once shown to another
one beside the window and looking out to the sea.

"It will amuse you to see the room, Hesther. You sit there. You can look
out of the window too when you are bored with people. Will you sit here,
Mr. Harkness, on my right?"

Harkness was now opposite the girl and looking out to the sea that was
lit with a bronze flame that played on the air like a searchlight. The
window was slightly open, and he could hear the sounds from the town,
the merry-go-round, a harsh trumpet, and once and again a bell.

"Do you mind that window?" Crispin asked him. "I think it is rather
pleasant. You don't mind it, Hesther dear? They are having festivities
down there this evening. The night of their annual ceremony when they
dance round the town--something as old as the hill on which the town is
built, I fancy. You ought to go down and look at them, Mr. Harkness."

"I think I shall," Harkness replied, smiling.

He noticed that now that the man was seated he did not look small. His
neck was thick, his shoulders broad, that forehead in the
brilliantly-lit room absolutely gleamed, the red hair springing up from
it like a challenge. The mention of the dance led Crispin to talk of
other strange customs that he had known in many parts of the world,
especially in the East. Yes, he had been in the East very often and
especially in China. The old China was going. You would have to hurry up
if you were to see it with any colour left. It was too bad that the West
could not leave the East alone.

"The matter with the West, Mr. Harkness, is that it always must be
improving everything and everybody. It can't leave well alone. It must
be thrusting its morals and customs on people who have very nice ones of
their own--only they are not Western, that's all. We have too many
conventional ideas over here. Superstitious observances that are just as
foolish as any in the South Seas--more foolish indeed. Now I'm shocking
you, Hesther, I'm afraid. Hesther," he explained to Harkness, "is the
daughter of an English country doctor--a very fine fellow. But she
hasn't travelled much yet. She only married my son a month ago. This is
their honeymoon, and it is very nice of them to take their old father
along with them. He appreciates it, my dear."

He raised his glass and bowed to her. She smiled very faintly, staring
at him for an instant with her large brown eyes, then looking down at
her plate.

"I have been driven," Crispin explained, "into the East by my
collector's passions as much as anything. You know, perhaps, what it is
to be a collector, not of anything especial, but a collector. Something
in the blood worse than drugs or drink. Something that only death can
cure. I don't know whether you care for pretty things, Mr. Harkness, but
I have some pieces of jade and amber that would please you, I think. I
have, I think, one of the best collections of jade in Europe."

Harkness said something polite.

"The trouble with the collector is that he is always so much more deeply
interested in his collection than any one else is, and he is not so
interested in a thing when he owns it as he was when he was wondering
whether he could afford it.

"However, women like my jade. Their fingers itch. It is pleasant to see
them. Have you ever felt the collector's passion yourself?"

"In a tiny way only," said Harkness. "I have always loved prints very
dearly, etchings especially. But I have so small and unimportant a
collection that I never dream of showing it to anybody. I have not the
means to make a real collection, but if I were a millionaire it is in
that direction that I think I would go. Etchings are so marvellously
human, unaccountably personal."

"Why, Herrick, listen to that! Mr. Harkness cares about etchings! We
must show him some of ours. I have a 'Hundred Guilders' and a 'De
Jonghe' that are truly superb. Do you know my favourite etcher in the
world? I am sure that you will never guess."

"There is a large field to choose from," said Harkness, smiling.

"There is indeed. But Samuel Palmer is the man for me. You will say that
he goes oddly enough with my jade, but whenever I travel abroad 'The
Bellman' and 'The Ruined Tower' go with me. And then Lepère--what a
glorious artist! and Legros's woolly trees and our old friend
Callot--yes, we have an enthusiasm in common there."

For the first time Harkness addressed the girl directly:

"Do you also care about etchings, Mrs. Crispin?"

She flushed as she answered him: "I am afraid that I know nothing about
them. Our things at home were not very valuable, I am afraid--except to
us," she added.

She spoke so softly that Harkness scarcely caught her words. "Ah, but
Hesther will learn," Crispin said. "She has a fine taste already. It
needs only some more experience. You are learning already, are you not,
Hesther?"

"Yes," she answered almost in a whisper, then looked up directly at
Harkness. He could not mistake her glance. It was an appeal absolutely
for help. He could see that she was at the end of her control. Her hand
was trembling against the cloth. She had been drinking some of her
Burgundy, and he guessed that this was a desperate measure. He divined
that she was urging herself to some act from which, during all these
weeks, she had been shuddering.

His own heart was beating furiously. The food, the wine, the lights,
Crispin's strange and beautiful voice were accompaniments to some act
that he saw now hanging in front of him, or rather waiting, as a
carriage waits, into which now of his own free-will he is about to step
to be whirled to some terrific destination.

He tried to put purpose into his glance back to her as though he would
say "Let me be of some use to you. I am here for that. You can trust
me."

He felt that she knew that she could. She might, such was her case,
trust any one at this crisis, but she had been watching him, he felt
sure, throughout the meal, listening to his voice, studying his
movements, wondering, perhaps, whether he too were in this conspiracy
against her.

He had the sudden conviction that on an instant she had resolved that
she could trust him, and had he had time to do as was usual with him, to
step back and regard himself, he would have been amazed at his own
happiness.

They had come to the dessert. Crispin, as though he had no purpose in
life but to make every one happy, was cracking walnuts for his
daughter-in-law and talking about a thousand things. There was nothing
apparently that he did not know and nothing that he did not wish to hand
over to his dear friends.

"It is too bad that I can't show you my 'Hundred Guilders.'" He cracked
a walnut, and his soft boneless fingers seemed suddenly to be endued
with an amazing strength. "But why shouldn't I? What are you doing this
evening?"

"I have no plans," said Harkness; "I thought I would go perhaps down to
the market and look at the fun."

"Yes--well. . . . Let me see. But that will fit splendidly. We have an
engagement for an hour or two--to say good-bye to an old friend. Why not
join us here at--say--half-past ten? I have my car here. It is only half
an hour's drive. Come out for an hour or two and see my things. It will
give me so much pleasure to show you what I have. I can offer you a good
cigar too and some brandy that should please you. What do you say?"

Harkness looked across at the girl. "Thank you," he said gravely, "I
shall be delighted."

"That's splendid. Very good of you. The house also should interest you.
Very old and curious. It has a history too. I have rented it for the
last year. I shall be quite sorry to leave it."

Then, smiling, he lent across--"What do you say, Hesther? Shall we have
our coffee outside?"

"Yes, thank you," she answered, with a curious childish inflection as
though she were repeating some lesson that was only half remembered.

She rose and started down the room. Harkness followed her. Half-way to
the door Crispin was stopped for a moment by the head waiter and stayed
with his son.

Harkness spoke rapidly. "There is no time at all, but I want you to know
that I was in the room at the top of the house just now when you were
there. I heard everything. I apologise for overhearing. I could not
escape, but I want you to know that if there's anything I can
do--anything in the world--I will do it. Tell me if there is. We have
only a moment."

On looking back afterwards he thought it marvellous of her that,
realising who was behind them, she scarcely turned her head, showed no
emotion, but speaking swiftly, answered:

"Yes, I am in great trouble--desperate trouble. I am sure you are kind.
There is a thing you can do."

"Tell me," he urged. They were now nearly by the door and the two men
were coming up.

"I have a friend. I told him that if I would agree to his plan I would
send a message to him to-night. I did not mean to agree, but now--I'm
not brave enough to go on. He is to be at half-past nine at a little
hotel--'The Feathered Duck'--on the sea-front. Any one will tell you
where it is. His name is Dunbar. He is young, short, you can't mistake
him. He will be waiting there. Go to him. Tell him I agree. I'll never
forget . . ."

Crispin's forehead confronted them. "What do you say to this? Here is a
sheltered corner."

Dunbar? Dunbar? Where had he heard the name before?

They all sat down.



PART II: THE DANCE ROUND THE
TOWN



I


Quarter of an hour later he left them, making his excuses, promising to
return at half-past ten. He could not have stayed another moment,
sitting there quietly in his wicker armchair looking out on the
darkening garden, listening to Crispin's pleasure in Peter Breughel,
without giving some kind of vent to his excitement.

He must get away and be by himself. Because--yes, he knew it, and
nothing could alter the vehement pulsating truth of it--he was in love
for the first time in his life.

As he threaded his way along the garden paths that was at first all that
he could see--that he was in love with that child in the shabby frock
who was married to that odious creature, that bag-of-bones, who had not
opened his mouth the whole evening long--that child terrified out of her
life and appealing to him, a stranger, in her despair, to help her.

In love with a married woman, he, Charles Percy Harkness? What would his
two sisters, nay, what would the whole of Baker, Oregon, say did they
know?

But, bless you, he was not in love with her like that--no hero of a
modern realistic novel he! He had no thought in that first ecstatic
glow, of any thought for himself at all--only his eyes were upon her, of
how he could help her, how serve her, now--at once--before it was too
late.

He was deeply touched that she should trust him, but he also realised
that at that particular moment she would have trusted anybody. And yet
she had waited, watching him through all the first part of that meal,
making up her mind--there was some tribute to him at least in that!

It was a considerable time before he could fight his way behind his own
singing happiness into any detailed consideration of the facts.

He was in touch with real life at last, had it in both hands like a
magic ball of crystal, after which for so long he had been searching.

Where had he been all his life, fancying that this was love and that?
That ridiculous touching of hands over a tea-cup, that fancied glance at
a crowded party, that half uttered suggested exchange of gimcrack
phrases? And this! Why, he could not have stopped himself had he wished!
None of the old considered caution to which he had now grown so
accustomed that it had seemed like part of his very soul, could have any
say in this. He was committed up to his very boots in the thing, and he
was glad, glad, glad!

Meanwhile he had lost his way. He pulled himself up short. He had been
walking just in any direction. He was in a far part of the garden. A
lawn in the twilight like dark glass beneath whose surface green water
played, stretched between scattered trees and beds of flowers now grey
and shadowy. Sparks of fire were already scattered across a sky that was
smoky with coils of mist as though some giant train had but now
thundered through on its journey to Paradise. Little whistles of wind
stole about the garden making secret appointments among the trees.
Somewhere near to him a fountain was splashing, and behind the lingering
liquid sound of it he could hear the merry-go-round and the drum. He
cared little about the dance now, but in some fashion he must pass the
time until nine-thirty when he would see her friend and learn what he
might do.

Her friend? A sudden agitation held him. Her friend? Had she a lover?
Was that all that there was behind this--that she had married in haste,
for money, luxury, to see the world, perhaps, and now that she had had a
month of it with that miserable bag-of-bones and his painted, talkative
father, discovered that she could not endure it and called to her aid
some earlier lover? Was that all that his fine knight-errantry came to
that he should assist in some vulgar ordinary intrigue? He stopped,
standing beside a small white gate that led out from the garden into the
road. It was as though the gate held him from the outer world and he
would never pass through it until this was decided for him. Her face
came before him as she had sat there on the other side of the table, as
it had been when their glances met. No, he did not doubt her for an
instant.

Whatever her experiences of the last month she was pure in heart and
soul as some child at her mother's knee. She had her pride, her pluck,
her resolve, but also, above all else, her innocent simplicity, her
ignorance of all the evil in the world. And as though the most urgent
problem of all his life had been solved, he gave the little white gate
a push and stepped through it into the open road.



II


He was now in the country to the left of, and above, the town. He could
see its lights clustered, like gold coins thrown into some capacious
lap, there below him in the valley.

He struck off along a path that led between deeply scented fields and
that led straight down the hill. He began now more soberly to consider
the facts of the case, and a certain depression stole about him. He
didn't after all see very well what he would be able to do. They were
going, on the following morning, the three of them, abroad, and once
there how was he to effect any sort of rescue?

The girl was apparently quite legally married and, although the horrible
young Crispin had been silent and sinister, there were no signs that he
was positively cruel. The deeper Harkness looked into it the more he was
certain that the secret of the whole mystery lay in the older
Crispin--it was of him that the girl was terrified rather than the son.
Harkness did not know how he was sure of this, he could trace no actual
words or looks, but there--yes, there, the centre of the plot lay.

The man was strange and queer enough to look at, but a more charming
companion you could not find. He had been nothing but amiable, friendly
and courteous. His attitude to his daughter-in-law had been everything
that any one could wish. He had seemed to consider her in every possible
way.

Harkness, with his American naïveté of conduct, was fond of the word
"wholesome," or rather, had he not spent so much of his life in Europe,
would have found it his highest term of praise to call his fellow-man "a
regular feller!" Crispin Senior was _not_ "a regular feller" whatever
else he might be. There had, too, been one moment towards the end of
dinner when a waiter, passing, had jolted the little man's chair. There
had been for an instant a glance that Harkness now, in his general
survey of the situation, was glad to have caught--a glance that seemed
to tear the pale powdered mask away for the moment and to show a living
moving visage, something quite other, something the more alive in
contrast with its earlier immobility. Once, years before, Harkness had
seen in the Naples Aquarium two octopuses. They lay like grey slimy
stones at the bottom of the shining sun-lit tank. An attendant had let
down through the water a small frog at the end of a string. The frog had
nearly reached the bottom of the tank when in one flashing instant the
pile of shiny stone had been a whirling sickening monster, tentacles,
thousands of them it seemed, curving, two loathsome eyes glowing. In one
moment of time the frog was gone and in another moment the muddy pile
was immobile once again. An unpleasant sight. Were the etchings of
Samuel Palmer Crispin's only appetite? Harkness fancied not.



III


Plunging almost recklessly down the hill he was soon in the town and,
pushing his way through two or three narrow little streets, found
himself in the market-place.

He caught his breath at the strange transformation of the place since
his last view of it more than three hours before. He learnt later that
this dance was held always as the Grand Finale of the Three Days' Annual
Fair, and on the last of the days there is an old custom that, from
four-thirty to six-thirty no trading shall be done, but that every one
shall entertain or be entertained within their homes. This pause had its
origin, I should fancy, in some kind of religious ceremony, to ask the
good God's blessing on the trading of the three days, but it had become
by now a most convenient interval for the purpose of drinking healths,
so that when, at seven o'clock, all the citizens of the town poured out
of their doors once again, they were truly and happily primed for the
fun of the evening.

Harkness found, therefore, what at first seemed to be naked pandemonium
and, stepping into it, crossed into the third room of his house of
delivery. The old buildings--the town hall, the church, the old grey
tower--were lit up as though by some supernatural splendour, all the
lights of the booths, the hanging clusters of fairy lamps, and, in the
very middle of the place, a huge bonfire flinging arms of flame to
heaven.

In one corner there was the merry-go-round. A twisting, heaving,
gesticulating monster screaming out "Coal Black Mammy of Mine," and
suddenly whooping with its own excitement, showing so much emotion that
it would not have been surprising to find it, at any moment, leap its
bearings and come hurtling down into the middle of the crowd.

The booths were thick with buyers and sellers, and every one, to
Harkness's excited fancy, seemed to be screaming at the highest pitch of
his or her strident voice.

Here was everything for sale--hats, feathers, coats, skirts, dolls,
wooden dolls, rag dolls, china dolls, monkeys on sticks, ribbons,
gloves, shoes, umbrellas, pies, puddings, cakes, jams, oranges, apples,
melons, cucumbers, potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, broaches, diamonds
(glass), rubies (glass), emeralds (glass), prayer books, bibles,
pictures (King George, Queen Mary), cups, plates, tea-pots, coffee-pots,
rabbits, white mice, dogs, sheep, pigs, one grey horse, tables, chairs,
beds, and one wooden house on wheels. More than these, much more. And
around them, about them, in and out of them, before them and beside them
and behind them men, women, children, singing, crying, shouting,
sneezing, laughing, hiccuping, quarrelling, kissing, arguing, denying,
confirming, whistling, and snoring. Men of the sea bronzed with dark
hair, flashing eyes, rings on their fingers and bells on their toes; men
of the fields, the soil interpenetrated with the very soul of their
being, bearded to the eyes, broad-shouldered, broad-buttocked, their
Sunday coats flapping over their corduroyed thighs, their rough thick
necks moving restlessly in their unaccustomed collars; women of the fair
with eyes like black coals; gipsy women straight from the tents with
crimson kerchiefs and black hair piled high under feathered hats; women
of the town with soft voices, sidling eyes and creeping hands; women of
the farm with gaze wondering and adrift, hands like leather, children at
their skirts; women householders with their purses carefully clutched,
their hands feeling the cabbages, pinching the cauliflowers, estimating
the chairs and tables, stroking the china; young boys and girls,
confidence in their gaze, timidity in their hearts, suddenly catching
hands, suddenly embracing, suddenly triumphant on their merry-go-round,
suddenly everything, conscious of the last penny burning deep down in
the pocket, conscious of love, conscious of appetite, conscious of
possible remorse, conscious of blood pounding in their veins. And the
magicians, the wonder workers, the steal-a-pennies, the old men with
white beards and trays of coloured treasures, the bold bad men with
their thimble and their penny, the little stumpy, fellow with
his cards, the long thin melancholy fellow with his medicines,
the thick jolly drunken fellow with his tales of the sea, the twisty
turn-his-head-both-ways fellow with his gold watches and silver chains,
the red wizard with his fortunes in envelopes, his magic on strings of
coloured paper, his mysterious signs and countersigns whispered into
blushing ears. And then the children that should have been in bed hours
ago--little children, large children, young children, old children, fat
children, thin children, children clinging-to-mother's-skirts, children
running in and out, like mice, between legs and trousers, children
riding on father's shoulder, children sticky with sweets and sucking
their thumbs, children screaming with pleasure, shrieking with terror,
howling with weariness--and one child all by itself on the steps of the
town hall, curled up and fast asleep.

Away, to one side of the place, just as he had been there fifteen years
ago when Maradick had been present, was a preacher, aloft on an
overturned box, singing with hand raised, his thin earnest face
illumined with the lights, his scant hair blowing in the breeze. Around
him a thin scattering of people singing just as fifteen years ago they
had sung:

  So like little candles
    We shall shine,
  You in your small corner
    And I in mine.

The same recipé, the same cure, the same key offered to the unlocking
of the same mysterious door--and so it will be to the end of created
life--Amen!

The hymn was over. The preacher's voice was raised. Children step to the
edge of the circle, looking up with wondering eyes, their fingers in
their mouths.

"And so, dear friends, we have offered to us here the Blood of the Lamb
for our salvation. Can we refuse it? What right have we to disregard our
salvation? I tell you, my dear friends, that Judgment is upon us even
now. There cometh the night when no man may work. How shall we be found?
Sleeping? With our sins heavy upon us? There is yet time. The hour is
not yet. Let us remember that God is merciful--there is still time given
us for repentance----"

The Town Hall clock stridently, with clanging reverberation, heard
clearly above all the din, struck nine.



IV


Even as the strokes sounded in the air the wide doors of the Town Hall
unfolded and a tall stout man, dressed in the cocked hat and the cape
and cloak of a Dickensian beadle, appeared. Flaming red they were, and
very fine and important he looked as he stood there on the steps, his
legs spread, holding his gold staff in his hands. He was attended by
several other gentlemen who looked down with benignant approval upon the
crowd, and by a drum, a trumpet, and a flute, these last being
instruments rather than men.

A crowd began to gather at the foot of the steps and the beadle to
address them at the top of his voice, but unlike his rival, the
preacher, his voice did not carry very far.

And now the Fair, having only five minutes more of life before it,
lifted itself into a final screaming manifestation. Now was the time for
which the wise and the cautious had been waiting throughout the three
days of the Fair--the moment when all the prices would tumble down with
a rush because it was now or never. The merry-go-round shrieked, the
animals bellowed, lowed, mooed and grunted, the purchasers argued,
quarrelled, shouted and triumphed, the preacher and his followers sang
and sang again, the bells clanged, the gas-jets flared, the bonfire rose
furiously to heaven. But meanwhile the crowd was growing larger and
larger around the Town Hall steps; they came with penny whistles and
horns and hand-bells and even tea-trays. Then suddenly, strong above the
babel, carried by men's stout voices, the song began:

  Now, gentles all, attend this song,
    Tra-_la_, la-la, Tra-_la_,
  It is but short, it can't be long,
    Tra-_la_-la-la, Tra-_la_,
  How Farmer Brown one summer day
  Was in his field a-gathering hay,
  When by there came a pretty maid
  Who smiling sweetly to him said,
    Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la_,

  Then Farmer Brown, though forty year,
    Tra-_la_, la-la, Tra-_la_,
  When he that pretty voice did hear,
    Tra-_la_-la-la, Tra-_la_,
  He threw his fork the nearest ditch
  And caught the maiden tightly, which
  Was what she wanted him to do,
  And so the same would all of you,
    Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la_,

  But she withdrew from his embrace,
    Tra-_la_-la-la, Tra-_la_,
  And mocked poor Farmer to his face,
    Tra-_la_-la-la, Tra-_la_,
  And danced away along the lane
  And cried "Before I'm here again
  Poor Farmer Brown you'll dance with Pain,"
    Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la_,

  And that was true as you shall hear,
    Tra-_la_, la-la, Tra-_la_,
  Poor Farmer Brown danced many a year,
    Tra-_la_-la-la, Tra-_la_,
  But never once that maid did see,
  He grew as aged as aged could be,
  And danced in_to_ Eterni-tee,
    Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la_.

The red-flaming beadle moved down the steps, and behind him came the
drum, the trumpet and the flute. The drum a stout fellow with wide
spreading legs, had from the practice of many a year, and his father and
grandfather having been drummers before him, caught the exact measure of
the tune. Along the market-place went the beadle, the drum, the trumpet
and the flute.

For a moment a marvellous silence fell.

To Harkness this silence was exquisite. The myriad stars, the high
buildings, their façades ruby-coloured with the leaping light, the dark
piled background, the crowd humming now with quiet, like water on the
boil, the glow of rich suffused colour sheltering everything with its
beautiful cloak, the rich voices tossing into the air the jolly song,
the sense of well-being and the tradition of the lasting old time and
the spirit of England eternally fresh and sturdy and strong; all this
sank into his very soul and seemed to give him some hint of the
deliverance that was, very soon, to come to him.

Then the procession definitely formed. All the voices--men's, women's
and children's alike--caught it up. One--two--three, one--two--three.
The drum, the trumpet and the flute came to them through the air:

  How Farmer Brown one summer day
  Was in his field a-gathering hay,
  When by there came a pretty maid
  Who smiling sweetly to him said,
    Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la._

He was never to be sure whether or no he had intended to join in the
dance. He was not aware of more than the colour, the lights, the rhythm
of the tune when a man like a mountain caught him by the arm, shouting,
"Now we're off, brother--now we're off," and he was carried along.

There had always been a superstition about the dance that to join in it,
to be in it from the beginning to the end, meant the best of good luck,
and to miss it was misfortune. There was, therefore, now a flinging from
all sides of eager bodies into the fray. No one must be left out and as
the path between the line of bodies and houses was a narrow one, every
one was pressed close together, and as there had been much friendly
swilling of beer and ale, every one was in the highest humour, shouting,
laughing, singing, ringing their bells and blowing their whistles.

Harkness was crushed in upon his enormous friend so completely that he
had no other impression for the moment but of a vast expanse of heaving,
leaping, corduroy waistcoat, of a hard brass button in his eye, and of
himself clutching with both hands to a shiny trouser that must hold
himself from falling. But they were off indeed! Four of them now in a
row and the song was swinging fine and strong. One--two--three,
one--two--three. Forward bend, one leg in air, backward bend, t'other
leg in air, forward bend again, down the market-place and round the
corner voices raised in one tremendous song.

He was easier now and able more clearly to realise his position. One arm
was tightly wedged in that of his companion, and he could feel the thick
welling muscles taut through the stuff of the shirt. On the other side
of him was a girl, and he could feel her hand pressing on his sleeve. On
her side, again, was a young man--her lover. He said so, and shouted it
to the world.

He leaned across her and cried out her beauties as they moved, and she
threw her head back and sang.

The giant on the hitherside seemed to have taken Harkness into his
especial protection. He had been drinking well, but it had done him no
order of harm. Only he loved the world and especially Harkness. He felt,
he knew, that Harkness was a stranger from "up-along." On an average day
he would have resented him, been suspicious of him, and tried "to do him
out of some of his blasted money." But to-night he would be his friend
and protect him from the world.

He would rather have had a girl crooked there under his arm, but the
girl he had intended to have had somehow missed him when the fun
began--but it didn't matter--the beer made everything glorious for
him--and after all he had two daughters "nigh grown up," and his old
missus was around somewhere, and it was just as good he didn't slip into
any sort of mischief which it was easy to do on a night like this--and
his name was Gideon. All this he confided to Harkness while the
procession halted, for a minute or two, at the corner of the
market-place to pull itself straight before it started down the hill.

He had his arm around Harkness's neck and words poured from him. Gideon
what or something Gideon? It didn't matter. Gideon it was and Gideon it
would be so long as Harkness's memory remained.

All the soil of the English country, all the deep lanes with their high
dark hedges, the russet cornfields with their sudden dips to the sea,
the high ridges with the white cottages perched like birds resting
against the sky, the smell of the earth, the savour of the leaves wet
after rain, the thick smoke and damp of the closed-in rooms, the mud,
the clay, the running streams, the wind through the thick-sheltering
trees, all these were in Gideon's speech as he stood, close pressed,
thigh to thigh with Harkness.

He was happy although he knew not why, and Harkness was happy because he
was in love for the first time in his life and tingled from head to foot
with that knowledge. And up and down and all around it was the same.
This was the night of all the nights of the year when enmities were
forgotten and new friendships made. As Maradick once had felt the
current of love running strong and true through a thousand souls, so
Harkness felt it now, and, as with Maradick once, so with Harkness now,
it seemed strange that life might not be simply run, that the lion might
not lie down with the lamb, that nations might not be for ever at peace
the one with another, and that the Grand Millennium might not
immediately be at hand.

All beer you say? Maybe, and yet not altogether so. Something anxious
and longing in the human heart was rising, free and strong, that night,
and would never again entirely leave some of the hearts that knew it.

Harkness for one. There were to be many years in the future when he was
to feel again the beating of Gideon's heart under his arm. Something of
Gideon's was his, and something of his was Gideon's forevermore, though
they would never meet again.



V


And now the procession was arranged. Harkness looking back could see how
it stretched, a winding serpent black in the shadows of the leaping
bonfire, through the square. They were off again. The drum had started.
Down the hill they went, all packed together, all swinging with the
tune. A kind of divine frenzy united them all. Young and old, men and
women, married and single, good and evil, vicious and virtuous, all were
together bound in one chain. Harkness was with them. For the first time
in all his life restraint was flung aside. He did not smell the beer nor
did the sweat of the perspiring bodies offend his sensitive nostrils,
nor the dung from the fields, nor the fishy odours of the sea. With
Gideon on one side and a young man's girl on the other, he swung through
the town.

Details for a time eluded him. He was singing the song at the top of his
voice, but what words he was singing he could not have told you; he was
dancing to the measure, but for the life of him he could not have
afterwards repeated the rhythm.

They swung down into the heart of the town. The doors of all the houses
were crowded with the very aged and the very young who stood laughing
and crying out, pointing to their friends and acquaintances, laughing at
this and cheering at that.

And always more were joining in, pushing their way, dancing the more
energetically because they had missed the first five minutes. Now they
were down on the fish-market all sprinkled with silver under the little
moon and the cloth of stars. Here the wind from the sea came to meet
them, and through the music and the singing and the laughter and the
press-press of the dancing crowd could be heard the faint breath of the
tide on the shore "seep-seep-sough-sough," wistful and powerful,
remaining for ever when they all were gone. The sheds of the fish-market
were gaunt and dark and deserted. For one moment all the naked place was
filled with colour and movement. Then up the hill they all pressed.

It was difficult up the hill. There were breaths and pants and "Eh,
sirs," and "Oh, the poor worm," and "But my heart's beating," and "I
cannot! I cannot!" One woman fell, was picked up and planted by the side
of the road, a young man staying with melancholy kindness beside her.
The rest passed on.

Soon they were at the top of the hill before they turned to the left
again back into the town. And this was Harkness's greatest moment. For
an instant the dance paused, and just then it happened that Harkness was
at the highest point of the climb.

Catching his breath, his hand to his heart, for he was out of training,
and the going had been hard, he looked about him. Below him to the right
and to the left and to the farthest horizon the sea, a grey silk shadow,
hung, so soft, so gentle, that the stars that crackled above it seemed
to be taunting it with its lethargy. On the other side of the hill was
all the clustered town, and before him and behind him the dark
multitudes of human beings. Pressed close to Gideon, who was drinking
something out of a bottle, he was unconscious of any personality--only
that time had found for him, it seemed, a solution to the whole problem
of life. The sea-wind fanning his temples, the salt snap of the sea, the
pounding of his own heart in union with that other heart of his
companion who was with him--all these things together made of him who
had been always afraid and timorous and edged with caution, a triumphant
soul.

And it was good that it was so because of all that he would be called
upon to do that night.

Gideon put his arm around him, pressing him close to him, and pushed the
bottle up to his lips. "Drink, brother," he said. "Drink, then, my
dear." And Harkness drank.

Now they were starting down the hill into the town once more, and the
dance reached the height of its madness.

  He threw his fork the nearest ditch
  And caught the maiden tightly, which
  Was what she wanted him to do--
  And so the same would all of you
    Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la._

They screamed, they shrieked, they tumbled on to one another, they held
on where they could, they swung from side to side. The red beadle
himself caught the frenzy, flinging his fat body now here, now there.
The very houses and the cobbles of the streets seemed to swing and sway
as the lights flashed and flared. All the bells of the town were
pealing. In the market-place they were setting off the fireworks, and
the rockets, green and red and gold, streaked the purple sky and fought
for rivalry with the stars. All the sky now was scattered with sparks of
gold. From the highest heaven to the lowest of man's ditches the world
crackled and split and sang.

Now was the moment when all enemies were truly forgotten, when love was
declared without fear, when lips sought lips and hands clasped hands,
and heaven opened and all the human souls marched in.

  Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la_
  Tra-_la_-la-la-Tra-_la._

Back into the market-place they all tumbled, then, standing in a serried
mass as the beadle and his followers mounted the Town Hall steps, they
shouted:

  "All together: One--two--three.
    One--Two--Three.
    One. Two. Three.
  HURRAY! HURRAY! HURRAY!"

The dance of all the hearts was, for one more year, at an end.



VI


Every one was splitting up into little groups, some to look at the
fireworks, some to have a last drink together, some to creep off into
the dark shadows and there confirm their vows, some to drive home on
their carts and waggons to their distant farms, some to sit in their
homes for a last chatting about all the news, some to go straight to
their beds--the common impulse was over although it would not be
forgotten.

Harkness looked around to find Gideon, but that giant was gone nor was
he ever to see him again. He paused there panting, happy, forgetting for
an instant everything but the fun and freedom that he had just passed
through. Then, as though it would forcibly remind him, the Town Hall
clock struck half-past nine.

He spoke to a man standing near him:

"Can you kindly tell me where a hotel called the 'Feathered Duck' is?"
he asked.

"Certainly," said the man, wiping the sweat from the hair matted on his
forehead. "It's out on the sea-front. Go down High Street--that'll take
you to the sea-front. Then walk to your right and it's about five houses
down."

Harkness thanked him and hurried away. He had no difficulty in finding
the High Street, but there how strange to walk so quietly down it,
hearing your own foot tread, watched by all the silent houses, when only
five minutes ago you had been whirling in Dionysian frenzy! He was on
the sea-front and two steps afterwards was looking up at the quiet and
modest exterior of "The Feathered Duck."

The long road stretched shining and sleek. Not a living soul about. The
little hotel offered a discreet welcome with plants in large green pots,
one on either side of the door, a light warm enough to greet you and not
too startling to frighten you, and the knob gleaming like an inviting
eye.

Harkness pushed open the door and entered. The hall was anæmic and
dark, with the trap to catch visitors some way down on the right. There
seemed to be no one about. Harkness pushed open a door and at once found
himself in one of those little hotel drawing-rooms that are so
peculiarly British, compounded as they are of ferns and discretion,
convention and an untuned piano. In this little room a young man was
sitting alone. Harkness knew at once that his search was over. He knew
where it was that he had heard the name Dunbar before--this was his
young man of the high road, the wandering seaman and the serious
appointment, the young man of his expectant charge.

There was yet, however, room for mistake and so he waited standing in
the doorway. The young man was bending forward in a red plush armchair,
eagerly watching. He recognised Harkness at once as his friend of the
afternoon.

"Hullo!" he said, and then hurriedly, "why, what _has_ been happening to
you?"

Harkness stepped forward into the room. "To me?" he said.

"Why, yes. You're sweating. Your collar's undone. You look as though you
had run a mile."

"Oh, that!" Harkness blushed, fingering his collar that had broken from
its stud. "I've been dancing."

"Dancing?"

"Yes. All round the town. Like the lion and the unicorn."

"Oh, I heard you. On any other night----" He broke off. During this time
he had been watching Harkness with a curious expression, something
between eagerness, distrust, and an impatience which he was finding very
difficult to conceal. He said nothing more. Harkness also was silent.
They stared the one at the other, and could hear beyond the door the
noises of the little hotel, a shrill female voice, the rattle of plates,
some man's laughter.

At last Harkness said: "Your name is Dunbar, isn't it?"

The young man, instead of answering, asked his own question. "Look here,
what the devil are you after? I don't say that it is or it isn't, but
anyway why do _you_ want to know?"

"It's only this," said Harkness slowly, "that if your name _is_ Dunbar,
then I have a message for you."

"You _have_?"

He started out of his chair, standing up in front of Harkness as though
challenging him.

"Yes, a friend of yours asked me to come here, to meet you at half-past
nine and tell you that she agrees to your proposal----"

"She does? . . . At last!"

Then his voice changed to suspicion. "You seem to be a lot in this.
Forgive my curiosity. I don't want to seem rude, but meeting me on the
hill this afternoon and now this. . . . I've got to be so _damn_
careful----"

"My name is Harkness. It was quite by chance that I was walking down the
hill this afternoon and met you. As I told you then, I was on my way to
the 'Man-at-Arms.' This evening I offered my help to a lady there who
seemed to be in distress, and asked her whether there was anything that
I could do. She asked me to bring you that message. There was no one
else for her to ask."

Dunbar stared at Harkness, then suddenly held out his hand. "Jolly
decent of you. I won't forget it. My name is Dunbar as you know, David
Dunbar."

"And mine Harkness, Charles Harkness."

"I can't tell you what you've done for me by bringing me that message.
Here, don't go for a minute. Have something, won't you?"

"Yes, I think I will," said Harkness, conscious of a sudden weariness.

"What shall it be? Whisky? Large soda?"

They sat down. Dunbar touched a bell and then, in silence, they waited.
Harkness was humorously conscious that he seemed to be the younger of
the two. The boy had taken complete command of the situation.

The older man was also aware that there was some very actual and
positive situation here that was developing under his eyes. As he sat
there, sticking to the plush of his chair, listening to the ridiculous
chatter of the marble clock, staring into the Wardour Street Puritans of
"When did you see father last?" he felt urgency beating in upon them
both. A shabby waiter looked in upon them, received his order and
departed.

Dunbar suddenly plunged. "Look here, I know I can trust you. I'm sure of
it. And _she_ trusted you, so that should be enough for me. But--would
you mind--telling me exactly how it happened that you got this message?"

"Certainly," Harkness said. "I----"

"Wait," Dunbar interrupted, "forgive me, but drop your voice, will you?
One doesn't know who's hanging round here."

They drew their chairs closer together and Harkness, sitting forward,
continued. "I had dressed for dinner early. A friend of mine in London
had told me that there was a little old room at the top of the hotel
that was well worth seeing. I guess, like most Americans, I care for
old-fashioned things, so I got to the top of the house and found the
room. I was up in a little gallery at the back when two people came in,
a man and a girl. They began to talk before I could move or let them
know I was there. It was all too quick for me to do anything. The girl
begged the man, to whom she was apparently married, to let her go home
for a week before they went abroad, and the man refused. That was all
there was, but the girl's terror struck me as extreme----"

"My God!" Dunbar broke in, "if you only knew!"

"Well, I was touched by that and I didn't like the man's face, either.
They went out. I came down to dinner. While I was waiting in the garden
an extraordinary man spoke to me--extraordinary to look at, I mean.
Short, fat, red hair--"

"You needn't describe him," Dunbar interrupted, "I know him."

"He came and asked me for a match. He was very polite, and finally
invited me to dine with him, his son and daughter-in-law. I accepted. Of
course the son and daughter-in-law were the two that I had overheard
upstairs. I saw that throughout dinner she was in great distress, and at
the end as we were leaving the room I let her know that I had overheard
her inadvertently before dinner, and that I was eager to help her if
there was any way in which I could do so. We had only a moment, Crispin
and his son were close upon us. She was, I suppose, at the end of her
endurance and snatched at any chance, so she told me to do this--to find
you here and give you that message--that's all--absolutely all."

"The door opened, making both men turn apprehensively. It was only the
shabby little waiter with his tray and the whiskies. He set down the
glasses, split the soda, and stared at them both as Dunbar paid him.

"Will that be all, gentlemen?" he asked, scratching his ear.

"Everything," said Dunbar abruptly.

"Gentlemen sleeping here?"

"No, we're not. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir." With a little sigh the waiter withdrew. The door
closed, and instantly the ferns in the pots, the plush chairs and sofa
closed round as though they also wanted to hear.

"It's an extraordinary piece of luck," Dunbar began. Then he hesitated.
"But I don't want to bother you with any more of this. It isn't your
affair. You've come into it, after all, only by accident----"

He hesitated as though he were making an invitation to Harkness. And
Harkness hesitated. He saw that this was his last opportunity of
withdrawal. Once again he could hear the voice of the Imp behind his
shoulder: "Well, clear out if you want to. You have still plenty of
time. And this is positively the last chance I give you----"

He drank his whisky and, drinking, crossed his Rubicon.

"No, no, I am interested, tremendously interested. Tell me anything you
care to and if I can be of any help----"

"No, no," Dunbar assured him, "I'm not going to drag you into it. You
needn't be afraid of that."

"But I _am_ in it!" Harkness answered, smiling; "I'm going back with
Crispin to his house this evening!"



VII


The effect of that upon Dunbar was fantastic. The young man jumped from
his chair crying:

"You're going back?"

"Yes."

"To the house?"

"Why, yes!"

"And to-night!"

He stared down at him as though he could not believe the evidence of his
ears nor of his eyes nor of anything that was his. Then he finished his
whisky with a desperate gulp.

"But what's pushing you into this anyway?" he cried at last. "You don't
look like the kind of man---- And yet there you were on the hill this
afternoon, and then at the hotel and overhearing what Hesther said, and
then dining with the man and his asking you---- He did ask you, didn't
he?"

"Of course he asked me," Harkness answered. "You don't suppose I'd have
gone if he didn't."

"No, I don't suppose you would," agreed Dunbar. "I bet he offered to
show you his jewels and his pictures, his collections."

"Yes," said Harkness, "he did."

"Well, that's just a miracle of good luck for me, that's all. You can
help me to-night, help me marvellously. But I don't like to ask you.
Things might turn out all wrong and then we'd all be in for a bad time
and that wouldn't be fair to you." He paused, thinking, then he went on.
"I'll tell you what I'll do. You saw that girl to-night and talked to
her, didn't you?"

Harkness nodded his head.

"You saw that she was a damned fine girl?"

Harkness nodded again.

"Worth doing a lot for. Well, I'll put the whole story to you--let you
have it all. We've got nearly three-quarters of an hour. I can tell you
most of it in that time, and then you can make up your mind. If, when
I've told you everything, you decide to have nothing whatever to do with
it, that's all right. There's no obligation on you at all, of course.
But if you _did_ help me, being in the house at that very time, it would
make the whole difference. My God, yes!" he ended with a sigh of
eagerness, staring at Harkness.

Harkness sat there, thinking only of the girl. His own personal history,
the town, the dance, Crispin and his son, all these things had faded
away from his mind; he saw only her--as she had been when turning her
head for a moment she had spoken to him with such marvellous
self-control.

He loved her just as she stood there granting him permission to help
her. His own prayer was that it might not be long before he was allowed
to help her again. He was recalled to the immediate moment by Dunbar's
voice:

"You'll forgive me if I go back to the beginning of things--it's the
only way really to explain. Have you ever heard of Polchester, a town in
Glebeshire, north of this? There's a rather famous cathedral there."

"Yes," said Harkness, "I thought I might go there from here."

"Well," Dunbar went on, "out of Polchester about ten miles there's a
village--Milton Haxt. I was born there and so was Hesther. Her name was
Hesther Tobin, and she was the only daughter of the doctor of the
place--she had two brothers younger than herself. We've known one
another all our lives."

"Wait a moment," Harkness interrupted; "are you and she the same age?"

"No. I'm thirty, she's only twenty."

"You look younger than that, or you did this afternoon, I'm not so sure
now." Indeed the boy seemed to have acquired some new weight and
responsibility as he sat there.

"No," he went on. "When I said that we'd known one another always I mean
that she's always known about me. I used to take her on my knee and toss
her up and down. That was where all the trouble began. If she hadn't
been always used to me and fancied that I was years older than she--a
kind of grandfather--she'd have married me."

"Married you!" Harkness brought out.

"Yes. I can't remember a time when I wasn't in love with her. I always
was, and she never was with me. She liked me--she likes me now--but
she's always been so used to the idea of me. I've always been David
Dunbar--and that's all. A friend who was always there but nothing more.
There was just a moment when I was missing for six months in the middle
of the war, I think she really cared then--but soon they heard that I
was safe in Germany and it was all as it had been before."

"Were her father and mother living?" Harkness asked.

"Her father. Her mother died when her youngest brother was born, when
she was only six years old. The mother's death upset the father, and he
took to drink. He'd always been inclined that way I expect. He was too
brilliant a doctor to have landed in that small village without there
being some reason. Well, after Mrs. Tobin's death there was simply one
trouble after another. Tobin's patients deserted him. The big house on
the hill had to be sold and they moved into a small one in the village.
He had been a big, jolly, laughing, generous man before, now he was
always quarrelling with everybody, insulting the few patients left to
him, and so on. Hesther was wonderful. How she kept the house together
all those years nobody knew. There was very little she didn't know about
life by the time she was ten years old--ordinary life, I mean, not this
damned Crispin monstrosity. She always had the pluck and the courage of
the devil, and you can fancy what I felt just now when you told me about
her asking young Crispin to let her off. That _swine_!"

He paused for a moment, then went on hurriedly:

"But we haven't much time. I must buck ahead. I was quite an ordinary
sort of fellow, of course, but there was nothing I wouldn't do for her
if I got a chance. I helped her sometimes, but not so much as I'd have
liked. She was always terribly proud. All the things that happened at
home made her hold up her head in a kind of defiance.

"The odd thing was that she loved her father, and the worse he got the
more she loved him. But she loved her young brothers still more. She was
mother, sister, nurse, everything to them, and would be still if she'd
been let alone. They were nice little chaps too, only a lot younger, of
course--one three years, one six. One's in the Navy--very decent
fellow--and if he'd been home he'd never have allowed any of this to
happen.

"Well, the war came when she was quite a kid. I was away most of that
time. Then in 1918 my father died and left me a bit of property there in
Milton. I came home and asked her to marry me. She thought I was pitying
her, and anyway she didn't love me. And I hadn't enough of this world's
goods to make the old man keen about me.

"Then this devil came along." Dunbar stopped for a moment. They both
listened. There was not a sound in the whole house.

"What brought him to a village like yours?" asked Harkness, lowering his
voice. "I shouldn't have thought that a man like that----"

"No, you wouldn't," said Dunbar. "But that's one of his passions
apparently, suddenly landing on some small village where there's a big
house and bossing every one around him. . . . I shall never forget the
day I first saw him. It was just about a year ago.

"I had heard that some foreigner had taken Haxt, that was the big house
in Milton that the Dombeys, the owners, were too poor to keep up. Soon
all the village was talking. Furniture arrived, then lots of servants,
Japs and all sorts. Then one evening going up the hill I saw him leaning
over one of the Haxt gates looking into the road.

"It was a lovely July evening and he was without a hat. You've spoken of
his hair. I tell you that evening it was just flaming in the sun. It
looked for a moment like some strange sort of red flower growing on the
top of the gate. He stopped me as I was passing and asked me for a
match."

"That's what he asked me for," murmured Harkness.

"Yes, his opening gambits are all the same. He offered me a cigarette
and I took one. We talked for a little. I didn't like him at first, of
course, with his hair, white face, painted lips, but--did you notice
what a beautiful voice he has?"

"I should think I did," said Harkness.

"And then he can make himself perfectly charming. The beginning of your
acquaintance with him is exactly like your introduction to the villain
of any melodrama--painted face, charming voice, cosmopolitan, delightful
information. The change comes afterwards. But I must hurry on, I'll
never be done. I'm as bad as Conrad's Marlowe. Have another whisky,
won't you?"

"No, thanks," said Harkness.

"Well, it wasn't long before he was the talk of the whole place. At
first every one liked him. Odd though he looked you can just fancy how a
man with his wealth and knowledge of the world would fascinate a
country-side if he chose to make himself agreeable, and he _did_ choose.
He gave parties, he went round to people's houses, sent his motors to
give old ladies a ride, allowed people to pick flowers in his garden,
adored showing people his collections. I happened to be in Milton during
the rest of that year looking after my little property, and he seemed to
take to me. I was up at Haxt a good deal.

"Looking back now I can see that I never really liked him. I was aware
of my caution and laughed at myself for it. I liked pretty things, you
know, and I loved his jade and emeralds, and still more his prints. And
he knew so much and was never tired of telling me and never seemed to
laugh at one's ignorance.

"He was, as I have said, all the talk that summer. It was 'Mr. Crispin'
this and 'Mr. Crispin' that--Mr. Crispin everything. The men didn't take
to him much, but of course they wouldn't! They had always thought _me_ a
bit queer because I liked reading and played the piano. The first thing
that people didn't like about him was his son. That beauty arrived at
Haxt somewhere in September, and everybody hated him. I ask you, could
you help it? And he was the exact opposite of his father. _He_ didn't
try to make himself agreeable to anybody--simply went about scowling and
frowning. But it wasn't that people disliked--it was his relation to his
father. He was absolutely in his father's power--that is the only way to
put it--and there was something despicable, something almost obscene,
you know, almost as though he were hypnotized, the way he obeyed him,
listened to his voice, slaved away for him."

"I noticed something of that myself this evening," said Harkness.

"You couldn't help it if you saw them together. Somehow the son turning
up beside the father made the _father_ look queer--as though the son
showed him up. People round Milton are not very perceptive, you know,
but they soon smelt a rat, several rats in fact. For one thing the
people in the village didn't like the Jap servants, then one or two
maids that Crispin had hired abruptly left. They wouldn't say anything
except that they didn't like the place, that old Crispin walked in his
sleep or something of the kind.

"It was just about this time, early in October or so, that Crispin
became friendly with the Tobins. Young Crispin had a cold or something
and Tobin came up and doctored him. Crispin gave him the best liquor
he'd ever had in his life so he came again and then again. That was the
beginning of my dislike of Crispin. It seemed to me rotten of him, when
Tobin was already going as fast downhill as he could, to give him an
extra push. And Crispin liked doing that. One could see it at a glance.
I hated him from the moment when I caught him watching with amused
smiles Tobin fuddled in his chair. You can imagine that Tobin's
drunkenness, having cared for Hesther as I had for so long, was a matter
of some importance for me. I had tried to pull him up, without any sort
of success, of course, and it simply maddened me to see what Crispin was
doing. So I lost my temper and spoke out. I told him what I thought of
him. He listened to me very quietly, then he suddenly threw his head up
at me like a snake hissing. He said a lot of things. That was the first
time I heard all his nonsensical stuff about sensations. We haven't time
now, and anyway it wasn't very new--the philosophy that as this was our
only existence we had better make the most of it, that we had been given
our senses to use, not to stifle, and the rest of it. Omar put it better
than Crispin.

"He had also a lot of talk about Power, that if he liked he could have
any one in his power, and so could I if I liked. You had only to know
other people's weaknesses enough. And more than that. Some stuff about
its being good for people to suffer. That the thing that made life
interesting and worth while was its intensity, and that life was never
so intense as when we were suffering. That, after all, God liked us to
suffer. Why shouldn't _we_ be gods? We might be if we only had courage
enough.

"It was then, that morning, that it first entered my head that there was
something wrong with him--something wrong with his brain. It had never
occurred to me during all those months because he had always been so
logical, but now--he seemed to step across the little bridge that
separates the sane from the insane. You know how small that bridge is?"
Harkness nodded his head.

"Then all in a moment he took my arm and twisted it. I can't give you
any sort of idea how queer and nasty that was. As he did it he peered
into my face as though he didn't want to miss the slightest shadow of an
expression. Then--I don't know if you noticed when he shook hands with
you--his fingers haven't any bones in them, and yet they are beastly
powerful. He ought to be soft all over and he _isn't._ He twisted my arm
once and smiled. It was all I could do to keep from knocking him down.
But I broke away, told him to go to hell and left the house. From that
moment I hated him.

"It was directly after this that I noticed for the first time that he
had his eye on Hesther, and he had his eye upon her exactly because she
hated him and wouldn't go near him if she could possibly help it. I must
stop for a moment and tell you something about her. You've seen her, but
you cannot have any kind of idea how wonderful she really is.

"She has the most honourable loyal character you've ever seen in woman.
And she's never been in love--she doesn't know what love is. Those are
the two most important things about her. That doesn't mean that she's
ignorant of life. There's nothing mean or sordid or disgusting that
hasn't come into her experience through her beauty of a father, but
she's stood up to it all--until this, this Crispin marriage. The first
thing in her life she's funked.

"She's been saved all along by her devotion to one thing, her
family--her father and two brothers. She must have given her father up
pretty completely by now, seeing that it was hopeless; but her small
brothers--why, they are the key to the whole thing! If it weren't for
them she wouldn't be where she is to-night, and, as I have said, if the
elder one had known anything about it he wouldn't have allowed it, but
he's away on a foreign station and Bobby's too young to understand.

"She was always very independent in the village, keeping to herself. Not
being rude to people, you understand, but making no real friends. She
simply lived for those two boys, and she had to work so hard that she
had no time for friends. She knew that I loved her--I had told her often
enough. She saw more of me than of any one else, and she would allow me
to do things for her sometimes, but even with me she kept her
independence. To-night is the very first time in both our lives that she
has begged me to do anything!"

He stopped for a moment. "By God!" he cried, "if I can't help her
to-night I'll finish myself; there'll be nothing left in life for me!"

"We _will_ help her," Harkness said. "Both of us. But go on. Time's
advancing. I mustn't miss my appointment."

"No, by Jove, you mustn't," said Dunbar. "Everything hangs on that.
Well, to get on. It didn't take me very long to see what Crispin was
doing to her father, and one day she went up to see him alone and begged
him to be merciful. She says that he was charming to her and that she
hated him worse than ever.

"He promised her that he would stop her father's drinking, and, of
course, he didn't keep his promise, but made Tobin drink more than ever.

"It was round about Christmas that these things happened, and just about
this time all sorts of stories began to circulate about him. He suddenly
left, came over to Treliss, and took the White Tower where you're going
to-night. After he had gone _the_ stories grew in volume--the most
ridiculous things you ever heard, about his catching rabbits and
skinning them alive and holding witches' Sabbaths with his Japs--every
kind of fantastic thing. And all the women who had gone to see his
pretty things and raved about him when he first came said they didn't
know how they 'ever could have seen anything in him,' and that he
deserved imprisonment and worse.

"It was now that I discovered that Hesther was desperately worried. I
had known her all my life and had never seen her worried like this
before. She lost her colour, was always thinking about other things when
one spoke to her, and, several times, had been crying when I came upon
her. Naturally I couldn't stand this, and I bullied her until I got the
truth out of her. And what do you think that was? Why, of all the
horrible things, that the younger Crispin had asked her to marry him,
and that all the time her blackguard of a father was pressing her to do
it.

"You can imagine what I felt like when I heard this! I cursed and swore
and blasphemed and still couldn't believe that she was in any way taking
it seriously until, when I pressed her, I found that she was!

"She was always as obstinate as sin, had her own way of looking at
things, made up her own mind and stuck to it. She didn't hate the son as
she hated the father, although she disliked the little she'd seen of him
well enough; but, remember, she knew very little about marriage. All her
thoughts were on those two boys, her brothers.

"I found out that old Crispin had offered Tobin any amount of money if
he'd give his daughter up, and that Tobin had put this to Hesther,
telling her that he was desperately in debt, that he'd be put in prison
if the money didn't turn up from somewhere, and, above all, that the
boys would be ruined if she didn't agree, that he'd have to take the
younger boy away from school and so on.

"I did everything I could. I went and saw Tobin and told him what I
thought of him, and he was drunk as usual and we had a scuffle, in the
course of which I unfortunately tumbled him over. Hesther came in and
saw him on the floor, turned on me, and then said she'd marry young
Crispin.

"I begged, I implored her. I said that if she would marry me I'd give
her everything that I had in the world, that we'd manage so that Bobby
shouldn't have to be taken away from school and the rest of it. Then
Father Tobin got up from the floor and asked me with a sneer how much
I'd got, and I tried to bluster it out, but of course they both of them
knew that I hadn't got very much.

"Anyway Hesther was angry with me--ashamed, I think, that I'd seen her
father in such a state, and her pride hurt that I should know how badly
they were placed. She accepted young Crispin by the next mail. If the
Crispins had actually been there in the flesh I don't think she would
have done it, but some weeks' absence had softened her horror of them,
and she could only think how wonderful it was going to be to do all the
marvellous things for the boys that she was planning.

"I'm sure that when young Crispin did turn up with his long body and
cadaverous face she repented and was frightened, but her pride wouldn't
let her then back out of it.

"I had one last talk with her before her marriage. I begged her to
forgive me for anything that I had done that might seem casual or
insulting, that she must put me out of her mind altogether, but just
consider in a general way whether this wasn't a horrible thing that she
was doing, marrying a man that she didn't love, taking on a
father-in-law whom she hated.

"She was very sweet to me, sweeter than she had ever been before. She
just shook her head and let me kiss her. And I knew that this was a
final good-bye."



VIII


"She married Crispin and came to Treliss. I wasn't at the wedding. I
heard nothing from her. And then a story came to my ears that, after I
had once heard it, gave me no peace.

"It was an old woman--a Mrs. Martin. She had, months before, been up at
Haxt doing some kind of extra help. She was an old mottled woman like a
strawberry--I'd known her all my life--and a grandmother. She suddenly
left, and it was only weeks after Crispin went that I found out why. She
was very shy about it, and to this day I've never discovered exactly
what happened. Something one evening when she was alone in the kitchen
preparing to go home. The elder Crispin came in followed by one of his
Japs. He made her sit down in one of the kitchen chairs, sat down beside
her, and began to talk to her in his soft beautiful voice. What it was
all about to this day she doesn't know--some of his fine stuff about
Sensation, I daresay, and the benefit of suffering so that you could
touch life at its fullest! I shouldn't wonder--anyway an old woman like
Mrs. Martin, who had borne eight or nine children of her husband who
beat her, knew plenty about suffering without Crispin trying to teach
her. Anyway he went on in his soft beautiful voice, and she sat there
bewildered, fascinated a bit by his red hair which she told me "she
never could get out of her mind like," and the Jap standing silent
beside her.

"Suddenly Crispin took hold of her old wrinkled neck and began stroking
it, putting his face close to hers, talking, talking, talking all the
time. Then the Jap stepped behind her, caught the back of her head and
pulled it.

"What would have happened next I don't know had not the younger Crispin
come in, and at the sight of him the older man instantly got up, the Jap
disappeared--it was as though nothing had been. Old Mrs. Martin got out
of the house, then tumbled to pieces in the shrubbery. She was ill for
days afterwards, but she kept the whole thing quiet with a kind of
villager's pride, you know--'she wasn't going to have other folks
talking as they did anyway when they saw how quickly she had left.'

"But she told one of her daughters and the daughter told me. There was
almost nothing in the actual incident, but it told me two things, one,
that the older Crispin really is mad--definitely, positively insane, the
other that the son, in spite of his seeming so submissive, has some sort
of hold over him. There is something between the two that I don't
understand.

"Well, that decided me. I went to Treliss to find out what I could. I
had to hang about for quite a time before I could learn anything at all.
Crispin was going on at Treliss just as he had done at Milton. He's
taken this strange house outside the town which you'll see to-night.
Quite a famous place in a way, built on the sea-cliff with a tangled
overgrown wood behind it and a high white tower that you can see for
miles over the country-side. At first the people liked him just as they
had done at Milton and were interested in him. Then there were stories
and more stories. Suddenly, only a week ago, he said he was going
abroad, and to-morrow he's going.

"Now the point I want to make clear to you is that the man's mad. I'm
not a clever chap. I don't know any of your medical theories. I've never
had any leaning that way, but I take it that the moment that any one
crosses the division between sanity and insanity it means that they can
control their brain no longer, that they are dominated by some desire or
ambition or lust or terror that nothing can stop, no fear of the law, of
public shame, of losing social caste. Crispin is mad, and Hesther, whom
I love more than anything in this world and the next, is in his hands
completely and absolutely. They go abroad to-morrow morning where no one
can touch them.

"The time's been so short, and I've not been sufficiently clever to give
you any clear idea of the man himself. I've got practically no facts.
You can't say that his stroking an old woman's neck is a fact that
proves anything. All the same I believe you've seen enough yourself to
know that it isn't all imagination, and that the girl is in terrible
peril. My God, sir," the boy's voice was shaking, "before the war there
were all sorts of things that didn't seem possible, we knew that they
couldn't exist outside the books of the story-tellers. But the war's
changed all that. There's nothing too horrible, nothing too beastly,
nothing too bad to be true--yes, and nothing too fine, nothing too
sporting.

"And this thing is quite simple. There are those two madmen and my girl
in their hands, and only to-night to get her out of them.

"I must tell you something more," he went on more quietly. "I've been
making desperate attempts to see her, and at the same time to prevent
either of those devils from seeing _me._ I saw her twice, once in the
grounds of the White Tower, once on the beach below the house. Neither
time would she listen to me. I could see that she was miserable,
altogether changed, but all that she would say was that she was married
and that she must go through with what she had begun.

"She begged me to go away and leave Treliss. Her one fear seemed to be
lest Crispin should find out I was there and do something to me.

"Her terror of him was dreadful to witness--but she would tell me
nothing. I hung about the place and made a friend of a fisherman he had
up there working on the place--Jabez Marriot--you saw him on the hill
to-day.

"He's a fine fellow. He's only been working on the grounds, had nothing
to do with inside the house, but he didn't love the Crispins any better
than I did, and he had lost his heart to Hesther. She spoke to him once
or twice, and he would do anything for her. I sent letters to her
through him: she replied to me in the same way, but they were all to the
same effect, that I was to go away quickly lest Crispin should do
something to me, that she wasn't being badly treated and that there was
nothing to be done.

"Then, about a week ago, Crispin saw me. It was in one of the Treliss
lanes, and we met face to face. He just gave me one look and passed on,
but since then I've had to be terribly careful. All the same I've made
my plans. All that was needed was her consent to them, and that, until
to-night, she has steadily refused to give. However, something worse
than usual has broken her down. What he has been doing to her I don't
know, I dare not think--but to-night I've got to get her out. I've _got_
to, or never show my face anywhere again. Now I've told you this as
quickly as I could. Will you help me?"

Harkness stood up holding out his hand: "Yes," he said, "I will."

"It can be beastly, you know."

"That's all right."

"You don't mind what happens?"

"I don't mind what happens."

"Sportsman."

The two men shook hands. They sat down again. Dunbar spread out a paper
on the little green-topped table.

"This is a rough plan of the house," he said. "I can't draw, but I think
you can make this out.

"Please forgive this childish drawing," he said again. "It's the best I
can do. I think it makes the main things plain. Here's the house, the
tower over the sea, the wood, the garden, the high road.


[Illustration]


"Now look at this other plan of the second floor.


[Illustration]


"You'll see from this that Hesther's room is at the very end of the
house and her husband's room next to hers. The two guest rooms are
empty, and there are no other bedrooms on that floor. The picture
gallery runs right along the whole floor. The small library is a rather
cheerful bright room. Crispin has put his prints in there, some on the
walls, the rest in solander boxes. The large library is a gaunt, dusty
deserted place hung with heads of many animals that one of the
Pontifexes (the real owners of the place) shot at some time or other. No
one ever goes there. In fact this second floor is generally deserted.
Crispin spends his time either in the tower or on the ground floor. He
is in the small library playing about with his prints some of the time
though.

"Now, my plan is this. I have told Hesther everything to the very
tiniest detail, and all that she had to do was to send word at any
moment that she agreed to it. That she has now done.

"To-night at one o'clock I am going to be up the high road under the
shadow of the wood at the back of the kitchen garden with a jingle and
pony----"

"A jingle?" asked Harkness.

"Yes, a jingle is Cornish for a pony trap. The obvious thing for me to
have had was a car, but after thinking about it I decided against it for
a number of reasons. One of them was the noise that it makes in
starting, then it might easily stick over the ground that we shall have
to cover, then I fancy that it will be the first thing that Crispin will
look for if he starts in pursuit. We have only to go three miles anyway,
and most of it over the turf of the moor."

"Only three miles?" Harkness asked.

"Yes, I'll tell you about that in a moment. Crispin Senior is pretty
regular in his movements, and just about one o'clock he goes up to his
bedroom at the top of the tower with his two Japs in attendance. That is
the only time of the day or night that one or another of those Japs
isn't hanging about somewhere. They are up there with him on exactly the
opposite side of the house from Hesther's room at just that time. That
leaves only young Crispin. We shall have to chance him, but, according
to Jabez, he has the habit of going to bed between eleven and twelve,
and by one o'clock he ought to be sound asleep.

"However, that is one of the things we ought to look out for, one of the
things indeed that I want your help about. Meanwhile Jabez is patrolling
in the grounds outside."

"Jabez!" Harkness cried, startled.

"Yes, that is our great piece of luck. Crispin has had some fellow of
his own in the grounds all this time, but three nights ago he sent him
up to London on some job and Jabez has taken his place. I don't think he
trusts Jabez altogether, but he trusts the others still less. He is
always cursing the Cornishmen, and they don't love him any the better
for it."

"Well, when you've got safely to your pony cart what happens next?"

"We drive up Shepherd's Lane, down across the moor until we reach the
cliff just above Starling Cove. Here I've got a boat waiting, and we'll
row across that corner of the bay to another cove--Selton--and just
above Selton is Selton Minor where there's a station. At four in the
morning there's the first train, local, to Truro, and at Truro we can
catch the six o'clock to Drymouth. In Drymouth there are an uncle and
aunt of hers--the Bresdins--who have long been fond of her and wanted
her often to stay with them. Stephen Bresdin is a good fellow and will
stand up for her, I know, once she's in his hands. Then we can get the
law to work."

"Won't Crispin be after you before you reach the Truro train?"

"Well, I'm reckoning first that he doesn't discover anything at all
until he wakes in the morning. They are making an early start for London
that day, but he shouldn't be aware of anything until six at least. But
secondly, if he does, I'm calculating that first he'll think she's
catching the three o'clock Treliss to Drymouth, or that she's motored
straight into Truro. If he goes into Truro after her or sends young
Crispin I'm reckoning that he won't have the patience to wait for that
six o'clock or won't imagine that we have, and will be sure that we will
have motored direct into Drymouth.

"He'll post after us there. I don't think he knows about the Bresdins in
Drymouth. He may, but I don't think so. Of course it's all chance, but
I figure that is the best we can do."

"And what's my part in this?" asked Harkness.

"Of course you're not to do a thing more than you want to," said Dunbar.
"But this is where you could be of use. The thing that we're mainly
afraid of is young Crispin. Hesther can get out of her room easily
enough. It is only a short drop on to an outhouse roof, and then a short
drop from there again, but if young Crispin is moving about, coming into
her room and so on, it may be very difficult. What I suggest is that you
stay with the older Crispin looking at his collections and the rest
until half-past twelve or so, then bid him a fond good-night and go.
Wait for a quarter of an hour in the grounds. Jabez will be there, and
then at about a quarter to one he will let you into the house again.
Crispin Senior should be up in the tower by then, but if he isn't you
can pretend that you have lost something, take him back into the small
library where the prints are and keep him well occupied until after one.
If he _has_ gone up to his tower, Hesther will leave a small piece of
white paper under her door _if_ Crispin Junior is in the way and hanging
about. In that case I should knock on his door, apologise, say that you
lost your gold match-box, had to come back for it as they are all
leaving early the next day, think it must be in the small library; he
goes back with you to look for it and--you keep him there. Do you think
you could manage that?"

"I will," said Harkness.

"There's more than that. One of the principal reasons that Hesther
refused to consider any of this was--well, running off alone with me in
the middle of the night. But if you are with us--some one, if I may say
so, so entirely----"

"Respectable," Harkness suggested as Dunbar hesitated.

"Well, yes--if you don't mind that word. It alters everything, don't you
see. Especially as you've never seen me before, aren't in love with her
or anything."

"Exactly," said Harkness gravely.

"There you are. The thing's full of holes. It can fall down in all sorts
of places, and if Crispin catches us and knows what we are up to it
won't be pleasant. But there's nothing else. No other plan that seems
any less dangerous. Are you for it, sir?"

"I'm for it," said Harkness. At that moment the little marble clock
struck the half-hour.

"My God!" Harkness cried, "I should be at the hotel this very minute. If
I miss them there's our plan spoiled."

He gripped Dunbar's hand once and was off.



IX


He went racing through the darkness, the two thoughts changing,
mingling, changing incessantly over and over in his brain--that he must
catch them at the hotel before they left it, and that he loved, he loved
her, he loved her with an intensity that seemed to increase with every
step that he ran.

In some way, although Dunbar had said so little about her, his picture
of her was infinitely clearer and stronger than it had been before. He
saw her in that small village of hers struggling with that drunken
father, with insufficient means, with the individualities and rebellions
of her two brothers who however deeply they loved her (and normal boys
are not conscious of their deep emotions), must have kicked often enough
against the limitations of their conditions, sneering servants, spying
neighbours, jesting and scornful relations, the father in his cups
abusing her, insulting her and for ever complaining--and yet she,
through all of this, showing a spirit, a hardihood, a pluck and, he
suspected, a humour that only this last fatal intercourse with the
Crispin family had broken down.

Harkness was the American man at his simplest and most idealistic, and
than this there is nothing simpler and more idealistic in the whole of
modern civilisation. The Englishman has too much common sense and too
little imagination, the Frenchman is too mercenary, the Southern peoples
too sensuous to provide the modern Quixote. In the United States of
America to-day there are as many Quixotes as there are builders of
windmills to be tilted at--and that is saying much.

So that, with his idealism, his hatred of cruelty and abnormality,
Harkness saw far beyond any personal aggrandisement in this pursuit. He
was not thinking now of himself at all, he had danced himself that night
into a new world.

In the market-place he had to pause for breath. He had run all the way
down the High Street, meeting no one as he went; he had already had
considerable exercise that evening, and he was in no very fine condition
of training. The market-place was quiet enough, only a few stragglers
about; the Town Hall clock told him it was twenty-eight minutes to
eleven.

He started up the hill, he arrived breathless at the hotel gates, the
sweat pouring down his face. He stopped and tried to arrange himself a
little. It would be a funny thing coming in upon them all with his tie
undone and lines of sweat running down his face. But, after all, he
could make the dance account for a good deal. He pushed his stud through
the two ends of his collar and pulled his tie up, finding it difficult
to use his hands because they were so hot, wiped his face with his
handkerchief, pushed his cap straight on his head.

His face wore an expression of grim seriousness as though he were indeed
Sir George off to rescue his Princess from the Dragon.

His heart gave a jump of relief when he saw that the Dragon was still
there, standing quite unconcernedly in the main hall of the hotel, his
son and daughter-in-law quietly beside him. Harkness's first thought at
view of him was that Dunbar's story was built up of imagination. The
little man was standing, a soft felt hat tilted a little on one side of
his head, a dark thin overcoat covering his evening clothes. Because his
hair was covered and his face shaded there was nothing about him that
was at all startling or highly coloured. He simply looked to be a nice
plump little English gentleman who was waiting, a smile on his face, for
his car to arrive that it might take him home. Nor was there anything in
the least exceptional in the pair that stood beside him, the man, thin,
dark, immobile; the girl, her head a little bent, a soft white wrap over
her shoulders, her hands at her side. At once it flashed into Harkness's
brain that all the scene with Dunbar had been imagined; there had been
no "Feathered Duck," no melodramatic story of madness and tyranny, no
twopence-coloured plan for a midnight rescue.

He was about to drive a mile or two to see some beautiful things, to
smoke a good cigar and drink some admirable brandy--then to retire and
sleep the sleep of the divinely worthy.

The girl raised her head. Her eyes met his, and he knew that whatever
else was true or false his love for her was certain and resolved.

Crispin looked extremely pleased to see him. He came towards him smiling
and holding out his hand:

"Why, Mr. Harkness, this is splendid," he said. "We were just wondering
what we should do about you. We were giving you up."

Harkness was conscious that, in spite of his attempts outside, he was
still in considerable disorder. He fingered his collar nervously:

"I'm sorry," he began. "But I'm so glad that I've caught you after all."

"Were the revels in the town amusing?" Crispin asked.

Harkness had a sudden impulse, whence he knew not, to make the younger
Crispin speak.

"Why didn't you come down?" he asked. "You'd have enjoyed it."

The man was astonished at being addressed. He sprang into sudden life
like any Jack-in-the-Box:

"Oh I," he said, "I had to go with my father, you know--yes, to see some
old friends."

He was looking at Harkness as though he were wondering why, exactly, he
had done that.

"Are you still willing to come and see my few things?" Crispin asked.
"It's only half-an-hour's drive and my car will bring you back."

"I shall be delighted to come," Harkness said quickly. "I would have
been deeply disappointed if I had missed you. But you must not think of
sending me back. I shall enjoy the walk greatly."

"Why, of course not!" said Crispin. "Walk back at that time of the
night! I couldn't allow it for a moment."

"But I assure you," Harkness pressed, laughing, "I infinitely prefer it.
You probably imagine that Americans never move a step unless they have a
car to carry them. Not in my case. I won't come if I feel that during
every minute that I am with you I am keeping your chauffeur up."

"Well, well--all right," said Crispin, laughing. "Have it your own way.
You're a very obstinate fellow. Perhaps you will change your mind when
the time really arrives."

They moved out to the doorway, then into the car. Mrs. Crispin sat in
one corner. Harkness was about to pull up the seat opposite, but Crispin
said:

"No, no. Plenty of room on the back for three of us. Herrick doesn't
mind the other seat. He's used to it."

They sat down. Harkness between the elder Crispin and the girl. The
night was black beyond their windows. Crispin pressed the button. The
interior of the car was at once in darkness, and instantly the night was
no longer black but purple and threaded with wisps of grey lavender that
seemed to hold in their spider filigree all the loaded scent of the
summer evening. Again, as the car turned into the long ribbon of the
dark road. Harkness was conscious through the open window of the smell
of innumerable roses, the late evening smell when the heat of the day is
over and the flowers are grateful.

Then a curious thing happened. Through the darkness, Harkness felt one
of the fingers of Crispin's left hand creeping like an insect about his
knee. They were sitting very closely together inside the car's
enclosure. Harkness was conscious that Hesther Crispin was pressed,
almost crouching, against the corner of the car, and although the stuff
of her dress touched him he was aware that she was striving desperately
that he should not be aware of her proximity, and then directly after
that, of why she was so striving--it was because she was
shivering--shivering in little spasms and tremors that shook her from
head to foot--and she was wishing that he should not realise this.

And even as he caught from her the consciousness of her trembling, at
the same moment he was aware of the pressing of Crispin's finger upon
his knee. He was so close to Crispin, and his leg was pushed so firmly
against Crispin's leg, that this movement might have been accidental had
Crispin's whole hand rested there. But there was only the finger, and
soon it began its movement, staying for an instant, pressing through the
cloth on to the bone of the knee, then moving very slowly up the thigh,
the sharp finger-nail suddenly pushing more firmly into the flesh, then
the finger relaxing again and making only a faint tickling creeping
suggestion of a pressure. Half-way up the thigh it stopped; for an
instant the whole hand, soft, warm and boneless, rested on the stuff of
Harkness's trousers, then withdrew, and the fingers, like a cautious
animal, moved on.

When Harkness was first conscious of this he tried to move his knee, but
he was so tightly wedged in that he could not stir. Then he could not
move for another reason, that he was transfixed with apprehension. It
was exactly as though a gigantic hand had slipped forward and enclosed
him in its grasp, congealing him there, stiffening him into helpless
clay--and this was the apprehension of immediate physical pain.

He had known all his days that he was a coward about physical pain, and
that was always the form of human experience that he had shrunk from
observing, compelling himself sometimes because he so deeply hated his
cowardice, to notice, to listen, but suffering after these contacts
acute physical reactions. Only once or twice in his life had pain
actually come to him. He did not mind it so deeply were it part of
illness or natural causes, but the deliberate anticipation of it--the
doctor's "Now look out; I am going to hurt," the dentist's "I may give
you a twinge for a moment," these things froze him with terror. During
the war, when he had offered his service, this was the thing that from
the clammy darkness of the night leapt out upon him. He had done his
utmost to serve at the front, and it was in no way his own fault when he
was given clerical work at home. He had tried again and again, but his
poor sight, his absurd inside that was always wrong in one fashion or
another, these things had held him back--and behind it all was there not
a faint ring of relief, something that he dared not face lest it should
reveal itself as cowardice? There had been times at the dentist's and
one operation. That operation had been a slight one, but it had involved
for several weeks the withdrawing of tubes and the probing with bright
shining instruments. Every morning for several hours before this
withdrawing and probing he lay panting in bed, the beads of sweat
gathering on his forehead, his hands clutching and unclutching, saying
to himself that he did not care, that he was above it, beyond it . . .
but closer and closer and closer the animal came, and soon he was at his
bedside, and soon bending over him, and soon his claws were upon his
flesh and the pain would swoop down, like a cry of a discoverer, and the
voice would be sharper and sharper, the determination not to listen, not
to hear, not to feel weaker and weaker, until at length out it would
come, the defeat, the submission, the scream for pity.

The creeping finger upon his knee had the same sudden warning of
imminent physical peril. The swiftly moving car, the silence, these
things seemed to bear in upon him the urgency of the other--that it was
no longer any game that he was playing but something of the deadliest
earnest. Once again the soft hand closed upon his thigh, then the finger
once more like a creeping animal felt its way. His body was responsive
from head to foot. He was all tingling with apprehension. His hand
resting firmly on his other knee began to tremble. Why was he in this
affair at all? If Crispin were mad, as Dunbar declared, what was to stop
him from taking any revenge he pleased on those who interfered with him?

The tale was no longer one of pleasant romantic colour, the rescuing of
a distressed damsel from an enchanted castle, but rather something quite
real and definite, as real as the car in which they were sitting or the
clothes that they were wearing. He, suddenly feeling that he could
endure it no longer--in another moment he would have cried out
aloud--jerked his knee upwards. The hand vanished, and at the same
moment Crispin's voice said: "We are almost there. We are going through
the gates now."

Lamps flashed upon their faces and Crispin's eyes seemed to have
vanished into his fat white face. He had, in that sudden illumination,
the most curious effect of blindness. His lids were closed over his
eyes, lying like little pieces of pale yellow parchment under the faint
red eyelashes.

"Here we are!" he cried. "Out you get, Herrick." And as Harkness stepped
out of the car something deep within him whispered: "I am going to be
hurt. Pain is coming----"

Before him swung a cavern of light. It swung because on his stepping
from the car he was dizzy, dizzy with a kind of poignant thick scent in
the soul's nostrils, deep deep down as though he were at the edge of
being spiritually anæsthetised. He paused for a moment looking back
into the night piled up behind him.

Then he walked in.



X


It was an old house. The long hall was panelled and hung with the heads
of animals. A torn banner of faded red and yellow with long tassels of
gold hung above the stone fireplace. The floor was of stone, and some
dim rugs of uncertain colour lay like splashes of damp here and there.
The first thing of which he was aware was that a strong cold draught
blew through the hall. It seemed to come from a wide oak staircase on
his right. There were no portraits on the panelled walls. The house gave
a deep sense of emptiness. Two Japanese servants, short, slim, immobile,
their hair gleaming black, their faces impassive, waited. The outer door
closed. The banner fluttered, the only movement in the house.

"Come in here, Mr. Harkness," Crispin said. "It is more comfortable."

His little figure moved forward. Harkness followed him, but he had had
one moment with the girl as he entered the hall. The two Crispins had
been for an instant back by the car. He had said, his lips scarcely
moving:

"I gave him the message. He is coming," and she had answered without
turning her head or looking at him: "Thank you."

Only as he walked after Crispin he wondered whether the Japanese could
have understood. No. He was sure that no one could have heard those
words, but he turned before leaving the hall, and he had a strange
impression of the bare, empty, faded place, the staircase running darkly
up into mystery, and the four figures, the two servants, Hesther and the
younger Crispin, at that moment immobile, waiting as though they were
listening--and for what?

The room into which Crispin led him was even shabbier than the hall. It
was a large ugly place with dim cherry-coloured paper, and a great glass
candelabrum suspended from the ceiling. The walls had, it seemed, once
been covered with pictures of all shapes and sizes, because the
wall-paper showed everywhere pale yellow squares and ovals and lozenges
of colour where the frames had been. The wall-paper had indeed leprosy,
and although there were still some pictures--a large Landseer, an
engraving of a Millais, a shabby oil painting of a green and windy
sea--it was these strange sea-sick evidences of a vanished hand that
invaded the air.

There was very little furniture in the place, two shabby armchairs, a
round shining table, a green sofa. The draught that had swept the hall
crept here, now come now gone, stealing on hands and feet from corner to
corner.

"You see," said Crispin, standing beside the empty fireplace, "I am here
but little. I have pulled down the pictures from the walls and then left
it all shabby. I enjoy the contrast." At the far end of the room were
long oak cupboards. Crispin went to them and pulled back the heavy
doors, and instantly in the shabby place there were blazing such
treasures as Harkness had never set eyes on before.

Not very many as numbers went--some dozen shelves in all--but gleaming,
glittering, shining, flinging out their flashes of purple and amber and
gold, here crystalline, now deeply wine-coloured, pink with the petals
of the rose, white with the purity of the rising moon. There was jewelry
here that seemed to move with its own independent life before Harkness's
eyes--Jaipur enamel of transparent red and green, lovely patterns with
thick long strips of enamel on a ground of bright gold, over which,
while still soft from the furnace, an open-work pattern of gold had been
pressed; large rough turquoises set in silver; Chinese work of carved
ivory and jade, cap ornaments exquisitely worked, a cap of a Chinese
emperor with its embroidered gold dragon and its crown of pearls. Then
the inlaid Chinese feather work, and at the sight of these tears of
pleasure came into Harkness's eyes, cells made as though for cloisonné
enamel, and into these are daintily affixed tiny fragments of
king-fisher feather. Colours of blue, green and mauve here blend and
tone one into another miraculously, and the effect of all is a
glittering sheen of gold and blue. There was one tiny fish, barely half
an inch long, and here there were thirty cells on the body, each with
its separate piece of feather. Chinese enamel buttons and clasps,
nail-guards beautifully ornamented, Japanese hair combs marvellously
wrought in lacquer, horn, gold lac on wood, wood with ivory appliqués,
and stained ivory.

Then the Netsukes! Had any one in the world such lovely things! With the
ivory and its colour richly toned with age, the metal ones showing a
glorious patina. The sword guards--made of various metals and alloys and
gold and silver, the metal so beautifully finished that it had the rich
texture of old lace.

There was then the Renaissance jewelry, pieces lying like fragments of
sky, of peach tree in bloom, of cherry and apple, a lovely pendant
parrot enamelled in natural colours, a beautiful ship pendant of
Venetian workmanship, an Italian earring formed of a large irregular
pear-shaped pearl, in a gold setting a Cinquecento jewel--an emerald
lizard set with a baroque pearl holding an emerald in its mouth.

Eighteenth-century glory. Gold studs with little skeletons on silk,
covered with glass and set in gold. Initials of fine gold with a ground
of plaited hair, this edged with blue and covered with faceted glass on
crystal and the border of garnets. A pair of earrings, paintings in
gouache mounted in gold. A brooch set with garnets. A French vinaigrette
enamelled in panels of green on a gold and white ground.

Loveliest of anything yet seen, a sixteenth-century cameo portrait of
Lucius Verius cut in a dark onyx. The enamel was green with little white
"peas" and small diamonds were set in each pod.

"Ah this!" said Harkness, holding it in his hand. "This is exquisite!"

But Crispin was restless. The eyes closed, the short body moved to
another part of the room leaving all the treasures carelessly exposed
behind him. "That is enough," he said--"enough of those, I bore you. And
now," turning aside with a deprecatory child-like smile, as though he
had been exhibiting his doll's house, "you must see the prints."

Harkness turning back to the room saw it as even shabbier than before.
It was lit by candle-light, and in the centre of the round shining table
there were four tall amber-coloured candlesticks that threw around them
a flickering colour as the draught ruffled their power. To this table
Crispin drew two chairs. Then he went to a handsome old oak cabinet
carved stiffly with flowers and fruit. He stayed looking with a long
lingering glance at the drawers, then sharply up at Harkness. Seen there
in the mellow light, with the coloured glory of the open cabinets dimly
shining in the far room, with the pleasant timid smile that a collector
wears when he is approaching his beloved friends, he might have stood to
Rembrandt for another "Jan Six," short and stumpy though he be.

"Now what will you have? Dürer, Whistlers, Little Masters, Meryons,
Dutch seventeenth century, Callot, Hollar? What you will. . . . No, you
shall have only a few, and those not the most celebrated but perhaps the
best loved. Now, here's for your pleasure. . . ."

He came to the table bearing carefully, reverentially, his treasures. He
set them down. From one after another he withdrew the paper, there
gleaming between the stiff white shining mats they breathed, they lived,
they smiled. There was the Rembrandt "Landscape with a flock of sheep,"
there the Muirhead Bone "Orvieto," the Hollar "Seasons," Callot's
"Passion," Meryon's "College Henri Quatre," Paul Potter's "Two Horses,"
a seascape of Zeeman, Cotman's "Windmill," Bracquemond's "Teal
Alighting," a seascape of Moreau, and Aldegrever's "Labour of Hercules"
to close the list. Not more than thirty in all, but living there on the
table with their personal glow spontaneity. He bent over them caressing
them, fondling them, smiling at them. Harkness drew near and, looking at
the tender wistfulness of the two old Potter's horses, bravely living
out there the last days of their broken forgotten lives, he felt a
sudden friendliness to all the world, a reassurance, a comfort.

Those glittering jewelled things had had at their heart a warning, an
alarm; but no one, he was suddenly aware, who cared for these prints
could be bad. There are no things in the world so kindly, so simple, so
warm in their humanity. . . .

The little man was near to him. He put his hand on his knee.

"They are fine, eh? They know you, recognise you. They are alive, eh?"

"Yes," said Harkness, smiling. "They are the most friendly things in
art."

The door opened and one of the Japanese servants came in with liqueurs.
They were put on the table close to Harkness, and soon he was drinking
the most wonderful brandy that it had ever been his happy fortune to
encounter.

He was warm, cosy, quite unalarmed. The prints smiled at him, the dim
room received him as a friend.

Crispin was talking, leaning back now from the table, his fat body
hugged up like a cushion into his chair.

His red hair stood, flaming, on end. Harkness was, at first, only
vaguely conscious that Crispin was speaking, then the words began to
gather about him, to force their way in upon his brain; then, as the
monologue continued, his comfort, his cosiness, his sense of security
slowly slipped from him. His eyes passed from the "Two Horses" to the
high sharp cliffs of the "Orvieto," to the thick naked Hercules of the
Aldegrever. Then, he was aware that he was frightened, as he had been on
the road, in the hotel, in the car. Then, with a flash of awareness,
like the sharp contact with unexpected steel, he was on his guard as
though he were standing alone with his back to the wall against an army
of terrors.

". . . And so as I like you so much, dear Mr. Harkness, I feel that I
can talk to you freely about these things and that you will understand.
That has always been my trouble--that I have not been understood
sufficiently, and if now I go my own way and have my own fashion of
dealing with life I am sure that it is comprehensible enough.

"I was a very lonely child, Mr. Harkness, and mocked at by every one who
saw me. No, I have not been understood sufficiently. The colour of my
hair has been a barrier. I realise that I am, and always have been,
absurd in appearance, and from the very earliest age I was aware that I
was different from other human beings and must pursue another course
from theirs. I make no complaint about that, but it justifies, I think,
my later conduct."

Here, as though some wire had sprung taut inside him he sat forward
upright in his chair, staring with his little pale eyes at Harkness, and
it was now that Harkness was abruptly aware of his conversation.

"I am not boring you, I trust, but I have taken a sympathetic liking to
you, and it may interest you to understand my somewhat unusual
philosophy of life.

"My mother died when I was very young. My father was a surgeon, a very
wealthy man, money inherited from an uncle. He was a strange man,
peculiar, odd. Cruel to me. Very cruel to me. He hated the sight of me,
and told me once that it was a continual temptation to him to lay hands
on me and cut my heart out--to see, in fact, whether I had a heart. He
liked to torment and tease me, as indeed did every one else. I am not
telling you these things, Mr. Harkness, to rouse your pity, but rather
that you should understand exactly the point at which I have arrived."

"Yes," said Harkness, dragging his eyes with strange difficulty from the
pursed white face, the red hair, and glancing about the dim faded room
and the farther spaces where the jewels flashed in the candle-light.

"Many people would have called my father insane, did not hesitate to do
so. He was a large, extremely powerful man, given to violent tempers.
But, after all, what is insanity? There are cases--many I suppose--where
the brain breaks down and is unable to perform any longer its ordinary
functions, but in most cases insanity is only the name given by envious
persons to those who have strength of character enough to realise their
own ideas regardless of public opinion. Such was my father. He cared
nothing for public opinion. We led a strange life, he and I, in a big
black house in Bloomsbury. Yes, black, that's how it was. I went to
Westminster School, and they all mocked me, my hair, my body, my
difference. Yes, my difference. I was different from them all, different
from my father, different from all the world. And I was glad that I was
different. I hugged my difference. Different. . . ."

He lent forward, tapped Harkness's knee with his hand, staring into his
face.

"Different, Mr. Harkness, different. Different. . . ."

And the long draughty room echoed "Different . . . different . . .
different."

"My father beat me one night terribly, beat me so that I could not move
for pain. For no reason, simply because, he said, he wished that I
should understand life, and first to understand life one must learn to
suffer pain, and that then, if one could suffer pain enough, one could
be as God--perhaps greater than God.

"It was to that night in the Bloomsbury house that I owe everything. I
was fifteen years of age. He stripped me naked and made me bleed. It was
terribly cold, and I came in that bare room right into the very heart of
life, into the heart of the heart, where the true meaning is at last
revealed--and the true meaning----"

He broke off suddenly, then whispered:

"Do you believe in God, Mr. Harkness?" and the draught went whispering
on hands and feet round the room, "Do you believe in God, Mr. Harkness?"

"Yes," said Harkness.

"Yes," said Crispin, in his lovely melodious voice; "but in a good God,
a sweet God, a kind beneficent God. That is no God. God is first cruel,
terrible, lashing, punishing. Then when He has punished enough, and the
victim is in His power, bleeding at His feet, owning Him as Lord and
Master, then He bends down and lifts the wounded brow and kisses the
torn mouth, and in His heart there is a great and mighty triumph. . . .
Even so will I do, even so will I be . . . and greater than God
Himself!"

There was silence in the room. Then he curled up in his chair as he had
done before, and went on with his friendly air:

"Dear Mr. Harkness, it is good indeed of you to listen to me so
patiently. Tell me at once when I bore you. My father died when I was
seventeen and left me all his wealth. He died in a Turkish bath very
suddenly--ill-temper with some casual masseur, I fancy.

"I realised that I had a power. The realisation was very satisfactory to
me. I married and during the three years of my married life I collected
most of the things that I have shown you this evening. I married a woman
whom I was unfortunately unable to make happy. She could have been
happy, I am sure, could she have only understood, a little, the
philosophy that my father had taught me. My father was a very remarkable
man, Mr. Harkness, as perhaps you have perceived, and he had, as I have
told you, shown me the real meaning of this strange life in which we are
forced, against our wills, to take part. It was foolish of my wife not
to benefit by this knowledge. But she did not, and died sooner than I
had anticipated, leaving me one child.

"A widower's life is not a happy one, and you will have undoubtedly
perceived how many widowers marry again."

He paused as though he expected some comment, so Harkness said yes, that
he had perceived it. Crispin sat forward looking at him inquisitively,
and making, with his fingers, a kind of pattern in the air as though he
were tracing there a bar of music.

"Yes. I did not marry again, but rather gave myself up to the
continuation of my father's philosophy. The philosophy of pain as
related to power one might perhaps term it. God--of whose existence no
thinking man can truly permit himself to doubt--have you ever thought,
Mr. Harkness, that the whole of His power is derived from the pain that
He inflicts upon those less powerful than Himself? We conceive of Him as
a beneficent Being, and from that it follows that He must have
determined that pain is, from Him, our greatest beneficence. It is
plainly for our good that He torments us. Should not then we, in our
turn, realising that pain is our greatest happiness, seek, ourselves,
for more pain, and also teach our fellow human beings that it is only
_through_ pain that we can reach the true heart and meaning of life?
Through Pain we reach Power.

"I test you with pain, and as you overcome the pain so do you climb up
beside me, who have also overcome it, and we are in time as gods knowing
good and evil. . . . A concrete case, Mr. Harkness. I slash your face
with a knife. You are so powerful that you take the pain, twist it in
your hand and throw it away. You rise up to me, and suddenly I, who have
inflicted the pain on you, love you because you have taken my power over
you and used it for your soul's advantage."

"And do I love you because you have slashed my face?" asked Harkness.

Crispin's eyes narrowed. He put out his hand and laid it on Harkness's
knee.

"We would have to see," Crispin murmured. "We would have to see. I
wonder--I wonder...."

They were silent. Harkness's body was cold, but the room was very hot.
The candles seemed to throw out a metallic radiant heat. Harkness moved
his knee.

"It would not do to prove your theory too frequently," he said at last.

"No, no, of course it would not. It is, you understand, only a theory
that I have inherited from my father. Yes. But I will confess that when
an individuality comes close to me and remains entirely outside my
influence I am tempted to wonder. . . . Well, to speculate. . . . I like
to see how far one personality _will_ surrender to another. It is
interesting--simply as a speculation. For instance, you have noticed my
daughter-in-law?"

"Yes," said Harkness, "I have. A charming girl."

"Charming. Exactly. But independent, refusing to make the most of the
advantages that are open to her. Like my poor late wife, for instance.
Unfortunate, because she is young and might benefit so much from my
older and more experienced brain.

"But she refuses to come under my influence, remains severely outside
it. Now, my son is almost too willing to understand my meaning. Were I
to plunge a knife into his arm no blood would flow. I am speaking
metaphorically of course. After a very slight training in his early
youth he was all that I could wish. But too submissive--oh yes,
altogether too submissive.

"His wife's independence, however, is quite of another kind. It might
almost seem as though during these last weeks she had taken a dislike
both to myself and my son. However, she is very young and a little time
will alter that, I have no doubt. Especially as we shall be in foreign
countries and to some extent alone by ourselves."

Harkness pressed his hands tightly together. A little shiver ran, as
though it responded to the draught that blew through the room, up and
down his body. He was anxious that Crispin should not notice that he was
shivering.

"Have you any idea where you will go?" he asked--and his voice sounded
strangely unlike his own, as though some third person were in the room
and speaking just behind him.

"We have no idea," said Crispin, smiling. "That will depend on many
things. On Mrs. Crispin herself of course amongst others. A young wife
must not show too complete an independence. After all, there are others
whose feelings must be considered----" He was smiling as it were to
himself and as though his thoughts were pleasant ones.

Suddenly he sprang up and began to walk the room. The effect on Harkness
was strange--it was as though he were suddenly shut in there with an
animal. So often in zoological gardens he had seen that haunting
monotonous movement, that encounter with the bars of the cage and the
indifferent acceptance of their inevitability, indifferent only because
of endless repetition. Crispin, padding now up and down the long room,
reminded Harkness of one of the smaller animals, the little jaguars, the
half-wolf, half-fox; his head forward, his hands crossed behind his
short thick back, his eyes, restless now, moving here, there about the
room, his movements soft, almost furtive, every instinct towards escape.
As he moved in the room half-clouded with light, the soft resolute step
pervaded Harkness's sense, and soon the thick confined scent of a caged
animal seemed to creep up to his nostrils and linger there.

Furry--captive--danger hanging behind the plodding step, so that if a
sudden release were to come. . . . And he sat there fixed in his seat as
though nailed to it while the sweet voice continued: "And so, my dear
Mr. Harkness, I have devoted my later years to the solution of this
problem.

"I feel, if I may say so, without too much arrogance, that I am
intending to help poor human nature along the road to a better
understanding of life. Poor, muddled human nature. Defeated always by
Fear. Yes, Fear. And if they have surmounted Pain and stand with their
foot on its body, what remains? It is gone, vanished. I myself am
increasing my power every day. First one, then another. First through
Pain. Then through Love. I love all the world, yes, everything in it,
but first it must be taught, and it is so reluctant--so strangely
reluctant--to receive its teaching. And I myself suffer because I am too
tender-hearted. I should myself be superior to the suffering of others
because I know how good it is for them to suffer. But I am not. Alas,
no. It is only where my indignation is aroused, and aroused justly, that
I can conquer my tenderness, and then--well then . . . I can make my
important experiments. My daughter-in-law, for instance. . . ."

He paused, not far from Harkness, and once again his hands made a
curious motion in the air as though he were transcribing a bar of music.
He stepped close to Harkness. His breath, scented curiously with a faint
odour of orange, was in Harkness's face. He leaned forward, his hands
were on Harkness's shoulders.

"For instance, I have taken a fancy to you, my friend. A real fancy. I
liked you from the first moment that I saw you. I don't know when, so
suddenly, I have taken a fancy to any one. But to care for you deeply,
first--yes, first--I would show you the meaning of pain. . . ." Here his
body suddenly quivered from the feet to the head. ". . . And I could
not, liking you so much, do that unless you were seriously to annoy me,
interfere in any way with my simple plans"--the hands pressed deeply
into the shoulders--"yes, only then could we come really to know one
another . . . after such a crisis what friends we might be, sharing our
power together! What friends! Dear me! Dear me!"

He moved away, turning to the table, looking down on the prints that
were spread out there.

"Yes, yes, I could show you then my power." His voice vibrated with
sudden excitement. "You think me absurd. Yes, yes, you do. You do. Don't
deny it now. As though I couldn't perceive it. Do you think me so
stupid? Absurd, with my ridiculous hair, my ugly body. Oh! I know! You
can't hide it from me. You laugh like the rest. Secretly, you laugh. You
are smiling behind your hand. Well, smile then, but how foolish of you
to be so taken in by physical appearances. Do you know my power? Do you
know what I could do to you now by merely clapping my hands?

"If my fingers were at your throat, at your breast, and you could not
move but must wait my wish, my plan for you, would you think me then so
absurd, my figure, my hair, ridiculous? You would be as though in the
hands of a god. I should be as a god to you to do with you what I
wished. . . .

"What is there that is so beautiful that I, ugly as I am, cannot do as I
wish with it? This----" Suddenly he took up the "Orvieto" and held it
forward under the candle-light. "This is one of the most beautiful things
of its kind that man has ever made, and I--am I not one of the ugliest
human beings at whom men laugh?--well, would you see my power over it? I
have it in my hands. It is mine. It is mine. I can destroy it in one
instant----"

The beautiful thing shook in his hand. To Harkness it seemed suddenly to
be endued with a human vitality. He saw it--the high sharp razor-edged
rocks, the town so confidingly resting on that strength, all the daily
life at the foot, the oxen, the peasants, the lovely flame-like trees,
the shining reaches of valley beyond, all radiating the heat of that
Italian summer.

He sprang to his feet. "Don't touch it!" he cried. "Leave it! Leave it!"

Crispin tore it into a thousand pieces, wrenching it, snapping at it
with his fingers like an animal. The pieces flaked the air. A white
shower circled in the candle-light then scattered about the table, about
the floor.

Something died.

A clock somewhere struck half-past twelve.

Crispin moved from the table. Very gently, almost beseechingly, he
looked into Harkness's face.

"Forgive me my little game," he said. "It is all part of my theory. To
be above these things, you know. What would happen to me if I
surrendered to all that beauty?"

The eyes that looked into Harkness's face were pathetic, caged, wistful,
longing. And they were mad. Somewhere deep within him his soul, caught
in the wreckage of his bodily life like a human being pinned beneath a
ruined train, besought--yes, besought Harkness for deliverance.

But he had no thought at that moment of anything but his own escape. To
flee from that room--from that room at any cost! He said something.
Crispin did not try to keep him. They moved together into the hall.

"And you won't allow my chauffeur to drive you back?"

"No, no thank you, I shall love the walk."

"Well, well. It has been delightful. We shall meet some day again I have
no doubt. . . ."

Silence flooded the house. Once more Harkness's hand touched that other
soft one. The door was open. The lovely night air brushed his face, and
he had stepped into the dim star-drenched garden. The door closed.



PART III: THE SEA-FOG



I


In the garden the silence was like a warning, as though the night had
her finger to her lips holding back a multitude of breathing, deeply
interested spectators.

Harkness, slipping from the path on to the lawn, felt a relief, as
though with the touch of his foot on the cool turf there had come a
freedom from imprisonment.

The garden was so friendly, so safe, so homely in its welcome. The scent
of roses that had seemed to follow him throughout the adventures of that
queer evening came to him now as though crowding up to reassure him. The
night sky pierced with stars, but they were thick and dim seen through a
veil of mist. The trees of the garden, like serried ranks of giants in
black armour, seemed to stand, in silent attention, on every side of
him, awaiting his orders. The voice of all this world was the sea
stirring, with a sigh and a whisper, below the wall of rock.

His first impulse as he stood on the lawn was to go away as far as he
could from that house. Yes, as far as ever he could--miles and miles and
miles--China if you like. Ah, no! That was just where that man would be!

He was trembling and shaking and wiping his forehead with his
handkerchief; the breeze stroked him with cool fingers. He must run for
ever to be clear of that house--and then suddenly remembered that he
must not run because he had his duty to do--and even as he remembered
that a figure stepped up to him out of the trees. He would have called
out--so wild and trembling were his nerves--had he not at once
recognized from his great size that this was Jabez the fisherman.

He might have been an incarnation of the night with his deep black
beard, his grave kindly face, and his simple, natural quiet. He was
dressed in his fisherman's jersey and blue trousers and had no covering
on his head.

"Good evening, sir," he said. "Mr. Dunbar told me as how you'd be
wanting to be back in the house for a moment to fetch something you'd
forgotten.

"We'd best be just stepping off the lawn, sir, if you don't mind. They
foreigners are always nosing around."

They turned quietly off the grass and stood closely together under the
dark shadow of the house.

"I must go back at once," said Harkness. "There's no time to lose. It
struck half-past twelve some time ago."

"I don't know nothing about that, sir," said Jabez; "I only know as how
you must be going back into the house for something you'd forgotten and
I was to let you in."

"Yes," said Harkness, his teeth chattering, "that's right."

He wasn't made, in any kind of way at all, for this sort of adventure.
He had never before realised how utterly inefficient he was. And of all
absurdities to go back into the house when he was now safely out of it!
Of all Dunbar's mad plan this was the maddest part. What could he do but
be seen or heard and then rouse suspicion when it might so easily have
been undisturbed?

Let Crispin find him groping among those dark passages and what was his
fate likely to be? There flashed into his consciousness then a sudden
suspicion of Dunbar. It might suit the boy's plans only too well that he
should be found, and so turn attention to another part of the house,
leaving the girl free. But no! There was Dunbar's own steady clear gaze
to answer him, and beyond that the certainty that Crispin's suspicions,
roused by the discovery of himself, would proceed immediately to the
girl.

No, did he return at once, the plan was quite feasible. Seeing him there
so soon after his departure, they could do nothing but accept his
reasons, and that especially if he returned quite openly with no thought
of concealment.

But oh how he hated to go back! He put his hand on the rough stuff of
Jabez's jersey, listened for a moment to the regular, consoling
breathing of the sea, sniffed the roses and the cool, gentle night air,
then said:

"Well, come along, Jabez; show me how to get back."

As they moved round to the door the thought came to him as to whether he
had given the elder Crispin and his two nasty servants time enough to
retire up to their part of the house. A difficult thing that, to hit the
precise medium between too lengthy a wait and too short. He could not
remember exactly what Dunbar had said as to that.

"Do you think I've waited long enough, Jabez?" he asked.

"Well, if you'd forgotten something, sir," said Jabez, "you'd want to be
sure of finding it before the house is sleeping. They don't bolt this
door, sir," he continued in a whisper, "because Mr. Crispin don't like
to be bolted in. His fancy. After half-past one or so one of they Japs
is around. It's just their hour like from half-past twelve to half-past
one that I have to watch this part of the house extra careful. Yes,
sir," he added as he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door
quietly open.



II


The hall was very dark. From half-way up the staircase some of the
starlit evening scattered mistily through a narrow window, splintering
the boards with spars of pale milky shadow.

A clock chattered cluck-cluck-spin-spin-cluck close to Harkness's ear.
Otherwise there was not a sound anywhere. He reflected that several
things had been forgotten in his talk with Dunbar; one that there would,
in all probability, be no light in the upper passage. How was he then to
find the younger Crispin's door, or to see whether or no there were that
piece of paper under Mrs. Crispin's? Secondly, it would be in the room
on the ground floor where he had had his strange interview with the
elder Crispin that he must see the younger, because, of course, that
gloomy creature, dumb though he appeared to be, would be at least aware
that Harkness had never ventured into the upper floor at all and could
not therefore have left his gold match-box there. On the whole, this
would be the better for Dunbar's plan, because it would lead the younger
Crispin all the farther from his wife's door. But there were, at this
point, so many dangers and difficulties, so many opportunities of
disaster, that in absolute desperation he must perforce go forward.

He was aware that for himself now the easiest fashion would be to
persuade himself that he had indeed lost his match-box and was returning
to secure it. He hesitated on the bottom step of the stairs as though he
were wondering what he ought to do, how he might find the tiresome thing
without rousing the whole house.

He climbed the staircase slowly, walking softly, but not too softly,
accompanied all the way by the clock that attended him like a faithful
coughing dog. At the turn of the stairs he found the passage that Dunbar
had described to him, and he was instantly relieved to find that a wide
and deep window at the far end had no curtain, and that through it the
long stretch was suffused with a pale ghostly light turning the heavy
old frames, the faded green paper, into shadow opaque.

He hesitated, looking about him, then clearly saw the two doors that
must be those of Crispin and his wife; from under one of them, quite
clearly, a small piece of white paper obtruded.

He waited an instant, then moved boldly forward, not trying to walk
softly, and knocked on the nearer of the two doors. There was a moment's
pause, during which the wild beating of his own heart and the friendly
chatter of the clock from downstairs seemed to strive together to break
the silence.

The door opened abruptly, and the younger Crispin, his white horse-face
unmoved above his dark evening clothes, appeared there.

"I really must beg your pardon," Harkness said, smiling. "A most
ridiculous thing has happened. I left the house some ten minutes ago
after wishing your father good-night, and it was only after going a
little way that I discovered that I had lost a gold match-box of mine
that was of very great value to me. I hesitated as to what I ought to
do. I guess I should have gone straight back to my hotel, but it worried
me to think of losing it. It has some very intimate connections for me.
And I knew, you see, that you were leaving early to-morrow morning--or
_this_ morning as it is by this time, I fancy. So that it was now or
never for my match-box. I came back very reluctantly, I can assure you,
Mr. Crispin. I do feel this to be an intrusion. I had hoped that your
father would still be about, and that I should simply ask him to give me
a light in the room where we were sitting. In a moment I am sure that we
would find the thing. Your night porter very kindly let me in, but
although I had only been gone ten minutes the house was dark and there
was no one about. I would have left again, but I tell you frankly I
couldn't bear to leave the thing. I saw a light behind your door, and
knew that some one at any rate had not gone to bed. The whole thing has
been unpardonable. But just lend me a candle, and in five minutes I
shall have found it."

"I will go down with you myself," said Crispin, staring at Harkness as
though he had never seen him before.

"That's mighty fine of you. Thank you."

But still Crispin did not move, his eyes fixed on Harkness's face. The
eyes moved. They fell, and it seemed to Harkness that they were staring
at the small piece of paper underneath the next door. Crispin looked,
then without another word went back into his room, closing the door
behind him.

Harkness's heart stopped; the floor pitched and heaved beneath his feet.
It was all over already, then: young Crispin was now in his wife's room,
had discovered her, in all probability, in the very act of escaping. In
another moment the house would be aroused.

He prepared himself for what might come, standing back against the wall,
his hands spread palm-wise against the paper as though he would hold
himself up.

Truly he was shaking at the knees: he could see nothing, only that
possibility of being once again in the presence of the elder Crispin, of
hearing again that sweet voice, of feeling once more the touch of those
boneless fingers, of seeing for another time those mad beseeching eyes.
His tongue was dry in his throat. Yes, he was afraid, more utterly
afraid than he would have fancied it possible for a grown man ever to
be. . . .

The door opened. Crispin appeared holding in his hand a lighted candle.

"Now, let us go down," he said quietly.

The relief was so great that Harkness began to babble, "You have no
idea . . . the trouble I am causing you. . . . At this late
hour. . . . What must you think . . .?"

The young man said nothing. Harkness meekly followed, the candle-light
splashing the walls and floor with its wavering shadows. Their heads
were gigantic on the faded wall-paper, and Harkness had a sudden fancy
that the shadows here were the realities and he a mist. The younger
Crispin gave that sense of unreality.

A kind of weariness went with him as though he were the personification
of a strangled yawn. And yet beneath the weariness and indifference
there was a flame burning. One realised it in that strange absorbed
stare of the eyes, in a kind of determination in the movements, in a
concentrated indifference to any motive of life but the intended one.
Harkness was to realise this with a start of alarmed surprise when, once
more in the long shabby room lit only by the light of one uncertain
candle, young Crispin turned upon him and shot out at him in his harsh
rasping voice:

"What are you here for?"

They were standing one on either side of the table, and between them on
the floor were the white scattered fragments of the torn "Orvieto."

"I told you," said Harkness. "I left my match-box. I won't keep you a
moment if you'll allow me to take that candle----"

"No, no," said the other impatiently, "I don't mean that. What do I care
for your match-box? You are worrying my father. I must beg you, very
seriously, never to come near him again."

"Indeed," said Harkness, laughing, "I don't understand you. How could I
worry your father? I have never seen him in my life before this evening.
He invited me out here for an hour's chat. I am going now. He is leaving
for abroad to-morrow. I don't suppose that we shall ever meet again.
Please allow me just to find my match-box and go."

But Crispin had apparently heard nothing. He stood, his hand tapping the
table.

"I don't wish to appear rude, Mr.--Mr.----"

"Harkness is my name," Harkness said.

"I beg your pardon. I didn't catch it when my father introduced me this
evening. I don't want to seem offensive in any way. I simply thought
this a good opportunity for a few words that may help you to understand
the situation.

"My father is my chief care, Mr. Harkness. He is everything to me in the
world. He has no one to look after him but myself. He is, as you must
have seen, very nervous and susceptible to different personalities. I
could see at once to-night that your personality is one that would have
a very disturbing effect on him. He does not recognise these things
himself, and so I have to protect him. I beg you to leave him alone."

"But really," Harkness cried, "the boot's on the other leg. Your father
has been very charming in showing me his lovely things, but it was he
who sought me out, not I him. I haven't the least desire to push my
acquaintance with him, or indeed with yourself, any further."

Crispin's cold eyes regarded Harkness steadily, then he moved round the
table until he was close beside him.

"I will tell you something, Mr.--ah--Harkness--something that probably
you do not know. There have been one or two persons as foolish and
interfering as to suggest that my father is not in complete control of
his faculties, even that he is dangerous to the public peace. My father
is an original mind. There is no one like him in this whole world, no
one who has the good of the human race at heart as he has. He goes his
own way, and at times has pursued certain experiments that were
necessary for the development of his general plan. He was the judge of
their true necessity and he has had the courage of his opinions--hence
the inquisitive meddlesomeness of certain people." He paused, then
added:

"If you have come here with any idea, Mr.--Mr.--Harkness, of interfering
with my father's liberty, I warn you that one visit is enough. It will
be dangerous for you to make another."

Harkness's temper, so seldom at his command when he needed it, now
happily flamed up.

"Are you trying to insult me, Mr. Crispin?" he asked. "It looks mighty
like it. Let me tell you once again, and really now for the last time,
that I am an American travelling for pleasure in Cornwall, that I had
never heard of your father before this evening, that he spoke to me
first and asked me to dine with him, and that he invited me here. I am
not in the habit of spying on anybody. I would be greatly obliged if you
would allow me to look for my match-box and depart. I am not likely to
disturb you again."

But this show of force did not disturb young Crispin in the least. He
stood there as though he were a wax model for evening clothes in a
tailor's window, his black hair had just that wig-like sleekness, his
face that waxen pallor, his body that wooden patience.

"My father is everything to me," he said simply. "If my father died I
should die too. Life would simply come to an end for me. I am of no
importance to my father. He is frequently irritated by my stupidity.
That is natural--but I am there to protect him, and protect him I will.
We have been really driven from place to place, Mr. Harkness, during the
last year by the ridiculous ignorant superstitions of local gossip.
Great men always seem odd to their inferiors, and my father seems odd to
a number of people, but I warn them all that any spying, asking of
questions, and the like, is dangerous. We know how to protect
ourselves."

His eyes suddenly fell on the fragments of the "Orvieto." He bent down
and picked some of them up. A look of true human anxiety and distress
crept into his queer fish-like eyes that gave him a new air and colour.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" he said. "Did he do this while you were with him?"

"Yes," said Harkness, "he did."

"Ah! it was one of his favourites. He must have been in great distress.
This only confirms what I said to you just now about disturbing him. I
beg you to go--now, at once, immediately--and never, never return. It is
so bad for my father to be disturbed. He has so excitable a temperament.
Please, please leave at once----"

"But my match-box," said Harkness.

"Give me your London address. I promise you that it shall be forwarded
to you." He held the candle high and swept the room with it, the sudden
shadows playing on the walls, like a troop of dancing scarecrows. "You
don't see it anywhere?"

Harkness looked about him, then up at the face of the chattering clock.
Time enough had elapsed. She was safe away by now.

"Very well, then," he said. "I will give you my address. Here is my
card."

Young Crispin, who seemed in great agitation and, under this emotion, a
new and different human being from anything that Harkness had believed
to be possible, took the card, and with the candle moved into the hall.

He turned the key, opened the door, and the night air rushed in blowing
the flame.

"I wish you good-night," he said, holding out his hand.

Harkness touched it--it was cold and hard--bowed, said: "I must
apologise again for disturbing you. I would only reassure you that it is
for the last time."

Both bowed. The door closed, and Harkness was once again in the garden.



III


Jabez was waiting for him. They were both in the shadow; beyond them the
lawn was scattered with star-dust mist as though sewn with immortal
daisies; the stars above were veiled. The world was so still that it
seemed to march forward with the rhythm of the sea, that could be heard
stamping now like a whole army of marching men.

"They are waiting for you, sir," Jabez whispered. "I was terrible feared
you'd be too long in there."

They moved, keeping to the shadows, and reached the path that led to the
door in the wall. Here their feet crunched on the gravel, and every step
was an agony of anticipated alarm. It seemed to Harkness that the house
sprang into life, that lights jumped in the windows, figures passed to
and fro, but he dared not look back, and then Jabez's hand was on the
door, he was through and out safely in the wide free road.

Then, for an instant, he did look back, and there the house was, dark,
motionless, rising out of the trees like part of the rock on which it
was built, the high tower climbing pale in the mist above it.

Only an instant's glimpse, because there was the jingle, the pony,
Dunbar and the girl. An absurd emotion took possession of him at the
sight of them. He had been through a good deal that evening, and the
picture of them, safe, honest, sane, after the house and the company
that he had left, came with the breeze from the sea reassuring him of
normality and youth.

Jabez, too, standing over them like a protective deity. His whole heart
warmed to the man, and he vowed that in the morning he would do
something for him that would give him security for the rest of his days.
There was something in the patient, statuesque simplicity of that giant
figure that he was never afterwards to forget.

But he had little time to think of anything. He had climbed into the
jingle, and without a word exchanged between any of them they were off,
turning at once away from the road to the right over a turfy path that
led to the Downs.

Dunbar, who had the reins, spoke at last.

"My God," he said, "I thought you were never coming."

"I had a queer time," Harkness answered, whispering because he was still
under the obsession of his escape from the house. "You must remember
that I'm not accustomed to such adventures. I've never had such an odd
two hours before, and I shouldn't think that I'm ever likely to have
such another again."

They all clustered together as though to assure one another of their
happiness at their escape. The strong tang now of the sea in their
faces, the freshness of the wide open sky, the spring of the turf
beneath the jingle's wheels, all spoke to them of their freedom. They
were so happy that, had they dared, they would have sung aloud.

But Harkness now was conscious only of one thing, that Hesther Crispin,
a black shawl over her head, only the outline of her figure to be seen
against the blue night, was pressed close to him. Her hand touched his
knee, the strands of her hair, escaping the shawl, blew close to his
face, he could feel the beating of her heart. An ecstasy seized him at
the sense of her closeness. Whatever was to come of that night, at least
this he had--his perfect hour. The elder Crispin and his madness, the
younger and his strangeness, the dim faded house, the jewels and the
torn "Orvieto," the mad talk, all these vanished into unreality, and,
curiously, this ride was joined directly to the dance around the town as
though no other events had intervened.

Then he had won his freedom, this sanctified it. Then he had felt his
common humanity with all life, now he knew his own passionate share of
it.

He wanted nothing for himself but this, that, like Browning's strong
peasant, he might serve his duchess, at the last receiving his white
rose and watching her vanish into her own magical kingdom. A romantic,
idealistic American, as has been already declared in this history; but
ten hours ago both romance and idealism were theoretic, now they were
pulsing, living things.

"Hesther's the one for my money," Dunbar said, some of his happiness at
their safety ringing through his voice. "You should have seen her climb
out of that window. She landed on the roof of that tool-house so lightly
that not a mouse could have heard her. And then she swung down the pipe
like a monkey. Tell me how you managed with friend Crispin."

"It wasn't difficult," Harkness answered. "He went with me to that long
room downstairs like a lamb. He told me that he had been wanting to
speak with me to tell me that I was bothering his father and must keep
away."

"That you were bothering his father?"

"Yes. He---- Wait. Do you hear any one coming?"

They listened. The ramp-ramp of the sea was now very loud. They had come
nearly two miles on the soft track across the Downs. They stayed
listening, staring into the distance. There was no sound but the sea.
Then a bell ringing mournfully, regretfully, through the air.

"That's the Liddon," said Dunbar. "We must be nearly at our cottage. But
I don't hear anything. Unless they saw the jingle they never would think
of this. Our only danger was the younger Crispin going into Hesther's
room after he left you. I believe we're safe."

They stayed there listening. Very strange in that wide expanse, with
only the bell for their company. They drove on a little way, and a
building loomed up. This was a deserted cottage, simply the four walls
standing.

"I'm to tie the pony to this," Dunbar said. "Jabez will fetch it in the
morning."

They climbed out of the jingle and waited while the pony was tied.
Having done it, Dunbar raised his head sniffing the air.

"I say, don't you think the mist's coming up a bit? It won't do if it
gets too thick. We'll have difficulty in finding the Cove."

It was true. The mist was spreading like very thin smoky glass. The pony
was etherealised, the cottage a ghostly cottage.

"Well, come on," Dunbar said. "We haven't a great deal of time, but the
Cove's only a step of the way. Along here to the right."

He led, the others followed. Hesther had hitherto said nothing. Now she
looked up at Harkness. "Thank you for helping us. It was generous of
you."

He couldn't see her face. He touched her hand with his for a moment.

"I guess that was the least any one could do," he said.

"Oh, I'm so glad it's over!" She gave a little shiver. "To be out here
free after those weeks, after that house--you don't know, you don't know
what that was."

"I can pretty well imagine," Harkness answered grimly, "from the hour or
two I spent in your father-in-law's company. But don't let's talk about
it just now. Afterwards we'll tell each other all our adventures."

"Isn't it strange," she said simply, "we've only exchanged a word or
two, we never knew one another before this evening, and yet we're like
old friends? Isn't it pleasant?"

"Very pleasant," he answered. "We must always be friends."

"Yes, always," she said.

They were standing close to the broken wall of the cottage. It had a
wonderfully romantic air in the night air. It was so lonely, and so
independent as well. The storms that must beat around it on wild nights,
the screams of the birds, the battering roar of the waves, and then to
sink into that silence with only the voice of the bell for its company.
But Dunbar was no poet--a ruined cottage was a ruined cottage to him.

"I don't like this mist," he said. "It's made me a little uncertain of
my bearings. I wonder if you'd mind, Hesther, waiting here for five
minutes while I go and see----"

"Oh no, we'll all stick together," she interrupted. "Why should we
separate? Why, I'm more sure-footed than you are, David. You're trying
to mother me again."

"No, I'm not," he answered doggedly; "but I'm really not quite sure of
the way down, and if we got in a mess half way it would be much worse
your being there. Really these paths can be awfully nasty. I want to be
_sure_ of my way before you come--really Hesther----"

She saw that it was important to him. She laughed.

"It's stupid, when I'm a better climber than you are. But if you like
it--you're the commander of this expedition."

She seated herself on a stone near the pony. The two men walked off. The
sea mist was very faint, blowing in little wisps like tattered lawn, not
obscuring anything but rendering the whole scene ethereal and unreal.

Suddenly, however, as though out of friendly interest, the stars, that
had been quite obscured, again appeared, twinkling, humorous eyes
looking down over the wall of heaven.

"We should be all right," Dunbar said as the two men set off; "we are up
to time. The boat is bound to be there. It's lucky the fog hasn't come.
That's a contingency I never thought of. The path down to the Cove is
off here, to the right of the cottage somewhere. I've studied every inch
of the country round here."

The path appeared. "Tell me, did you have a queer time with Crispin--the
elder one, I mean?"

"I've never had so strange a conversation with any one," said Harkness.
"Madness is a queer thing when you are in actual contact with it,
because we have, every one of us, enough madness in ourselves to wonder
whether some one else _is_ so mad after all. He talked the most awful
nonsense, and _dangerous_ nonsense too, but there was a kind of theory
behind it, something that almost held it all together. A sort of pathos
too, so that you felt, in spite of yourself, sorry for the man."

But Dunbar was no analyser of human motives. He despised fine shades,
and was a man of action. "Sorry for him! Just about as sorry as you are
for a spider that is spinning a nest in your clothes cupboard. Sorry! He
wants crushing under foot like a white slug, and that he'll get before
I've finished with him. Why, man, he's murderous! He loves torture and
slow fire like the old Spaniards in the Inquisition. There's so little
to catch on to--that's the trouble; but I bet that if he had caught us
helping Hesther out of that house to-night there would be something to
catch on to! Why, if we were to fall into his hands now! Ugh! it doesn't
bear thinking of!"

"Oh yes, of course," Harkness agreed. "He's dangerously mad. He'll be in
an asylum before many days are out. If ever I have been justified in any
action of my life it has been this, in helping that poor girl out of the
hands of those two men. All the same . . . oh! it's sad, Dunbar! There
is something so tragic in madness, whether it's dangerous or
no--something captive, like a bird in a cage, and something common to us
all. . . ."

"Well, if you think that the kind of things that Crispin Senior is after
are common to us all you must have a pretty low view of humanity. The
beastly swine! Something pathetic? Why, you're a curious fellow,
Harkness, to feel pathos in that situation."

"You may hate it and detest it, you _must_ confine it because it's
dangerous to the community, but you can pity it all the same. His
eyes--that longing to escape."

But Dunbar had found the cleft. They were now right above the sea.
Although there was so slight a wind, the waves were breaking noisily on
the shore. The stars had gone again, but the edge of the cliff was
clear, and far below it a thin line of ragged white leapt to the eye,
vanished, and leapt again.

"Here's the path down," said Dunbar. "There isn't much light, but
enough, I fancy. We'll both go down so that we can be sure of our way
when we come back with Hesther, and we may be both needed to help her.
The path's all right, though. It's slippery after wet weather, but
there's been no rain for days. Can you make it out clearly enough?"

"Yes," Harkness said, but he felt anything but happy. Of all the things
that he had done that evening this was the one that he liked least. He
had a very poor head for heights, growing dizzy under any provocation;
the angry snarl of the sea bewildered him, and little breaths of vapour
curled about him changing from moment to moment the form and shape of
the scene. He would have liked to suggest to Dunbar that there was no
need for him to go down this first time, but, coward though he might be,
he had come down to Treliss to beat that cowardice.

Certainly the adventures of that night were giving him every
opportunity. He went to the edge and looked over. The sea banged up to
him, and the grey curved shadow of the Cove seemed to be miles below
him. The little path ran on the edge of the cliff between two
precipitous slopes, and its downward curve was sharp.

He pulled himself together, thinking of Hesther waiting there by the
cottage alone. Dunbar had already started; he followed.

When he had gone a little way his knees began to wobble, his legs taking
on a strange life of their own. His imagination had all his days been
dangerous for him in any crisis, because he always saw more than was
truly there: now the sea breeze blew on either side of him, the path was
so narrow that there was not room to plant his two feet at the same
time, the dim shadow light confused his eyes and the roar of the sea
leapt at him like a wild animal.

However he pressed forward, looking neither to right nor to left, and,
with what thankfulness, he felt the wet sand yield beneath him and saw
the boat drawn up under an overhanging rock only a few feet away from
him!

"There it is," said Dunbar, eyeing the boat with intense satisfaction.
"Now I think we're all right. I don't see what's going to stop us. We'll
be across there in half an hour and then have a good hour before the
train." He held out his hand.

"Harkness, I simply can't tell you what I think of your doing all this
for us. Coming down here just to have a holiday, and then taking all
these risks for people you'd never seen before. It's fine of you and
I'll never forget it."

"It's nothing at all," said Harkness, blushing, as he always did when
himself was at all in discussion. "As a matter of fact, I've had what
has been, I suppose, the most interesting evening of my life, and I
daresay it isn't all over yet."

"There's not much fear of their catching us now," said Dunbar; "but
you've been in more real actual danger than you imagine. As I said just
now, anything might have happened to us if he had caught us. You don't
know how remote that house is. He could do what he pleased without any
one being the wiser, and be off in the morning leaving our corpses
behind him. The only servants in that house are those two Japs."

"There's Jabez," said Harkness.

"Jabez is outside and is only temporary. He wouldn't have stayed after
to-morrow anyway. He hates the man. Fine fellow, Jabez. I don't know how
I would have managed this affair without him. He fell in love with
Hesther. He'd do anything for her. And then like the rest of the
neighbourhood he detested the Japanese.

"They are funny conservative people these Cornishmen. Whatever they may
pretend, they've no use for foreigners and especially foreigners like
Crispin."

They stood a moment listening to the sea.

"The tide's going out," said Dunbar. "I was a little anxious lest I'd
pulled the boat up high enough this afternoon, and then, of course, some
one might have come along and taken a fancy to it. However, I was pretty
safe. No one ever comes down into this cove. But we've taken a lot of
chances to-night and everything's come off. The Lord's on our side--as
He well may be considering the kind of characters the Crispins have."

He looked at Harkness. "Hullo, you're shivering. Are you cold?"

"No," said Harkness, "I suddenly got the creeps. Some one walking over
my grave, I suppose. I feel as though Crispin had followed us and was
listening to every word we were saying. I could swear I could see his
horrid red head poking over that rock now. However, to tell you the
exact truth, Dunbar, I didn't care overmuch for coming down that bit of
rock just now. I'm not much at heights."

"What! that path!" cried Dunbar. "That's nothing. However, there's no
need for both of us to go back. You can stay by the boat."

But a sudden determination flamed up in Harkness that it should be he,
and none other, that should fetch Hesther Crispin.

"No, I'll go. There's no need for you to come though. We'll be back here
in ten minutes. I'll see that she gets down all right."

"Very well," said Dunbar. "But look after her. She's not so good a
climber as she thinks she is."

So Harkness started off. He waved his hand to Dunbar who was now busied
with the boat, and began his climb. He stumbled over the wet rocks,
nearly fell once or twice, and then came to the little path. His thought
now was all of Hesther. He played with his imagination, picturing to
himself that he was going right out of the world to some unknown heights
where she awaited him, having chosen him out of all the world, and there
they would live together, alone, happy always in one another's
company. . . .

What a fool he was when she was married, and, even if she freed herself
from that horrid encumbrance, had that boy down there in the Cove
waiting for her. But he could not help his own state. It did no harm. He
told no one. It was so new for him, this rich thrilling tingle of
emotion at the thought of some other human being, something so different
from his love for his sisters and his admiration for his friends. And
to-night from first to last there had been all the time this same
_tingling_ of experience. From his first getting into the train until
now he had seemed to be in direct contact with life, contact with all
the wrappers off, with nothing in between him and it!

That he must never lose again. After this night he must never slip back
to that old half-life with its dilettante pleasures, its mild
disappointments, its vague sense of exile. He could not have Hesther for
himself, but, at least, he could live the full life that she and her
country had shown to him.

"Ours is a great wild country. . . ." Never back to the level plains
again!

Full of these fine brave exulting thoughts he had climbed a very
considerable way when--suddenly the path was gone. There was no path, no
rocks, no hillside, no Cove, no sea, no stars--nothing. He was standing
on air. The fog in one second had crept upon him. Not the thin glassy
mist of twenty minutes ago but a thick, dense, blinding fog that hemmed
in like walls of wadding on every side. In the sudden panic his legs
gave way and he fell on to his knees and hands, clutching both sides of
the narrow path, staring desperately before him. He heard the Liddon
bell, as it seemed, quite close to his side, ringing down upon him.



IV


His first thought was of Hesther--then of Dunbar. Here they were all
three of them, separated. The fog might last for hours.

He called, "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

The bell echoed him, mocking him, "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

Very cautiously he climbed upon his feet, steadying himself. The wind
seemed completely to have died, and the sea sent up now only a faint
rustle, like the mysterious movement of some hidden woman's dress, but
the fog was so thick that it seemed to embrace Harkness ever more
tightly--and it was cold with a bitter piercing chill. Harkness called
again, "Dunbar! Dunbar!" listened, and then, as there was no kind of
answer, began to move slowly forward.

Once, many years before, when a small boy at his private school, there
had been an hour that every week he had feared beforehand with a panic
dread. This had been the time of the fire-escape practice, when the
boys, from some second floor window, were pushed down, feet foremost,
into a long canvas funnel through which they slipped safely to the
ground. The passing through this funnel was only of a moment's duration,
but that moment to Harkness had been terrible in its nightmare stifling
sense, pressing blinding confinement. Something of that he felt now. He
seemed to be compelled to push against blankets of cold damp
obstruction. The Fog assumed a personality, and it was a personality
strangely connected in Harkness's confused brain with that little
red-headed man who seemed now always to be pursuing him. He was
somewhere there in the fog; it was part of his game that he was playing
with Harkness, and he could hear that sweet melodious voice whispering:
"Pain, you know. Pain. That's the thing to teach you what life really
means. You'll be thankful to me before I've done with you. You shouldn't
have interfered with my plans, you know. I warned you not to."

He tried to drive down his fancies and to control his body. That was his
trouble--that every limb, every nerve, every muscle, seemed to be
asserting its own independent life. His legs now--they belonged to him,
but never would you have supposed it. His arms tugged away from him as
though striving to be free. He was not trained for this kind of thing--a
cultured American gentleman with two sisters who read papers to women's
clubs in Oregon.

He beat down his imagination. He had been crawling on his hands and his
knees, and now he put out one hand and touched space. His heart gave a
sickening bound and lay still. Which way went the path, to right or to
left? He tried to throw his memory back and recapture the shape of it.
There had been a sharp curve somewhere as it bent out towards the sea,
but he did not know how far now he had gone. He strained with his eyes
but could see nothing but the wall of grey. Should he wait there until
the fog cleared or Dunbar came to him: but the fog might be there for
hours, and Dunbar might never come. No, he must not wait. The thought of
Hesther alone in the fog, fearing every moment recapture by the
Crispins, filled with every terror that her loneliness could breed in
her, spurred him on. He _must_ reach her, whatever the risk.

Stretching his arm at full length he touched the path again, but there
was an interval. Had there been any break in the path when he came down
it? He could not remember any. He felt backwards with his hand and found
the curve, crept forward, then his foot slipt and his leg slid over the
edge. He waited to stop the hammering of his heart, then, balancing
himself, pulled it back then forward again.

Lucky for him that there was no wind, but again not lucky because had
there been wind the fog might have been blown out of its course: as it
was, with every instant it seemed to grow thicker and thicker.

Then he grew calmer. He must soon now be reaching the top, and happiness
came to him when he thought that for a time at least he would be
Hesther's only protection. On him, until Dunbar reached them, she would
have absolutely to rely. She would be cold and he must shelter her, and
at the thought of her proximity to him, he with his arm around her,
wrapping her with his coat; holding perhaps her hand in his, he was,
himself, suddenly warm, and his body pulled together and was taut and
strong.

He fancied that he might walk now. Very carefully he pulled himself up,
stood on his feet, stepped forward--and fell.



V


He screamed, and as he did so the Fog seemed to put its clammy hand
against his mouth, filling it with boneless fingers. This was the
end--this death. All space was about him and a roar of air sweeping up
to meet him.

Then dimly there came to his brain the message, thrown to him like a
life-line, that he was not falling in space but was slipping down a
slope. He lurched out with his hands, caught some thick tufts of grass,
and held. His legs slid forward and then dangled. With all his
forces--and the muscles of his arms were but weak--he pulled himself
upward and then held himself there, his legs hanging over space.

While the tufts held, and so long as his arms had the strength, he could
stay. How long might that be? Sickness attacked him, a kind of
sea-sickness. Tears were in his eyes, and an intense self-pity seized
him. What a shame that such an end should come to a man who had meant no
harm to any one, whose life had yet such possibilities. He thought of
his sisters. How they would miss him! He had been tiresome sometimes,
and been restless at home, and pulled them up sharply when they had said
things that he thought stupid, but now only his good points would be
remembered. He had been kind to them; he had a warm heart. He--and here
his brain, working it seemed through his aching, straining arms, began
suddenly to whirl like a top, flinging in front of his eyes a succession
of the most absurd pictures--days in spring woods gathering flowers, his
mother and father laughing at something childish that he had said, a bar
of music from some musical comedy, Erda appearing before Wotan in
_Siegfried_, a night when he had come to a dinner party and had
forgotten to wear a dress tie, the moment when once before an operation
he had been wheeled into the operating theatre, the day when he had
plucked up his courage and decided that he could buy the Whistler
"Little Mast," the grave, anxious, kindly eyes of Strang as he leant
across the etching table, a morning when he had run for an omnibus up
Shaftesbury Avenue and missed it, and the conductor had laughed, that
hour with Maradick at the club, lights, scents, the cold fog drowning
his mouth, his nose, his eyes--then chill space, a roaring wind and
silence. . . .

How strange after that--and hours afterwards it seemed although it must
have been seconds--to find that he was still living, that his arms were
aching as though they were one extended toothache, and that he was still
holding to those tufts of grass. He had a kind of marvel at his
endurance, and now, suddenly, a wonder as to why he was doing this. Was
it worth while? How stupid this energy! How much better to let himself
go and to sleep, to sleep. How delicious to sleep and be rid of the
ache, the cold, the clammy fog!

With that, one of the grass tufts to which he was clinging lurched
slightly, and his whole soul was active in its energy to preserve that
life that but now he had thought to throw away. With a struggle to which
he would have supposed he could not have risen he drew his body up
against the slope so that the earth to which he was clinging might the
better restrain his weight. Then resting there, his fingers digging deep
into the soil of the cliff, his head pressed against the rock, he
uttered a prayer:

"O Lord, help me now. I have a life that has been of little use to the
world, but I have, in this very day, seen better the uses to which I may
put it. Help me from this, give me strength to live and I will try to
leave my idleness and my selfishness and meanness and be a worthier man.
O Lord, I know not whether Thou dost exist or not, but, if Thou art near
me, help me at least now to bear my death worthily, if it must be that,
and to live my life to some real purpose if I am to have it back again.
Amen." Then he repeated the Lord's Prayer. After that he seemed to be
quieted; a great comfort came to him so that he no longer had any
anxiety, his heart beat tranquilly, and he only rested there, passive
for the issue. "If death comes," he thought to himself, "I believe that
it will be very swift. I shall feel no more than I felt just now when I
first tumbled. I shall not have so much pain as with a toothache. I am
leaving no one in the whole world whose existence will be empty because
I have gone. Hesther after to-night I shall never, in any case, see
again, and I am fortunate because, before I die, I have been able to
feel the reality of life, what love is, and caring for others more than
myself." He was quite tranquil. The tuft of grass tugged again. His legs
were numb, and he had the curious fancy that one of his boots had
slipped off, and that one foot, as light as a feather, was blowing
loosely in the air.

Then it seemed to him--and now it was as though he were half asleep,
working in a dream--that some one was, very gently, pushing him upwards.
At least he was rising. His hands, one by one, left their tufts of grass
and caught higher refuge, first a projecting rock, then a thick hummock
of soil, then a bunch of sea-pinks. In another while, his heart now
beating again with a new excited anticipation, his head lurched forward
on the earth into space. With a last frantic urge he pulled all his body
together and lay huddled on the path safe once more.

He had now a new trouble because his body refused to move. He had no
body, nothing that he could count upon for action. He tried to find his
connection with it, endeavoured to rest upon his knees, but it was as
though he had been all dissipated into the fog and was turned, himself
now, into mist and vapour. Then this passed, and once more he crawled
forward.

He turned a corner and met again the Liddon bell. It was strange how
deeply this voice reassured him. He had been all alone in a world
utterly dead. He had not had, like Hardy's hero, the sight of the
crustacean to connect him with eternal life. But this sudden,
melancholy, lowing sound like a creature deserted, crying for its mate,
brought him once more into reality. The bell was insistent and very
loud. It swung through the fog up to him, ringing in his ear, then
fading away again into distance. He spoke aloud as men do when they are
in desperate straits: "Well, old bell," he cried, "I'm not beaten yet,
you see. They've done what they can to finish me, but I'm back again.
You don't get rid of me so easily as that, you know. You can come and
look, if you like. Here I am, company for you after all."

There was a little breeze blowing now in his eyes and this cheered him.
If only the wind rose the fog would move and all might yet be well. His
clothes were torn, his hands bleeding, his hat gone. He crawled into a
sitting position, shook his fist in the air, and cried:

"You old devil, you're there, are you! It's your game all this. You're
seeing whether you can finish me. But I'll be even with you yet." And it
did indeed seem to him that he could see through the mist that red head
sticking out like a furze bush on fire. The hair, the damp pale face,
the melancholy eyes, and then the voice:

"It's only a theory, of course, Mr. Harkness. My father, who was a most
remarkable man. . . ."

The thought of Crispin enraged him, and the rage drove him on to his
feet. He was standing up and moving forward quite briskly. He moved like
a blind man, his hands before him as though he were expecting at every
moment to strike some hard, sharp substance, but whereas before the fog
had seemed to envelope him, strangling him, penetrating into his very
heart and vitals, now it retreated from before him like a moving wall.
The incline was now less sharp, and now less sharp again. Little pebbles
rolled from beneath his feet, and he could hear them fall over down into
distant space, but he had no longer any fear. He was on level ground. He
knew that the down was spreading about him. He called out, "Hesther!
Hesther!" not realising that this was the first time he had spoken her
name. He called it again, "Hesther! Hesther!" and again and again,
always moving as he fancied forward.

Then, as though it had been hurled at him out of some gigantic distance,
the rugged wall of the cottage pierced the sky. He saw it, then herself
patiently seated beneath it. In another moment he was kneeling beside
her, both her hands in his, his voice murmuring unintelligible words.



VI


She was so happy to see him. His face was close to hers and for the
first time he could really see her, her large, grave, questioning eyes,
her child's face, half developed, nothing very beautiful in her
features, but to him something inexpressibly lovely for which all his
life he had been waiting.

She was damp with the fog, and the first thing he did was to take off
his coat and try to put it around her. But she stood up resisting him.

"Oh no, I'm not cold. I'm not really. And do you think I'll let you?
Why, you! What have you done? Your hands are all torn and your face!"

She was very close to him. She put up her hand and touched his face. It
needed to muster everything that he had in him not to put his arms
around her. He conquered himself. "That's nothing," he said; "I had some
trouble climbing up from the cliff. I was just half-way up when the fog
came on. It wasn't much of a path in any case."

She stood with her hand on his arm. "Oh, what shall we do? We shall
never find the boat now. The fog will clear and we will be caught. We
can't move from here while it lasts."

"No," he said firmly, "we can't move. This is the place where Dunbar
will expect us. He'll turn up here at any moment. Meanwhile, we must
just wait for him. Is the pony all right?"

"I don't know what I'd have done without the pony," she said. "When the
fog came up I was terrified. I didn't know what I'd better do. I called
your names, but, of course, you didn't hear. And then it got colder and
colder and I kept thinking that I was seeing Them. His red hair. . . ."

She suddenly, shivering, put her hand on his arm. "Oh, don't let them
find us," she said; "I couldn't go back to that. I would rather kill
myself. I _would_ kill myself if I went back. What they are--oh! you
don't know!"

He took her hand and held it firmly. "Now see here, we don't know how
long Dunbar will be, or how long the fog will last, or anything. We
can't do anything but stay here, and it's no good if we stay here and
think of all the terrible things that may happen. The fog can't last for
ever. Dunbar may come any minute. What we have to do is to sit down on
this stone here and imagine we are sitting in front of our fire at home
talking like old friends about--oh well, anything you like--whatever old
friends do talk about. Can your imagination help you that far?"

He saw that she was at the very edge of her nerves; a step further and
she would topple over into wild hysteria; he knew enough already about
her character to be sure that nothing would cause her such self-scorn
and regret as that loss of self-control. He was not very sure of his own
control; everything had piled up upon him pretty heavily during the last
hour; but she was such a child that he had an immense sense of
responsibility as though he had been fifteen years older at least.

"I haven't very much imagination," she said, in a voice hovering between
laughter and tears. "Father always used to tell me that was my chief
lack. And we _are_ old friends, as we said a while ago, even though we
have just met."

"That's right," he said. "Now we will have to sit rather close together.
There's only one stone and the grass is most awfully wet. Every three
minutes or so I'll get up and shout Dunbar's name in case he is
wandering about quite close to us."

He stood up and, putting his hands to his mouth, shouted with all his
might: "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

He waited. There was no answer. Only the fog seemed to grow closer. He
turned to her and said:

"Don't you think the fog's clearing a little?"

She shook her head. There was still a little quaver in her voice: "I'm
afraid not. You're saying that to cheer me up. You needn't. I'm not
frightened. Think how lucky I am to have you with me. You mightn't have
come back. You might have missed your way for hours."

When he thought of how nearly he had missed his way for ever and ever he
trembled. He mustn't let his thoughts wander in those paths; he was here
to make her feel happy and safe until Dunbar came. They sat down on the
stone together, and he put his arm around her to hold her there and to
keep her warm.

"Now what shall we talk about?" she asked him.

"Ourselves," he answered her. "We have a splendid opportunity. Here we
are, cut off by the fog, away from every one in the world. We know
nothing about one another, or almost nothing. We can scarcely see one
another's faces. It is a wonderful opportunity."

"Well, you tell me about yourself first."

"Ah! there's the trouble. I'm so terribly dull. I've never been or
thought or said anything interesting. I'm like thousands and thousands
of people in this world who are simply shadows to everybody else."

"Remember we're to tell the truth," she said. "No one ever honestly
thinks that about themselves--that they are just shadows of somebody
else. Every one has their own secret importance for themselves--at
least, every one in our village had. People you would have supposed had
_nothing_ in them, yet if you talked to them you soon saw that they
fancied that the world would end if they weren't in it to make it go
round."

"Well, honestly, that isn't my opinion of myself," Harkness answered. "I
don't think that I help the world to go round at all. Of course, I think
that there have to be all the ordinary people in it like myself to
appreciate all the doings and sayings of the others, the geniuses--to
make the audience. There are so many things I don't care for."

"What _do_ you care for?"

"Oh, different things at different times--not permanently for much.
Pictures--especially etchings--music, travel. But never very deeply or
urgently, except for the etchings. . . . Until to-night," he suddenly
added, lowering his voice.

"Until to-night?"

"Yes, ever since I left Paddington--let me see--how many hours ago? It's
now about two o'clock, I suppose." He looked at his watch. "Ten minutes
to two. Nearly nine hours. Ever since nine hours ago. I've felt a new
kind of energy, a new spirit, the thrill, the excitement that all my
life I've wanted to have but that never came until now. Being really
_in_ life instead of just watching it like a spectator."

She put her hand on his. "I am so glad you're here. Do you know I used
to boast that I never could be frightened by anything? But these last
weeks--all my courage has gone. Oh, why has this fog come? We were
getting on so well, everything was all right--and now I know they'll
find us, I know they'll find us. I'm sure he's just behind there,
somewhere, hiding in the fog, listening to us. And perhaps David is
killed. I can't bear it. I can't bear it!"

She suddenly clung to him, hiding her face in his coat. He soothed her
just as he would his own child, as though she had been his child all her
life. "Hesther! Hesther! You mustn't. You mustn't break down. Think how
brave you've been all this time. The fog can clear in a moment and then
we'll still have time to catch the train. Anyway the fog's a protection.
If Crispin were after us he'd never find us in this. Don't cry, Hesther.
Don't be unhappy. Let's just go on talking as though we were at home.
You're quite safe here. No one can touch you."

"Yes, I'm safe," she whispered, "so long as you're here." His heart
leapt up. He forced himself to speak very quietly:

"Now I'll tell you about _myself._ It will be soon over. I grew up in a
place called Baker in Oregon in the United States. It is a long way from
anywhere, but all the big trains go through it on the way out to the
Pacific coast. I grew up there with my two sisters and my father. I lost
my mother when I was very young. We had a funny ramshackle old house
under the mountains, full of books. We had very long winters and very
hot summers. I went to a place called Andover to school. Then my father
died and left me some money, and since then--oh! since then I dare not
tell you what a waste I have made of my life, never settling anywhere,
longing for Europe and the old beautiful things when I was in America
and longing for the energy and vitality of America when I was in Europe.
That's what it is to be really cosmopolitan--to have no home anywhere.

"The only intimate friends I have are the etchings, and I sometimes
think that they also despise me for the idle life I lead."

He could see that she was interested. She was quietly sitting, her head
against his shoulder, her hand in his just as a little girl might listen
to her elder brother.

"And that's all?" she asked.

"Yes. Absolutely all. I'm ashamed to let you look at so miserable a
picture. I have been like so many people in the world, especially since
the war. Modern cleverness has taken one's beliefs away, modern
stupidity has deprived one of the possibility of hero-worship. No God,
no heroes any more. Only one's disappointing self. What is left to make
life worth while? So you think while you are on the bank watching the
stream of life pass by. It is different if some one or something pushes
you in. Then you must fight for existence for your own self or, better
still, for some one else. They who care for something or some one more
than themselves--some cause, some idea, some prophecy, some beauty, some
person--they are the happy ones." He laughed. "Here I am sitting in the
middle of this fog, a useless selfish creature who has suddenly
discovered the meaning of life. Congratulate me."

He felt that she was looking up at him. He looked down at her. Their
eyes stared at one another. His heart beat riotously, and behind the
beating there was a strange pain, a poignant longing, a deep, deep
tenderness.

"I don't understand everything you say," she replied at last. "Except
that I am sure you are doing an injustice to yourself when you give such
an account. But what you say about unselfishness I don't agree with. How
is one unselfish if one is doing things for people one loves? I wasn't
unselfish because I worked for the boys. I had to. They needed it."

"Tell me about your home," he said.

She sighed, then drew herself a little away from him, as though she were
suddenly determined to be independent, to owe no man anything.

"Mother died when I was very young," she said. "I only remember her as
some one who was always tired, but very, very kind. But she liked the
boys better. I remember I used to be silly and feel hurt because she
liked them better. But the day before she died she told me to look after
them, and I was so proud, and promised. And I have tried."

"Were they younger than you?"

"Yes. One was three years younger and the other five. I think they cared
for me, but never as much as I did for them."

She stopped as though she were listening. The fog was now terribly thick
and was in their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths. They could see
nothing at all, and when he jumped to his feet and called again,
"Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!" he knew that he vanished from her sight. He
could feel from the way that she caught his hand and held it when he sat
down again how, for a moment, she had lost him.

"It's always that way, isn't it?" she went on, and he could tell from an
undertone in her voice that this talking was an immense relief to her.
She had, he supposed, not talked to any one for weeks.

"Always what way?" he asked.

"That if you love some one very much they don't love you so much. And
then the same the other way."

"Very often," he agreed.

"I'm sure that's what I did wrong at home. Showed them that I cared for
them too much. The boys were very good, but they were boys, you know,
and took everything for granted as men do." She said this with a very
old world-wise air. "They were dear boys--they were and are. But it was
better before they went to school, when they needed me always.
Afterwards when they had been to school they despised girls and thought
it silly to let girls do things for them. And then they didn't like
being at home--because father drank."

She dropped her voice here and came very close to him.

"Do you know what it is to hate and love the same person? I was like
that with father. When he had drunk too much and broke all the
things--when we had so few anyway--and hit the boys, and did things--oh,
dreadful things that men do when they're drunk, then I hated him. I
didn't love him. I didn't want to help him--I just wanted to get away.
And before--before he drank so much he was so good and so sweet and so
clever. Do you know that my father was one of the cleverest doctors in
the whole of England? He was. If he hadn't drunk he might have been
anywhere and done anything. But sometimes when he _was_ drunk and the
boys were away at school, and the house was in such a mess, and the
servant wouldn't stay because of father, I felt I couldn't go on--I
_couldn't!_--and that I'd run down the road leaving everything as it
was, into the town and hide so that they'd never find me. . . . And
now," she suddenly broke out, "I have run away--and see what I've made
of it!"

"It isn't over yet," he said to her quietly. "Life's just beginning for
you."

"Well, anyway," she answered, with a sudden resolute calm that made her
seem ever so much older and more mature, "I've helped the boys to start
in life, and I won't have to go back to all that again--that's
something. It's fine to love some one and work for them as you said just
now, but if it's always dirty, and there's never enough money, and the
servants are always in a bad temper, and you never have enough clothes,
and all the people in the village laugh at you because your father
drinks, then you want to stop loving for a little while and to escape
anywhere, anywhere to anybody where it isn't dirty. Love isn't
enough--no, it isn't--if you're so tired with work that you haven't any
energy to think whether you love or not."

She hesitated there, looking away from him, and said so softly that he
with difficulty caught her words: "I will tell you one thing that you
won't believe, but it's true. I wanted to go to Crispin."

He turned to look at her in amazement.

"You _wanted_ to go?"

"Yes. I know you thought that I went for the boys and father. I know
that David thinks that too. Of course that was true a little. He
promised me that they should have everything. It was a relief to me that
I needn't think of them any more. But it wasn't only that. I wanted to
go. I wanted to be free."

"To be free!" Harkness cried. "My God! What freedom! I can understand
your wanting to escape, but with _such_ men. . . ."

She turned round upon him eagerly. "You don't know what he can be
like--the elder Crispin, I mean. And to a girl, an ignorant, conceited
girl. Yes, I was conceited, that was the cause of everything. Father had
all sorts of books in his room, I used to read everything I could
see--French and German in a kind of way, and secretly I was very proud
of myself. I thought that I was more learned than any one I knew, and I
used to smile to myself secretly when I overheard people saying how good
I was to the boys, and how unselfish, and I would think, 'That's not
what I am at all. If you only knew how much I know, and the kind of
things, you'd be surprised.'

"I was always thinking of the day when I would escape and marry. I
fancied I knew everything about marriage from the books that I had read
and from the things that father said when he was drunk. I hadn't a nice
idea of marriage at all. I thought it was old-fashioned to fall in love,
but through marriage I could reach some fine position where I could do
great things in the world, and always in my mind I saw myself coming one
day back to my village and every one saying: 'Why, I had not an idea she
was like _that._ Fancy all the time she was with us we never knew she
was clever like this.'"

She laughed like a child, a little maliciously, very simply and
confidingly. He saw that she had for the moment forgotten her danger,
and was sitting there in the middle of a dense fog on a lonely moor at a
quarter-past two in the morning with an almost complete stranger as
though she were giving him afternoon tea in the placid security of a
London suburb. He was glad; he did not wish to bring back her earlier
terror, but for himself now, with every moment that passed, he was
increasingly anxious. Time was flying; now they could never catch that
train. And above all, what could have happened to Dunbar? He must surely
have found them by now had some accident not come to him. Perhaps he had
slipped as Harkness had done and was now lying smashed to pieces at the
bottom of that cliff. But what could he, Harkness, do better than this?
While the fog was so dense it was madness to move off in search of any
one. And if the fog lasted were they to sit there until morning and be
caught like mice in a kitchen?

And beneath his anxiety, as his arm held the child at his side, there
was that strange mixture of triumph and pain, of some odd piercing
loneliness and a deep burning satisfaction. Meanwhile her hand rested in
his, soft and warm like the touch of a bird's breast.

"When Mr. Crispin came--the elder, the father--and talked to me I was
flattered. No one before had ever talked to me as he did about his
travels and his collections and the grand people he knew, just as though
I were as old as he was. And then David--Mr. Dunbar--was always asking
me to marry him. I'd known him all my life, and I liked him better than
any one else in the whole world; but just because I'd always known him
he wasn't exciting. He was the last person I wanted to marry. Then Mr.
Crispin made father drink and I hated him for that, and I hated father
for letting him do it. I went up to Mr. Crispin's house and told him
what I thought of him, and he talked and talked and talked, all about
having power over people for their good and hurting them first and
loving them all afterwards. I didn't understand most of it, but the end
of it was that he said that if I would marry his son he would leave
father alone and would give me everything. I should see the world and
all life, and that his son loved me and would be kind to me.

"After that it was the strangest thing. I don't say that he hypnotised
me. I knew that he was bad. Every one in the place was speaking about
him. He had done some cruel thing to a horse, and there was a story,
too, about some woman in the village. But I thought that I knew better
than all of them, that I would save father and the boys and be grand
myself--and then I would show David that he wasn't the only one who
cared for me.

"And so--I consented. From the moment I promised I was terrified. I knew
that I had done a terrible thing. But it was too late. I was already a
prisoner. That is a hysterical thing to say, but it is true. They never
let me out of their sight. I was married very quickly after that. I
won't say anything about the first week of my marriage except that I
didn't need books any more to teach me. I knew the sin I'd committed.
But I was proud--I was as proud as I was frightened. I wasn't going to
let any one know what a terrible position I was in--and especially
David. When we went to Treliss, David came too and waited. In my heart I
was so glad he was there.

"You don't know what went on in that house. The younger Crispin wasn't
unkind. He was simply indifferent. He thought of nothing and nobody but
his father. His father mocked him, despised him, scorned him, but he
didn't care. He follows his father like a dog. At first you know I
thought I could make a job of it, carrying it through. And then I began
to understand.

"First one little thing, then another. The elder Crispin was always
talking, floods of it. He was always looking at me and smiling at me.
After two days in the house with him I hated him as I hadn't known I
could hate any one. When he touched me I trembled all over. It became a
kind of duel between us. He was always talking nonsense about making me
love him through pain--and his eyes never said what his mouth said. They
were like the eyes of another person caught there by mistake.

"Then one day I came into the library upstairs and found him with a dog.
A little fox-terrier. He had tied it to the leg of the table and was
flicking it with a whip. He would give it a flick, then stand back and
look at it, then give it another flick. The awful thing was that the dog
was too frightened to howl, too terrified to know that it was being hurt
at all. He was smiling, watching the dog very carefully, but his eyes
were sad and unhappy. After that there were many signs. I knew then two
things, that he was raving crazy mad and that I was a prisoner in that
house. They watched me night and day. I had no money. My only hope of
escape was through David who was always getting word to me, begging me
to let him help me. But I still had my pride, although it was nearly
beaten. I wouldn't yield until--until the night before you came, then
something happened, something he tried to do; the younger Crispin
stopped him that time, but another time--well, there mightn't be any one
there. That settled it all. I let David know through you that I would
go. I _had_ to go. I couldn't risk another moment. I couldn't risk
another moment, I tell you." She suddenly sprang up, caught at
Harkness's hands in an agony, crying:

"Don't stay here! Don't stay here! They can find us here! We're going to
be caught again. Oh, please come! Please! Please!"

She was suddenly crazy with terror. Had he not held her with all his
force she would have rushed off into the fog. She struggled in his arms,
pulling and straining, crying, not knowing what she said. Then suddenly
she relaxed, would have tumbled had he not held her, and murmuring, "I
can't any more--oh, I can't any more!" collapsed, so that he knew she
had fainted.



VII


He sat down on the stone, laying her in his arms as though she were his
child. He was, himself, not strongly built, but she was so slight in his
hold that he could not believe that she was a woman. He murmured words
to her, stroked her forehead with his hand; she stirred, turning towards
him, and resting her head more securely on his breast. Then her hand
moved to his cheek and lay against it.

At last after a long while she raised her head, looked about her, stared
up at him as though she had just awoken, turned and kissed him on the
cheek. She murmured something--he could not catch the words--then
nestled down into his arms as though she would sleep.

There began for him then, sitting there, staring out into the unblinking
fog, his hardest test. As surely as never before in his life had he
known what love truly was, so did he know it now. This child in her
ignorance, her courage, her hard history, her contact with the worst
elements in human nature, her purity, had found her way into the
innermost recesses of his heart. He saw as he sat there, with a strange
almost divine clarity of vision, both into her soul and into his own. He
knew that when she faced life again he would be the first to whom she
would turn. He knew that with one word, one look, he could win her love.
He knew that she had also never felt what love was. He knew that the
circumstances of this night had turned her towards him as she would
never have been turned in ordinary conditions. Yes, he knew this
too--that had they met in everyday life she would never have loved him,
would not indeed have thought of him twice.

He was not a man about whom any one thought twice. With the exception of
his sisters no woman had ever loved him; this child, driven to terrified
desperation by the horrors of the last weeks had been wakened to full
womanhood by those same horrors, and he had happened to be there at the
awakening. That was all. And yet he knew that so honest was she, and
good and true, that did she once go to him she would stay with him. He
saw steadily into the future. He saw her freedom from the madman to whom
she was married, then her union with himself. His happiness, and her
gradual discovery of the kind of man that he was. Not bad--oh no--but
older, far older than herself in many other ways than years, tired so
easily, caring nothing for all the young things in life, above all a man
in the middle state, solitary from some elemental loneliness of soul. It
was true that to-night had shown him a new energy of living, a new
happiness, a new vigour, and he would perhaps after to-night never be
the same man as he was before. But it was not enough. No, not enough for
this young girl just beginning life, so ignorant of it, so trustful of
him that she would follow the path that he pointed out. And for himself!
How often he had felt like Nejdanov in _Virgin Soil_ that "everything
that he had said or done during the day seemed to him so utterly false,
such useless nonsense, and the thing that ought to be done was nowhere
to be found . . . unattainable . . . in the depths of a bottomless pit."
Well, of to-night that was not true. What he had done was useful, was
well done. But to-morrow how would he regard it? Would it not seem like
senseless melodrama, the mad Crispins, his fall from the cliff, this
eternal fog? How like his history that the most conclusive and eternal
acts of his life should take place in a fog! And this girl whom he loved
so dearly, if he married her and kept her for himself would not his
conscience, that eternal tiresome conscience of his, would it not for
ever reproach him, telling him that he had spoilt her life, and would
not he be for ever watching to catch that moment when she would realize
how dull, how old, how negative he was? No, he could not . . . he could
not . . .

Then there swept over him all the fire of the other impulse. Why should
he not, at long last, be happy? Could any man in the world be better to
her than he would be? After all he was not so old. Had he not known when
he shared in that dance round the town that he could be part of life,
could feel with the common pulse of humanity? Did young Dunbar know life
better than he? With him she had lived always and yet did not love him.

And then he knew with a flash like lightning through the fog that at
this moment, when she was waking to life and was trusting him, he could
by only a few words, lead her to love Dunbar. She had always seen him in
a commonplace, homely, familiar light, but he, Harkness, if he liked,
could show her quite another light, could turn all this fresh romantic
impulse that was now flowing towards himself into another channel.

But why should he? Was that not simply sentimental idealism? Dunbar was
no friend of his, he had never seen him before yesterday, why should he
give up to him the only real thing that his life had yet known?

But it was not sentimental, it was not false. Youth to youth. In years
he was not so old, but in his hesitating, quixotic, undetermined
character there were elements of analysis, self-questioning, regret,
that would make any human being with whom he was intimately related
unhappy.

Sitting there, staring out into the fog, he knew the truth--that he was
a man doomed to be alone all his days. That did not mean that he could
not make much of his life, have many friends, much good fortune--but in
the last intimacy he could go to no one and no one could go to him.

He bent down and kissed her forehead. She stirred, moved, sat up,
resting back against him, her feet on the ground.

"Where am I?" she whispered. "Oh yes." She clung to his arm. "No one has
come? We are still alone?"

"No," he answered her gently, "no one has come. We are still alone."



VIII


"What time is it?" she asked.

He looked at his watch. "Half-past two."

"We have missed that train now."

"I don't know. And anyway there's probably another."

"And David?"

"He's lost his way in the fog. He'll turn up at any moment." He stood up
and shouted once again:

"Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

No answer.

He stood over her looking down at her as she sat with drooping head. She
looked up at him. "I'm ashamed at the way I've behaved," she said,
"fainting and crying. But you needn't be afraid any more. I shan't give
in again."

Indeed, he seemed to see in her altogether a new spirit, something finer
and more secure. She put out her hand to him.

"Come and sit down on the stone again as we were before. It's better for
us to talk and then we don't frighten ourselves with possibilities.
After all, we can't _do_ anything, can we, so long as this horrid fog
lasts? We must just sit here and wait for David."

He sat down, put his arm around her as he had done before. The moment
had come. He had only now to speak and the result was certain--the whole
of his future life and hers. He knew so exactly what he would say. The
words were forming on his lips.

"Hesther dear, I've known you so short a time, but nevertheless I love
you with all my heart and being. When you are rid of this horrible man
will you marry me? I will spend all my life in making you happy----"

And she, oh, without an instant's doubt, would say "Yes," would hide in
his arms, and rest there as though secure, yes, utterly secure for life.
But the battle was over. He would not begin it again. He clipped the
words back and sat silent, one hand clenched on his knee.

It was as though she were waiting for him to speak. Their silence was
packed with anticipation. At last she said:

"What is the matter? Is there something you're afraid of that you don't
like to tell me? You needn't mind. I'm through my fear."

"No, there's nothing," he answered. At last he said: "There _is_ one
thing I'd like to say to you. I suppose I've no right to speak of it
seeing how recently I've known you, but I guess this night has made us
friends as months of ordinary living never would have made us."

"Yes, you're right in that," she answered. He knew what she was
expecting him to say.

"Well, it's about Dunbar." He could feel her hand jump in his. "He loves
you so much--so terribly. He isn't a man, I should think, to say very
much about his feelings. I've only known him for an hour or two, and he
wouldn't have said anything to me if he hadn't _had_ to. But from the
little he did say I could see what he feels. You're in luck to have a
man like that in love with you."

She took her hand out of his, then, very quietly but very stiffly,
answered:

"But I've known him all my life, you know."

"That's just why I'm speaking about him," Harkness answered.

"It's rather strange to have the friend of your life explained to you by
some one who has known him only for an hour or two." She laughed a
little angrily.

"But that's just why I'm speaking," he answered. "When you've known some
one all your life you can't see them clearly. That's why one's own
family always knows so little about one. You can't see the wood for the
trees. In the first minutes a stranger sees more. I don't say that I
know Dunbar as _well_ as you do--I only say that I probably see things
in him that you don't see."

They had been so close to one another during this last hour that he felt
as though he could see, as through clear water, deep into her mind.

He knew that, during those last minutes, she had been struggling
desperately. She came up to him victorious and, smiling and putting her
hand into his, said:

"Tell me what _you_ think about him."

"Simply that he seems to me a wonderful fellow. He seems to you, I
expect, a little dull. You've always laughed at him a bit, and for that
very reason, and because he's loved you for so long, he's tongue-tied
when you're there and shy of showing you what he really thinks about
things. He has immense qualities of character--fidelity, honesty,
devotion, courage--things simply beyond price, and if you loved him and
showed him that you did you'd probably see quite new things--fun and
spontaneity and imagination--things that he had always been afraid to
show you until now."

Her hand trembled in his.

"You speak," she said, "as though you thought that you were so much
older than both of us. I don't feel that you are. Can't you----" she
broke off. He knew what she would say.

"My dear," and his voice was eloquently paternal, "I _am_ older than
both of you--years and years older. Not physically, perhaps, so much,
but in every other kind of way. I am an old fogey, nothing else. You've
both of you been kind to me to-night, but in the morning, when ordinary
life begins again, you'll soon see what a stuffy old thing I am. No, no.
Think of me as your uncle. But don't miss--oh, don't miss!--the love of
a man like Dunbar. There's so little of that unselfish devoted love in
the world, and when it comes to you it's a crime to miss it."

"But you can't force yourself to love any one!" she cried, sharply.

"No, you can't force yourself, but it's strange what seeing new
qualities in some one, looking at some one from another angle, will do.
Try and look at him as though you'd met him for the first time, forget
that you've known him always. I tell you that he's one in a million!"

"Yes, he's good," she answered softly. "He's been wonderful to me
always. If he'd been less wonderful perhaps--I don't know, perhaps I'd
have loved him more. But why are we talking about it? Aren't I married
as it is?"

"Oh that!" He made a little gesture of repulsion. "We must get rid of
that at once."

"It won't be very difficult," she answered, dropping her voice to a
whisper. "He hasn't been faithful to me--even during these weeks."

He put his arm round her and held her close as though he were truly her
father. "Poor child!" he said, "poor child!"

She trembled in his arms.

"You----" she began. "You----? Don't you----?" She could say no more.

"I'm your friend," he answered, "to the end of life. Your old avuncular
friend. That's my job. Think of your _young_ friend freshly. See what a
fellow he is. I tell you that's a man!"

She did not answer him, but stayed there hiding her head in his coat.

There was a long silence, then, stroking her hair, he said:

"Hesther dear. I'm going to try once again." He got up and, putting his
hands trumpet-wise to his mouth, shouted through the fog:

"Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

This time there was an answer, clear and definite. "Hallo! Hallo!
Hallo!" He turned excitedly to her. She also sprang to his feet. "He's
there! I can hear him!"

"Dunbar! Dunbar!"

The answer came more clearly: "Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!"

They continued to exchange cries. Sometimes the reply was faint. Once it
seemed to be lost altogether. Then suddenly it was close at hand. A
ghostly figure was shadowed.

Dunbar came running.



IX


He caught their hands in his. He was breathless. He sank down on the
stone beside them:

"Give me a minute. . . . I'm done. Lord! this filthy fog. . . . Where
haven't I been?" He panted, staring up at them with wide distracted
eyes.

"Do you realize? I've failed. It's no use our crossing in that boat now
even if we could find it. We've missed that train. We're done."

"Nonsense," Harkness broke in. "Why, man, what's happened to you? This
isn't like you to lose your courage. We're not done or anything like it.
In the first place we're all together again. That's something in a fog
like this. Besides so long as we stick together we're out of their
power. They can't force us, all of us, back into that house again. So
long as we're out of that house we're safe."

"Oh, are we?" said Dunbar. "Little you know that man. I tell you we're
not safe--or Hesther's not safe--until we're at least a hundred miles
away. But forgive me," he looked up at them both, smiling, "you're quite
right, Harkness. I haven't any right to talk like this. But you don't
know what a time I've had in that fog."

"I had a little bit of a time myself," said Harkness.

"Well in the first place," went on Dunbar, "I was terrified about you. I
knew that you didn't know these cliffs well. When the fog started I
called to you to come back, but you didn't hear me, of course. I was an
idiot to let you start out at all.

"And then, when it came to myself climbing them I wasn't very
successful. I was nearly over the edge fifty times at least. But at last
when I _did_ get to the top the ridiculous thing was that I started off
in the wrong direction. There I was only five minutes from the cottage
and the pony and Hesther; I know the place like my own hand, and yet I
went in the wrong direction.

"God knows where I got to. I was nearly over into the sea twice at
least. I kept calling your names, but the only thing I heard in answer
was that beastly bell. I never went very far, I imagine, because when I
heard your voice at last, Harkness, I was quite close to it. But just to
think of it! Every other emergency in the world I'd considered except
just this one! It simply never entered my head."

"Well now," said Harkness, "let's face the facts. It's too late for that
train. Is there any other that we can catch?"

"There's one at six, but I don't see ourselves hanging about here for
another three hours, nor, if the fog doesn't lift, can Hesther get down
into that cove. I'm not especially anxious to try it myself as a matter
of fact."

"No, nor I," said Harkness, smiling. "Then we count the boat out. There
aren't many other things we can do. We can take the pony and follow him.
He'll lead us straight back to Treliss to whatever stables he came
from--a little too close to the Crispin family, I fancy. Secondly, we
can wait here until the fog clears; that _may_ be in three minutes time,
it may be to-morrow. You both know more about these sea-fogs down here
than I do, but, from the look of it, it's solid till Christmas."

"A heat fog this time of year," said Dunbar, "within three miles of the
sea can last for twenty-four hours or longer--not as thick as this
though--this is one of the thickest I've ever seen."

"Well then," continued Harkness, "it isn't much good to wait until it
clears. The only thing remaining for us is to walk off somewhere. The
question is, where? Is there any garage within a mile or two or any
friend with a car? It isn't three o'clock yet. We still have time."

"Yes," said Dunbar, "there is. I've had it in my mind all along as an
alternative. Indeed it was the first thing of all that I thought of.
Three miles from here there's a village, Cranach. The rector of Cranach
is a sporting old man called Banting. During the last week or two we've
made friends. He's sixty or so, a bachelor, and he's got a car. Not much
of a car, but still it's something. I believe if we go and appeal to
him--we'll have to wake him up, of course--he'll help us. I know that he
disapproves strongly of the Crispins. I thought of him before, as I say,
but I didn't want to involve him in a row with Crispin. However, now, as
things have gone, it's got to be. I can think of no other alternative."

"Good," said Harkness, "that settles it. Our only remaining difficulty
is to find our way there through this fog."

"I can start straight," said Dunbar. "Left from the cottage and then
straight ahead. Soon we ought to leave the Downs and strike some trees.
After that it's across the fields. I don't think I can miss it."

"What about the pony?" asked Hesther.

"We'll have to leave him. He must be there for Jabez in the morning or
Jabez will have to pay for both the pony and the cart."

They started off. The character of the fog seemed now slightly to have
changed. It was certainly thicker in some places than in others. Here it
was an impenetrable wall, but there it seemed to be only a gauze
covering hanging before a multitude of changing scenes and persons. Now
it was a multitude of armed men advancing, and you could be sure that
you heard the clang of shield on shield and a thousand muffled steps.
Now it was horses wheeling, their manes tossing, their tails flying, now
secret furtive figures that moved and peered, stopped, bending forward
and listening, then moved on again.

All the world was stirring. A breeze ran along the ground, rustling the
short thin grass. Sea-gulls were circling the mist crying. A ship at sea
was sounding its horn. Figures seemed to press in on every side.

They linked arms as they went, stumbling over the tussocks at every
step. It was strange how the sudden vanishing of the cottage left them
forlorn. It had been their one sure substantial hold on life. They were
in their own world while they could touch those ruined stones, but now
they walked in air.

Nevertheless Dunbar walked forward confidently. He thought that he
recognised this landmark and that. "Now we veer a bit to the left," he
said. "We should be off the moor in another step."

They walked forward. Suddenly Hesther pulled back, crying. "Look out!
Look out!" Another instant and they would have walked forward into
space. The mist here twisted up into thinning spirals as though to show
them what they had escaped; they could just see the sharp black line of
the cliff. Far, far beneath them the sea purred like a cat.

They stopped where they were as though fixed like images into the wall
of the fog.

Dunbar whispered: "That's awful. Another moment. . . ."

It was Hesther who pulled them together again. "Let's turn sharp about,"
she said, "and walk straight in front of us. At least we escape the
sea."

They turned as she had said and then walked forward, but in the minds of
all of them there was the same thought. Some one was playing with them,
some one like an evil Will-o'-the-wisp was leading them, now here, now
there. Almost they could see his red poll gleaming through the fog and
could hear his silvery voice running like music up and down the scale of
the mist.

They were, three of them, worn with the events of the night. They were
beginning to walk somnambulistically. Harkness found in himself now a
strange kind of intimacy with the Fog.

Yes, spell it with a capital letter. The Fog. The FOG. Some emanation of
himself, rolling out of him, friendly and also hostile. He and Crispin
were of the Fog together. They had both created it, and as they were the
good and evil of the Fog so was all Life, shapeless, rolling hither and
thither, but having in its elements Good and Evil in eternal friendship
and eternal enmity.

Every part of his body was aching. His legs were so weary that they
dragged with him, protesting; his eyes were for ever closing, his head
nodding. He stumbled as he walked, and at his side, step by step in time
the Fog accompanied him, a mountainous grey-swathed giant.

He was talking, words were for ever pouring from him, words mixed with
fog, so that they were damp and thick before ever they were free. "In
life there are not, you know, enough moments of clear understanding.
Between nations, between individuals, those moments are too often
confused by winds that, blowing from nowhere in particular, ruffle the
clear water where peace of mind and love of soul for soul are
reflected. . . . Now the waters are clear. Let us look down."

Yes, he had read that somewhere. In one of Galleon's books perhaps? No
matter. It meant nothing. "A fine sentiment. What it means. . . . Well,
no matter. Don't you smell roses? Roses out here on the moor. If it
wasn't for the fog you'd smell them--ever so many. And so he tore the
'Orvieto' into shreds. Little scraps flying in the air like goose
feathers. What a pity! Such a beautiful thing. . . ."

"Hold up," cried Dunbar. "You're asleep, Harkness. You'll have us all
down."

He pulled together with a start, and opening his eyes wide and staring
about him saw only the disgusting fog.

"This fog is too much of a good thing. Don't you think so? I guess we
could blow it away if we all tried hard enough? You think Americans
always say 'I guess,' don't you? The English books always make them. But
don't you believe it. We only do it to please the English. They like it.
It satisfies their vanity."

He seemed to be climbing an enormous endless staircase. He mounted
another step, two, and suddenly was wide awake.

"What nonsense I'm talking! I've been half asleep. This fog gets into
your brain." He felt Hesther's arm within his. He patted her hand
encouragingly. "It's all right, Hesther. We'll be out of this soon. Just
another minute or two."

"By Jove, you're right," Dunbar cried; "these are trees."

And they were. A whole row of them. Crusoe was not more glad to see the
footprint on the sand than were those three to see those trees. "Now I
know where we are!" Dunbar cried triumphantly. "Here's the bridge and
here's the lane. What luck to have found it!"

The trees seemed to step forward and greet them, each one tall and
dignified, welcoming them to a happier country. They were on a road and
had no longer the turf beneath their feet. The fog here was truly
thinner so that very dimly they could see the mark of the hedge like a
clothes-line in mid-air.

They moved now much more rapidly, and in their hearts was an intense, an
eager relief. The fog thinned until it was a wall of silver. Nothing was
distant, but it was a world of tangible reality. They could kick pebbles
with their feet, could hear sheep moving on the farther side of the
hedge.

"This is better," said Dunbar. "We'll get out of this yet. Cranach is
only a mile or so from here. I know this lane well. And the fog's going
to lift at last."

Even as he spoke it swept up, thick and grey deeper than before. The
trees disappeared, the hedges. They had once more to grope for one
another's hands and walk close.

Harkness could feel from the way that Hesther leaned against him, and
the drag of her feet, that she was near the end of her endurance. She
said nothing. Only walked on and on.

They were all now silent. They must have walked it seemed to them, for
miles. An endless walk that had no beginning and no end. And then
Harkness was strangely aware--how, he never knew--that Dunbar and
Hesther were drawing closer together.

He felt that new relation that he had in a way created beginning to grow
between them. She drew away from Harkness ever so slightly. Then
suddenly he knew that Dunbar had put his arm round her and was holding
her up. She was so weary that she did not know what she was doing--but
for that quiet, resolute, determined boy it must have been a moment of
great triumph, the first time in their two lives that she had in any way
surrendered to him or allowed him to care for her. Harkness was once
more alone.

They walked and walked and walked. They did not know where they were
walking, but in their minds they were sure it was straight to Cranach.

Suddenly, after, as it seemed, hours of silence in a dead world, Dunbar
cried:

"We're there. Oh, thank God! we're there. This is the rectory wall."

A wall was before them and an open gate. They walked through the gate,
only dimly seen, stumbled where the lawn rose from the gravel, then
forward again, down on to the gravel again. The door was open.

Like somnambulists they walked forward. The door closed behind them.

Like somnambulists awakened they saw lights, a dim hall where flags
waved.

For Harkness there was something familiar--quite close to him, the
chatter-chatter of a clock, like a coughing dog. Familiar? He stared.

Some one was standing, looking at him and smiling.

With sudden agony in his voice, as a man cries in a terrible dream,
Harkness shouted:

"Out, Dunbar! Back! Back! Run for your life!"

But it was too late.

That voice of exquisite melody greeted them:

"I had no idea that of your own free will you would return. My son only
a quarter of an hour ago departed in search of you. I welcome you back."



PART IV: THE TOWER



I


With an instinctive movement both Harkness and Dunbar closed in upon
Hesther.

The three stood just in front of the heavy locked door facing the dim
hall. On the bottom stair was Crispin Senior, and on the floor below
him, one on either side, the two Japanese servants.

A glittering candelabrum, hanging high up, was fully lit, but it seemed
to give a very feeble illumination, as though the fog had penetrated
here also.

Crispin was wearing white silk pyjamas, brown leather slippers, and a
dressing-gown of a rich bronze-coloured silk flowered with gold buds and
leaves. His eyes were half-closed, as though the light, dim though it
was, was too strong for him. His face wore a look of petulant rather
childish melancholy. The two servants were statues indeed, no sign of
life proceeding from them. There was, however, very little movement
anywhere, the flags moving in the draught the chief.

Hesther's face was white, and her breath came in little sharp pants, but
she held her body rigid. Harkness after that first cry was silent, but
Dunbar stepped forward shouting:

"You damned hound--you let us go or you shall have this place about your
ears!" The hall echoed the words which, to tell the truth, sounded very
empty and theatrical. They were made to sound the more so by the
quietness of Crispin's reply.

"There is no need," he said, "for all those words, Mr. Dunbar. It is
your own fault that you interfered and must pay for your interference. I
warned you weeks ago not to annoy me. Unfortunately you wouldn't take
advice. You _have_ annoyed me--sadly, and must suffer the consequences."

"If you touch a hair of her head-----" Dunbar burst out.

"As to my daughter-in-law," Crispin said, stepping down on to the floor,
and suddenly smiling, "I can assure you that she is in the best possible
hands. She knows that herself, I'm sure. What induced you, Hesther," he
said, addressing her directly, "to climb out of your window like the
heroine of a cinematograph and career about on the seashore with these
two gentlemen is best known only to yourself. At least you saw the error
of your ways and are in time, after all, to go abroad with us to-day."

He advanced a step towards them. "And you, Mr. Harkness, don't you think
that you have rather violated the decencies of hospitality? I think you
will admit that I showed you nothing but courtesy as host. I invited you
to dinner, then to my house, showed you my few poor things, and how have
you repaid me? Is this the famous American courtesy? And may I ask while
we are on the question, what business this was of yours?"

"It was anybody's business," said Harkness firmly, "to rescue a helpless
girl from such a house as this."

"Indeed?" asked Crispin, "And what is the matter with this house?"

Here Hesther broke in: "Look back two nights ago," she cried, "and ask
yourself then what is the matter with this house and whether it is a
place for a woman to remain in."

"For myself," said Crispin. "I think it is a very nice house, and I am
quite sorry that we are leaving it to-day. That is, some of us--not
all," he added, softly.

"If you are going to murder us," Dunbar cried, "get done with it. We
don't fear you, you know, whatever colour your hair may be. But whether
you murder us or no I can tell you one thing, that your own time has
come--not many more hours of liberty for _you._"

"All the more reason to make the most of those I _have_ got," said
Crispin. "Murder you? No. But you have fallen in very opportunely for
the testing of certain theories of mine. I look forward to a very
interesting hour or two. It is now just four o'clock. We leave this
house at eight--or, at least, some of us do. I can promise all of us a
very interesting four hours with no time for sleep at all. I have no
doubt you are all tired, wandering about in the fog for so long must be
fatiguing, but I don't see any of you sleeping--not for an hour or two,
at least."

Hesther said then: "Mr. Crispin, I believe that I am chiefly concerned
in this. If I promise to go quietly with you abroad I hope that you will
free these two gentlemen. I give you that promise and I shall keep it."

"No, no," Dunbar cried, springing forward. "You shan't go with him
anywhere, Hesther, by heaven you shan't. Not while there's any breath in
my body----"

"And when there isn't any breath in your body, Mr. Dunbar," said
Crispin, "what then?"

"A very good line for an Adelphi melodrama, Mr. Crispin," said Harkness,
"but it seems to me that we've stayed here talking long enough. I warn
you that I am an American citizen, and I am not to be kept here against
my will----"

"Aren't you indeed, Mr. Harkness?" said Crispin. "Well, that's a line of
Adelphi drama, if you like. How many times in a secret service play has
the hero declared that he's an American citizen? Which only goes to
show, I suppose, how near real life is to the theatre--or rather how
much more theatrical real life is than the theatre can ever hope to be.
But you're all right, Mr. Harkness--I won't forget that you're an
American citizen. You shall have special privileges. That I promise
you."

Dunbar then did a foolish thing. He made a dash for the farther end of
the hall. What he had in mind no one knows--in all probability to find a
window, hurl himself through it and escape to give the alarm. But the
alarm to whom? That was, as far as things had yet gone, the foolishness
of their position. A policeman arriving at the house would find nothing
out of order, only that there two gentlemen had broken in, barbarously,
at a midnight hour to abscond with the married lady of the family.

Dunbar's effort was foolish in any case; its issue was that, in a moment
of time, without noise or a word spoken, the two Japanese servants had
him held, one hand on either arm. He looked stupid enough, there in the
middle of the hall, his eyes dim with tears of rage, his body straining
ineffectively against that apparently light and casual hold.

But it was strange to perceive how that movement of Dunbar's had altered
all the situation. Before that the three were at least the semblance of
visitors demanding of their host that they should be allowed to go; now
they were prisoners and knew it. Although Hesther and Harkness were
still untouched they were as conscious as was Dunbar of a sudden
helplessness--and of a new fear.

Harkness watched Crispin who had walked forward and now stood only a
pace or two from Dunbar. Harkness saw that his excitement was almost
uncontrollable. His legs, set widely apart, were quivering, his nostrils
panting, his eyes quite closed so that he seemed a blind man scenting
out his enemy.

"You miserable fellow," he said--and his voice was scarcely more than a
whisper. "You fool--to think that you could interfere. I told you . . .
I warned you . . . and now am I not justified? Yes--a thousand times.
Within the next hour you shall know what pain is, and I shall watch you
realise it."

Then his body trembled with a sort of passionate rhythm as though he
were swaying to the run of some murmured tune. With his eyes closed and
the shivering it was like the performance of some devotional rite. At
least Dunbar showed no fear.

"You can do what you damn well please," he shouted. "I'm not afraid of
you, mad though you are."

"Mad? Mad?" said Crispin, suddenly opening his eyes. "That depends. Yes,
that depends. Is a man mad who acts at last when given a perfectly just
and honourable opportunity for a pleasure from which he has restrained
himself because the opportunity hitherto was _not_ honourable? And
madness? A matter of taste, my friends, decides that. I like olives--you
do not. Are you therefore mad? Surely not. Be broad-minded, my friend.
You have much to learn and but little time in which to learn it."

Harkness perceived that the man was savouring every moment of this
situation. His anticipations of what was to come were so ardent that the
present scene was coloured deep with them. He looked from one to
another, tasting them, and his plans for them on his tongue. His
madness--for never before had his eyes, his hands, his whole attitude of
body more highly proclaimed him mad--had in it all the preoccupation
with some secret life that leads to such a climax. For months, for
years, grains of insanity, like coins in a miser's hoard, had been
heaping up to make this grand total. And now that the moment was come he
was afraid to touch the hoard lest it should melt under his fingers.

He approached Harkness.

"Mr. Harkness," he said quite gently, "believe me I am sorry to see
this. You took me in last evening, you did indeed. I felt that you had a
real interest in the beautiful things of art, and we had that in common.
All the time you were nothing but a dirty spy--a mean and dirty spy.
What right had you to interfere in the private life of a private
gentleman who, twenty-four hours ago, was quite unknown to you, simply
on the word of a crazy braggart boy? Have you so little to do that you
must be poking your fingers into every one else's business? I liked you,
Mr. Harkness. As I told you quite honestly last evening I don't know
where I have met a stranger to whom I took more warmly. But you have
disappointed me. You have only yourself to thank for this--only yourself
to thank."

Harkness replied firmly. "Mr. Crispin, I had every right to act as I
have done, and I only wish to God that it had been successful. It is
true that when I came down to Cornwall yesterday I had no knowledge of
you or your affairs, but, in the Treliss hotel, quite inadvertently, I
overheard a conversation that showed me quite plainly that it was some
one's place to interfere. What I have seen of you since that time, if
you will forgive the personality, has only strengthened my conviction
that interference--immediate and drastic--was most urgently necessary.

"Thanks to the fog we have failed. For Dunbar and myself we are for the
moment in your power. Do what you like with us, but at least have some
pity on this child here who has done you no wrong."

"Very fine, very fine," said Crispin. "Mr. Harkness, you have a
style--an excellent style--and I congratulate you on having lost almost
completely your American accent--a relief for all of us. But come, come,
this has lasted long enough. I would point out to you two gentlemen
that, as one of you has already discovered, any sort of resistance is
quite useless. We will go upstairs. One of my servants first--you two
gentlemen next, my other servant following, then my daughter-in-law and
myself. Please, gentlemen."

He said something in a foreign tongue. One Japanese started upstairs,
Harkness and Dunbar followed. There was nothing else at that moment to
be done. Only at the top of the stairs Dunbar turned and cried: "Buck
up, Hesther. It will be all right." And she cried back in a voice
marvellously clear and brave: "I'm not frightened, David; don't worry."

Harkness had a momentary impulse to turn, dash down the stairs again and
run for the window as Dunbar had done; but as though he knew his thought
the Japanese behind him laid his hand on his arm; the thin fingers
pressed like steel. At the upper floor Dunbar was led one way, himself
another. One Japanese, his hand still on his arm, opened a door and
bowed. Harkness entered. The door closed. He found himself in total
obscurity.



II


He did not attempt to move about the room, but simply sank down on to
the floor where he was. He was in a state of extreme physical
weariness--his body ached from head to foot--but his brain was active
and urgent. This was the first time to himself that he had had--with the
exception of his cliff climbing--since his leaving the hotel last
evening, and he was glad of the loneliness. The darkness seemed to help
him; he felt that he could think here more clearly; he sat there,
huddled up, his back against the wall, and let his brain go.

At first it would do little more than force him to ask over and over
again: Why? Why? Why? Why did we do this imbecile thing? Why, when we
had all the world to choose from, did we find our way back into this
horrible house? It was a temptation to call the thing magic and to have
done with it, really to suggest that the older Crispin had wizard
powers, or at least hypnotic, and had willed them back. But he forced
himself to look at the whole thing clearly as a piece of real life as
true and as actual as the ham-and-eggs and buttered toast that in
another hour or two all the world around him would be eating. Yes, as
real and actual as a toothbrush, that was what this thing was; there was
nothing wizard about Crispin; he was a dangerous lunatic, and there were
hundreds like him in any asylum in the country. As for their return he
knew well enough that in a fog people either walked round and round in a
circle or returned to the place that they had started from.

At this point in his thoughts a tremor shook his body. He knew what
_that_ was from, and the anticipation that, lying like a chained animal,
deep in the recesses of his brain, must soon be loosed and then bravely
faced. But not yet, oh no, not yet! Let his mind stay with the past as
long as it might.

In the past was Crispin. He looked back over that first meeting with
him, the actual moment when he had asked him for a match, the dinner,
the return to the hotel when, influenced then by all that Dunbar had
told him, he had seen him standing there, the polite gestures, the
hospitable words, the drive in the motor. . . . His mind stopped
abruptly _there._ The door swung to, the lock was turned.

In that earlier Crispin there had been something deeply pathetic--and
when he dared to look forward--he would see that in the later Crispin
there was the same. So with a sudden flash of lightning revelation that
seemed to flare through the whole dark room he saw that it was not the
real Crispin with whom they--Hesther, Dunbar and he--were dealing at
all.

No more than the ravings of fever were the real patient, the wicked
cancerous growth the real body, the broken glass the real picture that
seemed to be shattered beneath it.

They were dealing with a wild and dangerous animal, and in the grip of
that animal, pitiably, was the true struggling suffering soul of
Crispin. Not struggling now perhaps any more; the disease had gone too
far, growing through a thousand tiny almost unnoticed stages to this
horrible possession.

He knew now--yes, as he had never known it, and would perhaps never have
known it had it not been for the sudden love for and tenderness towards
human nature that had come to him that night--what, in the old world,
they had meant by the possession of evil spirits. What it was that
Christ had cast out in His ministry. What it was from which David had
delivered King Saul.

Quick on this came the further question. If this were so might he not
perhaps when the crisis came--as come he knew it would--appeal to the
real Crispin and so rescue both themselves and him? He did not know. It
had all gone so far. The animal with its beastly claws deep in the flesh
had so tight a hold. He realised that it was in all probability the
personality of Hesther herself that had urged it to such extremes. There
was something in her clear-sighted simple defiance of him that had made
Crispin's fear of his powerlessness--the fear that had always
contributed to his most dangerous excesses--climb to its utmost height.
He had decided perhaps that this was to be the real final test of his
power, that this girl should submit to him utterly. Her escape had
stirred his sense of failure as nothing else could do. And then their
return, all the nervous excitement of that night, the constant alarm of
the neighbourhoods in which they had stayed so that, as the younger
Crispin had said, they had been driven "from pillar to post," all these
things had filled the bowl of insanity to overflowing. _Could_ he rescue
Crispin as well as themselves?

Once more a tremor ran through his body. Because if he could not----
Once more he thrust the anticipation back, pulling himself up from the
floor and beginning slowly, feeling the wall with his hand like a blind
man, to walk round the room.

His eyes now were better accustomed to the light, but he could make out
but little of where he was. He supposed that he was on the second floor
where were the rooms of Hesther and the younger Crispin. The place
seemed empty, there was no sound from the house. He might have been in
his grave. Fantastic stories came to his mind, Poe-like stories of walls
and ceilings growing closer and closer, of floors opening beneath the
foot into watery dungeons, of fiery eyes seen through the darkness. He
repeated then aloud:

"I am Charles Percy Harkness. I am thirty-five years of age. I grew up
in Baker, Oregon, in the United States of America. I am in sound mind
and in excellent health. I came down to Cornwall yesterday afternoon for
a holiday, recommended to do so by Sir James Maradick, Bart."

This gave him some little satisfaction; to himself he continued, still
walking and touching the wall-paper with his hand: "I am shut up in a
dark room in a strange house at four in the morning for no other reason
than that I meddled in other people's affairs. And I am glad that I
meddled. I am in love, and whatever comes out of this I do not regret
it. I would do over again exactly what I have done except that I should
hope to do it better next time."

He felt then seized with an intense weariness. He had known that he was,
long ago, physically tired, but excitement had kept that at bay. Now
quite instantly as though a spring in the middle of his back had broken,
he collapsed. He sank down there on the floor where he was, and all
huddled up, his head hanging forward into his knees, he slept. He had a
moment of conscious subjective rebellion when something cried to him:
"Don't surrender. Keep awake. It is part of his plan that you should
sleep here. You are surrendering to _him_."

And from long misty distances he seemed to hear himself reply:

"I don't care what happens any more. They can do what they like. . . .
They can do what they like. . . ."

And almost at once he was conscious that they were summoning him. A tall
thin figure, like an old German drawing, with wild hair, set mouth,
menacing eye like Baldung's "Saturnus," stood before him and pointed the
way into vague misty space. Other figures were moving about him, and he
could see as his eyes grew stronger, that a vast multitude of naked
persons were sliding forward like pale lava from a volcano down a steep
precipitous slope.

As they moved there came from them a shuddering cry like the tremor of
the ground beneath his feet.

"Not there! Not there!" Harkness cried, and Saturnus answered, "Not yet!
You have not been judged."

Almost instantly judgment followed--judgment in a narrow dark passage
that rocked backward and forward like the motion of a boat at sea. The
passage was dark, but on either side of its shaking walls were cries and
shouts and groans and piteous wails, and clouds of smoke poured through,
as into a tunnel, blinding the eyes and filling the nostrils with a
horrible stench.

No figure could be seen, but a voice, strong and menacing, could be
heard, and Harkness knew that it was himself the voice was addressing.
His naked body, slippery with sweat, the acrid smoke blinding him, the
voices deafening him, the rocking of the floor bewildering him, he felt
desperately that he must clear his mind to answer the charges brought
against him.

The voice was clear and calm: "On February 2, 1905, your friend Richard
Hentley was accused in the company of many people during his absence, of
having ill-treated his wife while in Florence. You knew that this was
totally untrue and could have given evidence to that effect, but from
cowardice you let the moment pass and your friend's position was
seriously damaged. What have you to say in your defence?"

The thick smoke rolled on. The walls tottered. The cries gathered in
anguish.

"On March 13, 1911, you wired to your sisters in America that you were
ill in bed when you were in perfect health, because you wished to stay
for a week longer in London in order to attend some races. What have you
to say in your defence?"

"On October 3, 1906, you grievously added to the unhappiness of Mrs.
Harrington-Adams by asserting in mixed company that no one in New York
would receive her and that all Americans were astonished that she should
be received at all in London."

Here at any rate was an opportunity. Through the smoke he cried:

"There at least I am innocent. I have never known Mrs. Harrington-Adams.
I have never even seen her."

"No," the voice replied. "But you spoke to Mrs. Phillops who spoke to
Miss Cator who then cut Mrs. Adams. Other people followed Miss Cator's
example, and you were quoted as an authority. Mrs. Adams's London life
was ruined. She had never done you any harm."

"On December 14, 1912, you told your sisters that you hated the sight of
them and their stuffy ways, that their attempts at culture were
ridiculous, and that, like all American women, they were absurdly
spoilt."

Through the smoke Harkness shouted: "I am sure I never said----"

The voice replied: "I am quoting your exact words."

"In a moment of pique I lost my temper. Of course I didn't mean----"

"On June 3, 1913, you went secretly into the library of a friend and
stole his book of Rembrandt drawings. You knew in your heart that you
had no intention of returning it to him, and when, some months later, he
spoke of it, wishing to lend it to you and wondered why he could not
find it you said nothing to him about your own possession of it."

Harkness blushed through the rolling smoke. "Yes, that was shameful," he
cried. "But I knew that he didn't care about the book and I----"

"What have you to say against these charges?"

"They are all little things," Harkness cried, "small things. Every one
does them. . . ."

"Judgment! Judgment! Judgment!" cried the voice, and suddenly he felt
himself moving in the vast waters of human nudity that were slipping
down the incline. He tried to stay himself, he flung out his hands and
touched nothing but cold slimy flesh.

Faster and faster and faster. Colder and colder and colder. Darker and
darker and darker. Despair seized him. He called on his friends. Others
were calling on every side of him. Thousands and thousands of names
mingled in the air. The smoke came up to meet them--vast billowing
clouds of it. He knew with a horrible consciousness that below him a sea
of upturned swords, were waiting to receive them. Soon they would be
impaled. . . . With a shriek of agony he awoke.

He had not been asleep for more, perhaps, than ten minutes, but the
dream had unnerved him. When he rose from the ground he tottered and
stood trembling. He knew now why it was that his enemy had designed that
he should sleep; he knew _now_ that he could no longer ward off the
animal that on padded feet had been approaching him--the pain! The pain!
The pain!

The sweat beaded his forehead, his knees gave way and he sank yet again
upon the floor. He was murmuring: "Anything but that. Anything but that.
I can't stand pain. I can't _stand_ pain, I tell you. Don't you know
that I have always funked it all my life long? That I've always prayed
that whatever else I got it wouldn't be _that._ That I've never been
able to bear to see the tiniest thing hurt, and that in all my thought
about going to the war, although I didn't try to escape it, it was even
more the pain that I would see than the pain that I would feel.

"And now to wait for it like this, to know that it may be torture of the
worst kind, that I am in the power of a man who can reason no longer,
who is himself in the power of something stronger and more evil than any
of us."

Then dimly it came through to him that he had been given three tests
to-night, and as it always is in life the three tests especially suited
to his character, his strength and weakness, his past history. The dance
had stripped him of his aloofness and drawn him into life, his love for
Hesther that he had surrendered had taken from him his selfishness--and
now he must lose his fear of pain.

But that? How could he lose it? It was part of the very fibre of his
body, his nerves throbbed with it, his heart beat with it. He could not
remember a time when it had not been part of him. When he had been five
or six his father had decided that he must be beaten for some little
crime. His father was the gentlest of human beings, and the beating
would be very little, but at the sight of the whip something had cracked
inside his brain.

He was not a coward; he had stood up to the beating without a tear, but
the sense of the coming pain had been more awful than anything that he
could have imagined. It was the same afterwards at school. He was no
coward there either, shared in the roughest games, stood up to bullies,
ventured into the most dangerous places.

But one night earache had attacked him. It was a new pain for him and he
thought that he had never known anything so terrible. Worse than all
else were the intermissions between the attacks and the warnings that a
new attack was soon to begin. That approach was what he feared, that
terrible and fearful approach. He had said very little, had only lain
there white and trembling, but the memory of all those awful hours
stayed with him always.

Any thought of suffering in others--of poor women in childbirth, of
rabbits caught in traps, of dogs poisoned, of children run over or
accidentally wounded--these things, if he knew of them, produced an odd
sort of sympathetic pain in himself. The strangest thing had been that
the war, with all its horrors, had not driven him crazy as he might have
expected from his earlier history. On so terrible a scale was it that
his senses soon became numbed? He did the work that he was given to do,
and heard of the rest like cries beyond the wall. Again and again he had
tried to mingle, himself, in it; he had always been prevented.

A dog run over by a motor car struck him more terribly than all the
agonies of Ypres.

But these things, what had they to do with his present case? He could
not think at all. His brain literally reeled, as though it shook, tried
to steady itself, could not, and then turned right over. His body was
alive, standing up with all its nerves on tiptoe. How was he to endure
these hours that were coming to him?

"I must get out of this!" some one, not himself, cried. It seemed to him
that he could hear the strange voice in the room. "I must get out of
this. How dare they keep me if I demand to be let out? I am an American
citizen. Let me out of this. Can't you hear? Bring me a light and let me
out. I have had enough of this dark room. What do you mean by keeping me
here? You think that you are stronger than I. Try it and see. Let me
out, I say! Let me out!"

He tottered to his feet and ran across the room, although he could not
see his way, blundering against the opposite wall. He beat upon it with
his hands.

"Let me out, do you hear! Let me out!"

He was not himself, Harkness. He could no longer repeat those earlier
words. He was nobody, nothing, nothing at all. They could not hurt him
then. Try as they might they could not hurt him, Harkness, when he was
not Harkness. He laughed, stroking the wall gently with his hand as
though it were his friend.

"It's all right, do you see? You can't hurt me because you can't find
me. I'm hiding, _I_ don't know where to find myself, so that it isn't
likely you will find me. You can't hurt nothing, you know. You can't
indeed."

He laughed and laughed and laughed--gently enjoying his own joke. There
was a sudden knocking at the door.

"Come in!" he said in a whisper. "Come in!"

His heart stood still with fear.

The door opened, splashing into the darkness a shower of light like
water flung from a bucket. In the centre of this the two Japanese were
standing.

"Master says please come. If you ready he ready."

At sight of the Japanese a marvellous thing had happened. All his fear
had on the instant left him, his beastly physical fear. It fell from him
like an old suit of clothes, discarded. He was himself, clear-headed,
cool, collected, and in some strange new way, happy.

Harkness followed them.



III


Harkness followed, conscious only of one thing, his sudden marvellous
and happy deliverance from fear. He could not analyse it--he did not
wish to. He did not consider the probable length of its duration. Enough
that for the present Crispin might cut him into small pieces, skin him
alive, boil him in a large pot like a lobster, and he would not care. He
followed the sleek servants like a schoolboy.

The Tower? Then at last he was to see the interior of this mysterious
place. It had exercised, all through this adventure, a strange influence
over him, standing up in his imagination white and pure and apart,
washed by the sea, guarded by the woods behind it, having a spirit
altogether of its own and quite separate from the man who for the moment
occupied it. This would be perhaps the last building on this world that
would see his bones move and have their being, he had a sense that it
knew and sympathised with him and wished him luck.

Meanwhile he walked quietly. His chance would still come and with Dunbar
beside him. Or was he never to see Dunbar again? Some of his newfound
courage trembled. The worst of this present moment was his loneliness.
Was the final crisis to be fought out by himself with no friends at
hand? Was he never to see Hesther again? He had an impulse to throw
himself forward, attack the servants, and let come what will. The
silence of the house was terrible--only their footsteps soft on the
thick carpet--and if he could wring a cry or two from his enemies that
would be something. No, he must wait. The happiness of others was
involved with his own.

The men stopped before a dark-wooded door.

They went through and were met by a white circular staircase. Up this
they passed, paused before another door, and crossed the threshold into
a high circular brilliantly-lit room. For the moment Harkness, his eyes
dimmed a little by the shadows of the staircase, could see nothing but
the gayness, brightness of the place papered with a wonderful Chinese
pattern of green and purple birds, cherry-coloured pagodas and crimson
temples. The carpet was a soft heavy purple, and there was a number of
little gilt chairs, and, in front of the narrow barred window, a gilt
cage with a green and crimson macaw.

All this, standing by the door shading his eyes from the dazzling
crystal candelabra, he took in. Then suddenly saw something that swept
away the rest--Hesther and Dunbar standing together, hand in hand, by
the window. He gave a cry of joy, hurrying towards them. It was as
though he had not seen them for years; they caught his hand in theirs;
Crispin was there watching them like a benevolent father with his
beloved children.

"That's right," he said. "Make the most of your time together. I want
you to have a last talk."

He sat down on one of the gilt chairs.

"Won't you sit down? In a moment I shall leave you alone together for a
little while. In case you have any last words. . . ." Then he leaned
forward in that fashion so familiar now to Harkness, huddled together,
his red hair and little eyes and pale white soft hands alone alive.
"Well, and so--in my power, are you not? The three of you. You can laugh
at my ugliness and my stupidity and my bad character, but now you are in
my hands completely. I can do whatever I like with you. Whatever . . .
the last shame, the last indignity, the uttermost pain. I, ludicrous
creature that I am, have absolute power over three fine young things
like you, so strong, so beautiful. And then more power and then more and
then more. And over many finer, grander, more beautiful than you. I can
say crawl and you will crawl, dance and you will dance. . . . I who am
so ugly that every one has always laughed at me. I am a little God, and
perhaps not so little, and soon God Himself. . . ."

He broke off, making the movement of music in the air with his hands.

"You a little overestimate the situation," said Harkness, quietly. "For
the moment you can do what you like with our bodies because you happen
to have two servants who, with their Jiu-Jitsu and the rest of their
tricks, are stronger than we are. It is not you who are stronger, but
your servants whom your money is able to buy. I guess if I had you tied
to a pillar and myself with a gun in my hand I could make you look
pretty small. And in any case it is only our bodies that you can do
anything with. Ourselves--our real selves--you can't touch."

"Is that so?" said Crispin. "But I have not begun. The fun is all to
come. We will see whether I can touch you or no. And for my
daughter-in-law"--he looked at Hesther--"there is plenty of time--many
years perhaps."

Nothing in all his life would ever appeal more to Harkness than Hesther
then. From the first moment of his sight of her what had attracted him
had been the exquisite mingling of the child and of the woman. She had
been for him at first some sort of deserted waif who had experienced all
the cruelty and harshness of life so desperately early that she had
known life upside down, and this had given her a woman's endurance and
fortitude. She was like a child who has dressed up in her mother's
clothes for a party and then finds that she must take her mother's
place.

And now when she must, after this terrible night, be physically beyond
all her resources she seemed, in her shabby ill-made dress, her hair
disordered, her face pale, her eyes ringed with grey, to have a new
courage that must be similar to that which he had himself been given.
She kept her hand in Dunbar's, and with a strange dim unexpected pain
Harkness realised that new relation between the two of which he had made
the foundation had grown through danger and anxiety the one for another
already to a fine height. Then he was conscious that Hesther was
speaking. She had come forward quite close to Crispin and stood in front
of him looking him calmly and clearly in the eyes.

"Please let me say something. After all I am the principal person in
this. If it hadn't been for me there would not have been any of this
trouble. I married your son. I married him, not because I loved him, but
because I wanted things that I thought that you could give me. I see now
how wrong that was and that I must pay for doing such a thing. I am
ready to do right by your son. I never would have tried to run away if
it had not been for you--the other night. After that I was right to do
everything I could to get away. I begged your son first--and he refused.
You have had me watched during the last three weeks--every step that I
have taken. What could I do but try to escape?

"We've failed, and because we've failed and because it has been all my
fault I want you to punish me in any way you like but to let my two
friends go. I was not wrong to try to escape." She threw up her head
proudly, "I was right after the way you had behaved to me, but now it is
different. I have brought them into this. They have done nothing wrong.
You must let them go."

"You must let all of us go." Dunbar broke in hotly, starting forward to
Hesther's side. "Do you think we're afraid of you, you old play-acting
red-haired monkey? You just let us free or it will be the worse for you.
Do you know where you'll be this time to-morrow? Beating your fancy
coloured hair against a padded cell, and that's where you should have
been years ago."

"No, no," Hesther broke in. "No, no, David. That's not the way. You
don't understand. Don't listen to him. I'm the only one in this, I tell
you--can't you hear me?--that I will stay. I won't try to run away, you
can do anything to me you like. I'll obey you--I will indeed. Please,
please-- Don't listen to him. He doesn't understand. But I do. Let them
go. They've done no harm. They only wanted to help me. They didn't mean
anything against you. They didn't truly. Oh! let them go! Let them go!"

In spite of her struggle for self-control her terror was rising, her
terror never for herself but now only for them. She knew, more than
they, of what he was. She saw perhaps in his face more than they would
ever see.

But Harkness saw enough. He saw rising into Crispin's eyes the soul of
that strange hairy fetid-smelling animal between whose paws Crispin's
own soul was now lying. That animal looked out of Crispin's eyes. And
behind that gaze was Crispin's own terror.

Crispin said:

"This is very comforting for me. I have waited for this moment." Then
Harkness came over to him and stood very close to him.

"Crispin, listen to me. It isn't the three of us who matter in this, it
is yourself. Whatever you do to us we are safe. Whatever you think or
hope you can't touch the real part of us, but for yourself to-night this
is a matter of life or death.

"I may know nothing about medicine and yet know enough to tell you that
you're a sick man--badly sick--and if you let this animal that has his
grip on you get the better of you in the next two hours you're finished,
you're dead. You know that as well as I. You know that you're possessed
of an evil spirit as surely as the man with the spirits that cleared the
Gadarene swine into the sea. It isn't for our sakes that I ask you to
let us go to-night. Let us go. You'll never hear from any of us again.
In the morning, in the decent daylight, you'll know that you've won a
victory more important than any you've ever won in your life.

"You talk about mastering us, man. Master your own evil spirit. You know
that you loathe it, that you've loathed it for years, that you are
miserable and wretched under it. It is life or death for you to-night, I
tell you. You know that as well as I."

For one moment, a brief flashing moment, Harkness met for the first and
for the last time the real Crispin. No one else saw that meeting.
Straight into the eyes, gazing out of them exactly as a prisoner gazes
from behind iron bars, jumped the real Crispin, something sad, starved
and dying. One instant of recognition and he was gone.

"That is very kind of you, Mr. Harkness," Crispin said. "I knew that I
should enjoy this quarter of an hour's chat with you all and truly I am
enjoying it. My friend Dunbar shows himself to be quite frankly the
young ruffian he is. It will be interesting to see whether in--say an
hour's time from now--he is still in the same mind. I doubt it; quite
frankly I doubt it very much. It is these robust natures that break the
easiest. But you other two--really how charming. All altruism and
unselfishness. This lady has no thought for anything but her friends,
and Mr. Harkness, like all Americans, is full of fine idealism. And you
are all standing round me as though you were my children listening to a
fairy story. Such a pretty picture!

"And when you come to think of it here I am quite alone, all
defenceless, one to three. Why don't you attack me? Such an admirable
opportunity! Can it be fear? Fear of an old fat ugly man like me, a man
at whom every one laughs!"

Dunbar made a movement. Harkness cried: "Don't move, Dunbar. Don't touch
him. That's what he wants."

Crispin got up. They were now all standing in a little group close
together. Crispin gathered his dressing-gown around him.

"The time is nearly up," he said. "I am going to leave you alone
together for a little last talk. You'll never see one another again
after this, so you had best make the most of it. You see that I am not
really unkind."

"It is hopeless." Harkness turned round to the window. "God help us
all."

"Yes, it is hopeless," Crispin said gently. "At last my time has come.
Do you know how long I have waited for it? Do you know what you
represent to me? You have done me wrong, the two of you, broken my
hospitality, betrayed my bread and salt, invaded my home. I have justice
if I punish you for that. But you stand also for all the others, for all
who have insulted me and laughed at me and mocked at me. I have power at
last. I shall prick you and you shall bleed. I shall spit on you and you
shall bow your heads, and then when you are at my feet stung with a
thousand wounds I will raise you and care for you and love you, and you
shall share my power----"

He jumped suddenly from his gilt chair and stuttered, waving his hands
as though he were commanding an army, towards the macaw who was asleep
with his head under his crimson wing. "I shall be king in my own right,
king of men, emperor of mankind, then one with the gods, and at the last
I will shower my gifts. . . ."

He broke off, looking up at a red lacquer clock that stood on a little
round gilt table. "Time--time--time nearly up!" He swung round upon the
three of them.

Dunbar burst out:

"Don't flatter yourself that you'll get away to-morrow. When we're
missed----"

"You won't be missed," Crispin answered with a sigh, as though he deeply
regretted the fact. "The hotel will receive a note in the morning saying
that Mr. Harkness has gone for a coast walk, will return in a week, and
will the hotel kindly keep his things until his return? Of course the
hotel most kindly will. For Mr. Dunbar--well, I believe there is only an
aunt in Gloucester, is there not? It will be, I imagine, a month at
least before she makes any inquiry. Possibly a year. Possibly never. Who
knows? Aunts are often extraordinarily careless about their nephew's
safety. And in a week. Where can one not be in a week in these modern
days? Very far indeed. Then there is the sea. Anything dropped from the
garden over the cliff so completely vanishes, and their faces are so
often--well, spoilt beyond recognition. . . ."

"If you do this," Hesther cried, "I will----"

"I regret to say," interrupted Crispin, "that after eight this morning
you will not see your father-in-law of whom you are so fond for six
months at least. Ah, that is good news for you, I am sure. That is not
to say you will never see him again. Dear me, no. But not immediately.
Not immediately!"

Harkness caught Hesther's hand. He saw that she was about to make some
desperate movement. "Wait," he said; "wait. We can do nothing now."

For answer she drew him to her and flung out her hand to Dunbar. "We
three. We love one another," she cried. "Do your worst."

Crispin looked once more at the clock. "Melodrama," he said. "I, too,
will be melodramatic. I give you twenty minutes by that clock--a
situation familiar to every theatre-goer. When that clock strikes six I
shall, I'm afraid, want the company of both of you gentlemen. Make your
adieus then to the lady. Your eternal adieus."

He smiled and gently tip-toed from the room.



IV


"And so the curtain falls on Act Three of this pleasant little drama,"
said Dunbar, huskily, turning towards the window. "There will be a
twenty minutes' interval. But the last act will be played _in camera._
If only one wasn't so beastly tired--and if only it wasn't all my
fault. . . ." His voice broke.

Harkness went up to him, put his arm around him and drew him to him.
"Look here. I'm older than both of you. I might almost be your father,
so you've got to obey my orders. I'll be best man at your wedding yet,
David, yours and Hesther's. There's nobody to blame. Nothing but the
fog. But don't let's cheat ourselves either. We're shut up here at
half-past five in the morning miles from any help, no way out, no
telephone, and two damn Japs who are stronger than we are, in the power
of a man who's as mad as a hatter and as bloodthirsty as a tiger.

"It's going to be all right, I tell you. I know it. I feel it in my
bones. But we've got to behave for these twenty minutes--only seventeen
of them now--as though it won't be. It's of no use for us to make any
plan. We'll have to do something on the spur of the moment when we see
what the old devil has up his sleeve for us----"

"Meanwhile, as I say, make the best of these minutes."

He put out his arm and drew Hesther in.

"I tell you that I love you both. I've only known you a day, but I love
you as I've never loved any one in my life before. I love you as father
and brother and comrade. It's the best thing that has happened to me in
all my life."

The three, body to body, stood looking out through the gilded bars at
the sky, silver grey, and washed with shifting shadows.

"After all," he went on, "if our luck doesn't hold, and we are going to
die in the next hour or so, what is it? It's only what millions of
fellows passed through in the war and under much more terrible
conditions. Imagination is the worst part of that I fancy, and I suggest
that we don't think of what is going to happen when this time is
over--whether it goes well or ill--we'll fill these twenty minutes with
every decent thought we've got, we'll think of every fine thing that we
know of, and every beautiful thing, and everything that is of good
report."

"All I pray," said Dunbar, "is that I may have one last dash at that
lunatic before good-bye. He can have a hundred Japs around him but I'll
get at him somehow. Harkness, you're a brick. I brought you into this. I
had no right to, but I'm not going to apologise. We're here. The thing's
done, and if it hadn't been for that rotten fog----But you're right,
Harkness. We'll think of all the ripping things we know. With me it's
simple enough. Because the beginning and the middle and the end of it is
Hesther. Hesther first and Hesther second and Hesther all the time."

He didn't look at her, but stared out of the window.

"By Jove, the sun's coming. It's been up round the corner ever so long.
It will just about hit the window in another ten minutes. It seems kind
of stupid to stand here doing nothing."

He stepped forward and felt the bars. "Take hours to get through that,
and then there's a drop of hundreds of feet. No, you're about right,
Harkness. There's nothing to be done here but to say good-bye as
decently as possible."

He sighed. "I didn't want to kick the bucket just yet, but there it is,
it can happen to anybody. A fellow can be as strong as a horse, forget
to change his socks and next day be finished. This is better than
pneumonia anyway! All the same I can't help feeling we missed our chance
just now when we had him alone in here----"

"No," said Harkness, "I was watching him. That's what he wanted, for us
to go for him. I am sure that he had the Japs handy somewhere, and I
think he wanted to hurt us in front of Hesther. But his brain works
queerly. He's formulated a kind of book of rules for himself. If we take
such and such a step then he will take such and such another. A sort of
insane sense of justice. He's worked it all out to the minute. Half the
fun for him has been the planning of it, and then the deliberate
slowness of it, watching us, calculating what we'll do. Really a cat
with mice. There's nothing for deliberate consecutive thinking like a
madman's brain."

Hesther broke in:

"We're wasting time. I know--I feel as you do--that it's going to be all
right, but however he fails with you he _can_ carry me off somewhere,
and so it _is_ very likely that I don't see either of you again for some
time. And if that's so--_if_ that's so, I just want to say that you've
been the finest men in the world to me.

"And I want you to know that whatever turns up for me now--yes, whatever
it is--it _can't_ be as bad as it was before yesterday. I can't ever
again be as unhappy as I was now that I've known both of you as I've
known you this night.

"I didn't realise, David, how I felt about you until Mr. Harkness showed
me. I've been so selfish all these years, and I suppose I shall go on
being selfish, because one doesn't change all in a minute, but at least
I've got the two best friends a woman ever had."

"Hesther," Dunbar said, turning towards her, "if we get free of this and
you can get rid of that man--I ask you as I've asked you every week for
the last ten years--will you marry me?"

"Yes," she said. But for the moment she turned to Harkness. He was
looking through the bars out to the sky where the mist was now very
faintly rose like the coloured smoke of far distant fire. She put her
hand on his shoulder, keeping her other hand in Dunbar's.

"I don't know why you said you were so much older than we are. You're
not. Do you promise to be the friend of both of us always?"

"Yes," he said. Something mockingly repeated in his brain, "It is a far
better thing that I do----"

He burst out laughing. The macaw awoke, put up his head and screamed.

"You are both younger by centuries than I," he said. "I was born old. I
was born with the Old Man of Europe singing in my ears. I was born to
the inheritance of borrowed culture. The gifts that the fairies gave me
at my cradle were Michael Angelo's 'David,' Rembrandt's 'Goldweigher's
Field,' the 'Temples at Pæstum,' the Da Vinci 'Last Supper,' the
Breughels at Vienna, the view of the Jungfrau from Mürren, the Grand
Canal at dawn, Hogarth's prints, and the Quintet of the _Meistersinger._
Yes, the gifts were piled up all right. But just as they were all
showered upon me in stepped the Wicked Fairy and said that I should have
them all--on condition that I didn't touch! Never touch--never. At least
I've known that they were there, at least I've bent the knee, but--until
last night--until last night. . . ."

He suddenly took Hesther's face between his two hands, kissed her on the
forehead, on the eyes, on the mouth:

"I don't know what's coming in a quarter of an hour. I don't like to
think. To tell you the truth I'm in the devil of a funk. But I love you,
I love you, I love you. Like an uncle you know or at least like a
brother. You've taken a match and set fire to this old tinder-box that's
been dry and dusty so long, and now it's alight--such a pretty blaze!"

He broke away from them both with a smile that suddenly made him look
young as they'd never seen him:

"I've danced the town, I've climbed rocks. I've dared the devil. I've
fallen in love, and I know at last that there's such a hunger for beauty
in my soul that it must go on and on and on. Why should it be there? My
parents hadn't it, my sisters haven't it, no one tried to give it to me.
I've done nothing with it until last night, but now when I've needed it,
it's come to my help. I've touched life at last. I'm alive. I never can
die any more!"

The macaw screamed again and again, beating at the cage with its wings.

"Hesther, never lose courage. Remember that he can't touch you, that no
one can touch you. You're your own immortal mistress."

The red-lacquered clock struck the quarter, and at the same moment the
sun hit the window. Strange to see how instantly that room with the
coloured pagodas, the fantastic temple, the gilt chairs and the purple
carpet shivered into tinsel. The dust floated on the ladder of the sun:
the blue of the early morning sky was coloured faintly like a bird's
wing.

The sun flooded the room, wrapping them all in its mantle.

"Let's sit down," said Dunbar, pulling three of the gilt chairs into the
centre of the room where the sun shone brightest. "I've a kind of idea
that we'll need all the strength we've got in a few minutes. That's fine
what you said, Harkness, about being alive, although I didn't follow you
altogether.

"I'm not very artistic. A man who's been on the sea since he was a small
kid doesn't go to many picture galleries and he doesn't read books much
either. To tell you the truth there's always such a lot to do, and when
I've finished the _Daily Mail_ there doesn't seem time for much more,
except a shocker sometimes. The sort of mess we're in now wouldn't make
a bad shocker, would it? Only you'd never be able to make Crispin
convincing. All I know is, if I wrote a book about him I'd have him
tortured at the end with little red devils and plenty of pincers.
However, I get what you mean, Harkness, about being alive.

"I felt something of the same thing in the war sometimes. At Jutland,
although I was in the devil of a funk all the time, I was sort of
pleased with myself too. Life's always seemed a bit unreal since the
armistice, until last night. And it's a funny thing, but when I was
helping Hesther climb out of that window and expecting Crispin Junior to
poke his head up any minute I had just that same pleased-all-over
feeling that I had at Jutland. So that's about the same as you feel,
Harkness, only different, of course, because of your education. . . .
Hesther, if we win out of this and you marry me I'll be so good to
you--so good to you--that----"

He beat his hands desperately on his knees. "Here's the time slipping
and we don't seem to be doing anything with it. It's always been my
trouble that I've never been able to say what I mean--couldn't find
words, you know. I can't now, but it's simple enough what I mean----"

Hesther said: "If we only have ten minutes like this it's so hard to
choose what you would say, but I'd like you to know, David, that I
remember everything we've ever done together--the time I missed the
train at Truro and was so frightened about father, and you said you'd
come in with me, and father hadn't even noticed I'd been away; and the
time you brought me the pink fan from Madrid; and the time I had that
fever and you sat up all night outside my room, those two days father
was away; and the day Billy fell over the Bring Rock and you climbed
down after him; and the time you brought me that Sealyham and father
wouldn't let me have him; and the time just before you went off to South
Africa and I wouldn't say good-bye. I've hurt you so many times and
you've never been angry with me once--or only that once. Do you remember
the day I struck you in the face because you said I was more like a boy
than a girl? I thought you were laughing at me because I was so untidy
and dirty and so I hit you. And do you remember you sprang on me like a
tiger, and for a moment I thought you were going to kill me? You said no
one had ever struck you without getting it back. Then suddenly you
pulled yourself in--just like going inside and shutting your door.

"I've never seen you until to-night, David. I've been blind to you.
You've been too close to me for me to see you. It will be all right.
We'll come out of this and then we'll have such times--such wonderful
times----"

She came up to him, drew his head to her breast. He knelt on the floor
at her feet, his arms round her, his head on her bosom. She stroked his
hair, looking out beyond him to the blue of the sky.

Harkness felt a mad wildness of impatience. He went to the window and
tugged at the bars. In despair his hands fell to his side.

"The only chance, Dunbar, is to go straight for him the moment we're out
of this room, even if those damned Japs are with him. We can't do much,
but we may smash him up a bit first. Then there's Jabez. We've forgotten
Jabez. Where's he been all this time?"

Dunbar looked up. "I expect he went home after we went off."

"No," said Harkness, "he was to be there till six. He told me. What's
happened to him? At any rate he'll give the alarm if we don't turn up."

"No, he'll think we got safely off."

"Yes, I suppose he will. My God, it's five to six. Look here, stand up a
moment."

They stood up.

"Let's take hands. Let's swear this. Whatever happens to us now, whether
some of us survive or none, whether we die now or live happily ever
afterwards, we'll be friends forever, nothing shall ever separate us,
for better or worse we're together for always."

They swore it.

"And see here. If I don't come out of this don't have any regrets either
of you. Don't think you brought me into this against my will. Don't
think that whichever way it goes I regret a moment of it. You've given
me the finest time."

Dunbar laughed. "I sort of feel we're going to have a chance yet. After
all, he's been probably playing with us, trying to frighten us. There'll
be nothing in it, you see. Anyway I'll get a crack at his skull, and now
that I've got you, Hesther, I wouldn't give up this night for all the
wealth of the Indies. I don't know about life or death. I've never
thought much about it, to tell you the honest truth, but I bet that any
one who's as fond of any one as I am of you can't be very far away
whatever happens to their body."

"There goes six."

The red lacquer clock struck. Hesther flung her arms around Harkness and
kissed him, then Dunbar.

They all stood listening. Just as the clock ceased there was a knock at
the door.



V


Harkness went to the door and opened it; not Crispin, as he had
expected, but one of the Japanese.

For the first time he spoke:

"Beg your pardon, sir. The master would be glad you see him upstairs."
Harkness did not look back. He knew that Dunbar and Hesther were clasped
tightly in one another's arms. He walked out closing the door behind
him. He stood with the Japanese in the small space waiting. It was a dim
subdued light out here. You could only see the thick stone steps of the
circular staircase winding upwards out of sight. Harkness's brain was
working now with feverish activity. Whatever Crispin's devilish plan
might be he would be there to watch the climax of it. If Harkness and
Dunbar were quick enough they could surely have Crispin throttled before
the Japanese were in time; without Crispin it was likely enough that the
Japanese would be passive. This was no affair of theirs. They simply
obeyed their master's orders.

He wondered why he had not attempted something in that room just now,
why, indeed, he had prevented Dunbar; but some instinct had told him
then that Crispin was longing to shame them in some way before Hesther.
He had then an almost overpowering impulse to turn back, run into that
room, fling his arms about Hesther and hold her until those devils
pulled them apart. It was an impulse that rose blinding his eyes,
deafening his ears, stunning his brain. He half turned. The door opened
and Dunbar came out. Harkness sighed with relief. At the sight of Dunbar
the temptation left him.

They mounted the stairs, one Japanese in front of them, the other
behind. At the next break in the flight the Japanese turned and opened a
door on the left.

"In here, gentlemen, if you please," he said, bowing.

They entered a small room with no windows, quite dark save for one dim
electric light in the ceiling, and without furniture save for two wicker
chairs.

They stood there waiting. "The master," said the Japanese, "he much
obliged if you gentlemen will kindly take your clothes off."

For a moment there was silence. They had not realised the words. Then
Dunbar broke out: "No, by God, no! Strip for that swine! Harkness come
on! You go for that fellow, I'll take this one!" and instantly he had
hurled himself on the Japanese nearest the door.

Harkness flung at the one who had spoken. He was conscious of his
fingers clutching at the thin cotton stuff of the clothes, and, beneath
the clothes, the cold hard steel of the limbs. His arms gripped upwards,
caught the cloth of the shirt, tore it, slipped on the smooth hairless
chest. Then in his left forearm there was a pain, sharp as though some
ravenous animal had bitten him there, then an agony in the middle of his
back, then in his left thigh.

Against his will he cried out; the pain was terrible--awful. Every nerve
in his body was rebelling so that he had neither strength nor force. He
slipped to the floor, writhing involuntarily with the agony of the
twisted muscle and, even as he slipped, he saw sliding down over him,
impervious, motionless, fixed like a shining mask, the face of the
Japanese.

He lay on the floor; panic flooded him. His helplessness, the terror of
what was coming next, the fright of the dark--it was all he could do at
that moment not to burst into tears and cry like a child.

He was lying on the floor, and the Japanese, kneeling beside him, had
one arm under him as though to make his position more comfortable.

"Very sorry," the Japanese murmured in his ear; "the master's orders."

As the pain withdrew he felt only an intense relief and thankfulness. He
did not care about what had gone before nor mind what followed. All he
wished was to be left like that until the wild beating of his heart
softened and his pulse was again tranquil.

Then he thought of Dunbar. He turned his head and saw that Dunbar also
was lying on the floor, on his side. Not a sound came from him. The
other Japanese was bending over him.

"Dunbar!" Harkness cried in a voice that to his own surprise was only a
whisper, "wait. It's no good with these fellows. We'll have our chance
later."

Dunbar replied, the words gritted from between his teeth: "No--it's no
good--with these devils. It's all right though. I'm cheery."

Harkness saw then that the Japanese had been stripping Dunbar, and he
noticed with a curious little wonder that his clothes had been arranged
in a neat tidy pile--his socks, his collar, his braces, on his shirt and
trousers. He saw the Japanese move forward as though to help Dunbar to
his feet; there was a movement as though Dunbar were pushing him away.
He rose to his feet, naked, strong, his head up, swung out his arms,
pushed out his chest.

"No bones broken with their monkey tricks. Hurry up, Harkness. We may as
well go into the sea together. I bet the water's cold."

But no. The Japanese said something. Dunbar broke out:

"I'm damned if I will." Then, turning to Harkness: "He says I've got to
go on by myself. It seems they're going to separate us. Rotten luck, but
there's no fighting these two fellows here. Well, cheerio, Harkness.
You've been a mighty fine pal, if we don't meet again. Only that rotten
fog did us in."

Harkness struggled to his knees. "No, no, Dunbar. They shan't separate
us. They shan't----" but there was a touch of a hand on his arm and
instantly, as though to save at all costs another pressure of that
nerve, he sank back.

Dunbar went out, one of the Japanese following him. The door closed.

Now indeed Harkness needed all his fortitude. He had never felt such
loneliness as this. From the beginning of the adventure there had been
an element so fantastic, so improbable, that except at certain moments
he had never believed in the final reality of it. There was something
laughable, ludicrous about Crispin himself; he had been like a child
playing with his toys. Now absolutely Harkness was face to face with
reality.

Crispin did mean all that he had threatened. And what that might be----!

The Japanese was beginning to take off his clothes, very lightly and
gently pulling his coat from under him. Harkness sat up and assisted
him. This did not matter. Of what significance was it whether he had
clothes or no? What mattered was that he should be out of this horrible
room where there was neither space nor light nor company. Anything
anywhere was better. The Japanese' cool hard fingers slipped about his
body. He himself undid his collar and mechanically dropped his
collar-stud into the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat, where he always
put it when he was undressing. He bent forward and took off his shoes.

The Japanese gravely thanked him. There was a small hole in his right
sock and he slipped it off quickly, covering it with his other hand. He
was ashamed for the Japanese to see it.

His clothes were piled as neatly as Dunbar's. He stood up feeling
freshened and cool.

Then the Japanese, bowing, moved to the door. Harkness followed him.

They climbed the stairs once more, the stone striking cold under
Harkness's bare feet. They must now be reaching the very top of the
Tower. There was a sense of space and height about them and a stronger
light.

The Japanese paused, pushed back a door and sharply jerked Harkness
forward. Harkness nearly fell, but was caught by some one else, closed
his eyes involuntarily against a flood of light into which he seemed,
with a curious sensation as though he had dived from a great height, to
be sinking ever deeper and deeper, then to be struggling up through
bursting bubbles of colour. His eyes were still closed against the sun
that pressed like a warm palm upon the lids.

He felt hands moving about him. Then that he was held back against
something cold, then that he was being bound, gently, smoothly; the
bands did not hurt his flesh. There was a pause. He still kept his eyes
closed. Was this death then? The sun beat upon his body warm and strong.
The cool of the pillar to which he was bound was pleasant against his
back. There were boards beneath his feet, and on their dry, friendly
surface his toes curled. A delicious soft lethargy wrapped him round.
Was this death? One sharp pang like the pressure of an aching tooth and
then nothing. Sinking into dark silence through this shaft of deep and
burning sunlight. . . .

He opened his eyes. He cried aloud with astonishment. He was in what was
plainly the top room of the Tower, a high white place with a round
ceiling softly primrose. One high window went the length from floor to
ceiling, and this window, which was without bars, blazed with sun and
shone with the colours of the early morning blue. The room was
white--pure virgin white--round, and bare of furniture. Only--and this
was what had caught the cry from Harkness--three pillars supported the
ceiling, and to these three pillars were bound by white cord, first
himself, then Dunbar, then, naked as they, Jabez.

The fisherman stood there facing Harkness--a gigantic figure. Yesterday
afternoon on the hill, last night in the garden Harkness had not
recognised the man's huge proportions under his clothes. Now, bound
there, with his black hair and beard, his great chest, the muscle of his
arms and thighs, the sunlight bathing him, he was mighty to see.

His eyes were mild and puzzled like the eyes of a dog who has been
chained against reason. He was making a strange restless motion from
side to side as though he were testing the white cords that held him.
His face above his beard, his neck, the upper part of his chest, his
hands, his legs beneath the knees, were a deep russet brown, the rest of
him a fair white, striking strangely with the jet blackness of his hair.

He smiled as he saw Harkness's astonishment.

"Aye, sir," he said. "It wasn't me you was expectin' to see here, and it
wasn't myself that was expectin' to be here neither."

They were alone--no Japanese, no Crispin.

"I've been in here half an hour before you come," he went on. "And I can
tell you, sir, I was mighty sorry to see them bringin' both you
gentlemen in. Whatever happens to me, I said, they've got clear away. It
never kind of struck me that the fog was going to worry you."

"Why didn't you get away yourself, Jabez?" Harkness asked him.

"They was down on me about an hour after. The fog had come on pretty
thick and I was walkin' up and down out there thinkin'. I hadn't no more
than another hour of it and pleasin' myself to think how mad that old
devil would be when he'd found out what had happened and me safe in my
own house with the mother, when all of a sudden I hear the car snortin'.
'Somethin' up,' I says, and three seconds later, as you might say, they
was on me. If it hadn't been for that fog I might of got clear, but they
was on me before I knew it. I had a bit of a struggle with they dirty
stinkin' foreigners, but they got a lot of dirty tricks an Englishman
would be ashamed of using. Anyway they had me down on the ground pretty
quick and hurt me too.

"They trussed me up like a fowl, carried me into the hall, and didn't
the old red-headed devil spit and curse? You've never seen nothing like
it, sir. Sure raving mad he was that time all right. And he came and
kicked me on the face and pulled my beard and spat in my eyes. I don't
know what's coming to us right now, but I pray the Almighty Father to
give me just one turn with my fist. I'll land him.

"Then, sir, they carried me upstairs and tumbled me into a dark room.
There I was for I wouldn't like to say how long. Then they came in and
took my things off me, the dirty foreigners. It's only a foreigner would
think of a thing like that. I struggled a bit, but what's the use? They
put their thumb in your back and they've got you. Then they tied me up
here. I had to laugh, I did really. Did you ever see such a comic
picture as all three of us without a stitch between us tied up here at
six in the morning?

"When I tell mother about it she'll laugh all right. Like the show down
to St. Ives when they have the boxing. I suppose we'll be getting out of
this all serene, sir, won't we?"

"Of course we will," said Dunbar. "Don't you worry, Jabez. He's been
doing all this to frighten us. He daren't touch us really. Why, he'll
have the county about his ears as it is. Don't you worry."

"Thank you, sir," said Jabez, still moving from side to side within the
bands, "because you see, sir, I wouldn't like anything to happen to me
just now. Mother's expectin' an addition to the family in a month or so
and there's six on 'em already, an' it needs a bit of doing looking
after them all. I wouldn't have been working for this dirty blackguard
here if it hadn't been for there being so many of us--not that I'd have
one of them away if you understand me, sir."

"You needn't be afraid, Jabez," Dunbar said. "When we get out of this
Mr. Harkness and I will see that you never have any anxiety again.
You've been a wonderful friend to us to-night and we're not likely to
forget it."

"Oh, don't you mistake me, sir," said Jabez. "It wasn't no help I was
asking for. I'm doing very well with the boat and the potatoes. It was
only I was thinking I wouldn't like nothing exactly to happen to me
along of this crazy lunatic here if you understand me, sir. . . . I'm
not so sure if they give me time I couldn't get through these bits of
rope here. I'm pretty strong in the arm, or used to be--not so dusty
even now. If I could work at them a bit----"

The door opened and Crispin came in.

He appeared to Harkness as he stepped in, quietly closing the door
behind him, like some strange creature of a dream. He seemed himself, in
the way that he moved with his eyes nearly closed, somnambulistic. He
was wearing now only his white silk pyjamas, and of these the sleeves
were rolled up showing his fat white arms. His red hair stood on end
like an ill-fitting wig. In one hand he carried a curved knife with a
handle of worked gold.

In the room, blazing with sunlight, he was like a creature straight from
the boards of some neighbouring theatre, even to the white powder that
lay in dry flakes upon his face.

He opened his eyes, staring at the sunlight, and in their depths
Harkness saw the strangest mingling of terror, pathos, eager lust, and a
bewildered amazement, as though he were tranced. The gaze with which he
turned to Harkness had in it a sudden appeal; then that appeal sank like
light quenched by water.

He was wrung up on the instant to intensest excitement. His whole body
trembled. His mouth opened as though he would speak, then closed again.

He came close to Harkness. He put out his hand and touched his neck.

"We are alone," he said, in his soft beautiful voice. He stroked
Harkness's neck. The soft boneless fingers. Harkness looked at him, and,
strangely, at that moment their eyes were very close to one another.
They looked at one another gently. In Harkness's eyes was no malice; in
Crispin's that strange mingling of lust and unhappiness.

Harkness only said: "Crispin, whatever you do to us leave that girl
alone. I beg you leave her. . . ."

He closed his eyes then. God helping him he would not speak another
word. But a triumphant exultation surged through him because he knew
that he was not afraid.

There was no fear in him. It was as though the warm sun beating on his
body gave him courage.

Standing behind the safeguard of his closed eyes his real soul seemed to
slip away, to run down the circular staircase into the hall and pass
happily into the garden, down the road to the sea.

His soul was free and Crispin's was imprisoned.

He heard Crispin's voice: "Will you admit now that I have you in my
hand? If I touch you here how you will bleed--bleed to death if I do not
prevent it. Do you remember Shylock and his pound of flesh? 'Oh! upright
Judge!' But there is no judge here to stay me!"

The knife touched him. He felt it as though it had been a wasp's
sting--a small cut it must be--and suddenly there was the cool trickle
of blood down his skin. Then his right shoulder--a prick! Now a cut
again on his arm. Stings--nothing more. But the end had really come then
at last? His hands beneath the bonds moved suddenly of their own
impulse. It was not natural not to strive to be free, to fight for his
life.

He opened his eyes. He was bleeding from five or six little cuts.
Crispin was standing away from him. He saw that Dunbar, crimson in the
face, was struggling frantically with his cords and was shouting. Jabez,
too, was calling out. The room, hitherto so quiet, was alive with
movement. Crispin now stood back from him watching him. The sight of
blood had completed what these weeks had been preparing.

With that first touch of the knife on Harkness's body Crispin's soul had
died. The battle was over. There was an animal here clothed
fantastically in human clothes like a monkey or a dog at a music-hall
show. The animal capered, stood on its hind legs, mowed in the air with
its hands. It crept up to Harkness and, whining like a dog, pricked him
with the knife point now here, now there, in a hundred places.

Harkness looked out once more at the great window with its splash of
glorious sky, then ceased to struggle with his cords. His lips moved in
some prayer perhaps, and once more, surely now for the last time, he
closed his eyes. He had a strange vision of all the moving world beyond
that window. At that moment at the hotel the maids would be sweeping the
corridors, people would be stirring and rubbing their eyes and looking
at their watches; in the town family breakfasts would be preparing, men
would be sauntering down the narrow streets to their work; the
connection with the London train would be running in with the London
papers, already the men and women would be in the fields, the women
would be waiting perhaps for the fishing-fleet to come in, Mrs. Jabez
would be at the cottage door looking up the road for her husband. . . .

His heart pounded into his mouth, with a mighty impulse he drove it
back. Crispin was laughing. The knife was raised. His face was wrinkled.
He was running round the room, round and round, making with the knife
strange movements in the air. He was whispering to himself. Round and
round and round he ran, words pouring from his mouth in a thick unending
stream. They were not words, they were sounds, and once and again a
strange sigh like a catch of the breath, like a choke in the throat. He
ran, bending, not looking at the three men, bending low as though as he
ran he were looking for something on the floor.

Then quite suddenly he straightened himself, and with a growl and a
snarl, the knife raised in one hand, hurled himself at Jabez.

All followed then quickly. The knife flashed in the sunlight. It seemed
that the hands caught at Jabez's eyes, first one and then another, but
there had been more than the hands because suddenly blood poured from
those eyes, spouting over, covering the face, mingling with the beard.

With a great cry Jabez put forth his strength. Stung by agony to a power
that he had never known until then his body seemed to rise from the
ground, to become something superhuman, immortal. The great head
towered, the limbs spread out, it seemed for a moment as though the
pillar itself would fall.

The cord that tied him to the pillar snapped and his hands were free. He
tottered, the blood pouring from his face. He moved, blindly,
staggering. Not a sound had come from him since that first cry.

His hands flung out, and in another moment Crispin was caught into his
arms. He raised him. The little fat hands fluttered. The knife flashed
loosely and fell to the ground. The giant swung into the middle of the
room blinded, but holding to himself ever tighter and ever tighter the
short fat body.

Crispin, his head tossed back, his legs flung out in an agony now of
terror, screamed with a strange shrill cry like a rabbit entrapped.

Jabez turned, and now he had Crispin's soft chest against his bleeding
face, the arms fluttering above his head. As he turned his shoulder
touched the glass of the window. He pushed backward with his arm and the
window swung open, some of the broken glass tinkling to the ground.
There was a great rush of air.

That strange thing, like no human body, the white silk, the brown
slippers, the red hair, swung. For one second of time, suspended as it
were on the thread of that long animal scream, so shrill and yet so thin
and distant, the white face, its little eyes staring, the painted mouth
open, hung towards Harkness. Then into the air like a coloured bundle of
worthless junk, for a moment a dark shadow across the steeple of
sunlight, and then down, down, into fathomless depths of air, leaving
the space of sky stainless, the morning blue without taint. . . .

Jabez stood for a moment facing them, his chest heaving in convulsive
pants. Then crying, "My eyes! My eyes!" crumpled to the floor.



VI


First Harkness was conscious of a wonderful silence. Then into the
silence, borne in on the back of the sea breeze, he heard the wild
chattering of a multitude of birds. The room was filled with their
chatter, up from the trees, crowding the room with their life.

Straight past the window, like an arrow shot from a bow, flashed a
sea-gull. Then another more slowly wheeled down, curving against the
blue like a wave released into air.

He recognized all these things, and then once again that wonderful
blessed stillness. All was peace, all repose. He might rest for ever.

After, it seemed, an infinity of time, and from a vast distance, he
caught Dunbar's voice:

". . . Jabez! Jabez! Jabez, old fellow! The man's fainted. Harkness, are
you all right? Did he hurt you?"

"No," Harkness quietly answered. "He didn't hurt me. He meant to,
though. . . ." Then a green curtain of dark thick cloth swept through
the heavens and caught him into its folds. He knew nothing more. The
last thing he heard was the glorious happy chattering of the birds.



VII


He slowly climbed an infinity of stairs, up and up and up. The stairs
were hard to climb, but he knew that at their summit there would be a
glorious view, and, for that view, he would undergo any hardship. But
oh! he was tired, desperately tired. He could hardly raise one foot
above another.

He had been walking with his eyes closed because it was cooler that way.
Then a bee stung him. Then another. On the chest. Now on the arm. Now a
whole flight. He cried out. He opened his eyes.

He was lying on a bed. People were about him. He had been climbing those
stairs naked. It would never do that those strangers should see him. He
must speak of it. His hand touched cloth. He was wearing trousers. His
chest was bare, and some one was bending over him touching places here
and there on his body with something that stung. Not bees after all. He
looked up with mildly wondering eyes and saw a face bending over him--a
kindly bearded face, a face that he could trust. Not like--not
like--that strange mask face of the Japanese. . . . That other. . . .

He struggled on to his elbow crying: "No, no. I can't any more. I've had
enough. He's mad, I tell you----"

A kind rough voice said to him: "That's all right, my friend. That's all
over. No harm done----"

My friend! That sounded good. He looked round him and in the distance
saw Dunbar. He broke into smiles holding out his hand.

"Dunbar, old man! That's fine. So you're all right?"

Dunbar came over, sat on his bed, putting his arm around him.

"All right? I should think so. So are we all. Even Jabez isn't much the
worse. That devil missed his eyes, thank heaven. He'll have two scars to
the end of his time to remind him, though."

Harkness sat up. He knew now where he was, on a sofa in the hall--in the
hall with the tattered banners and the clock that coughed like a dog. He
looked at the clock--just a quarter to seven! Only three-quarters of an
hour since that awful knock on the door.

Then he saw Hesther.

"Oh, thank God!" he whispered to himself. "_Nunc dimittis_. . . ."

She came to him. The three sat together on the sofa, the bearded man
(the doctor from the village under the cliff, Harkness afterwards found)
standing back, looking at them, smiling.

"Now tell me," Harkness said, looking at Dunbar, "the rest that I don't
know."

"There isn't much to tell. We were only there another ten minutes. When
you fainted off I felt a bit queer myself, but I just kept together, and
then heard some one running up the stairs.

"I thought it was one of the Japs returning, but there was a great
banging on the door and then shouting in a good old Cornish accent. I
called back that I was tied up in there and that they must break in the
door. That they did and burst in--two fishermen and old Possiter the
policeman from Duntrent. He's somewhere about the house now with two of
the Treliss policemen. Well, it seems that a fellow, Jack Curtis, was
going up the hill to his morning work in the Creppit fields above the
wood here when he heard a strange cry, and, turning the corner of the
road, finds on the path above the rocks, Crispin--pretty smashed up you
know. He ran--only a yard or two--to the Possiters' cottage. Possiter
was having his breakfast and was up here in no time. They got into the
house through a window and saw the two Japanese clearing off up the back
garden. Curtis chased them but they beat him and vanished into the wood.
They stopped two other men who were passing and then came on Hesther
tied up in the library. She sent them to the Tower."

"Well--and then?" said Harkness.

"There isn't much more. Except this. They got up the doctor, had poor
old Jabez's face looked to and cleared him off down to his cottage, were
examining your cuts--all this down here. Suddenly a car comes up to the
door and in there bursts--young Crispin! The two Treliss policemen had
turned up three minutes earlier in _their_ car and were here alone
except for Possiter examining Crispin Senior--who was pretty well
smashed to pieces I can tell you.

"Crispin Junior breaks through, gives one look at his father, shouts out
some words that no one can understand, puts a revolver to his temple and
blows the top of his head off before any one can stop him. Topples right
over his father's body. The end of the house of Crispin!

"I saw all this from the staircase. I was just coming down after looking
at you. I heard the shot, saw old Possiter jump back and got down in
time to help them clear it all up.

"No one knows where he'd been. To Truro, I imagine, looking for all of
us. He must have cared for that madman, cared for him or been hypnotised
by him--_I_ don't know. At least he didn't hesitate----"

"And now, sir, would you mind telling me . . .?" said the stout
red-faced Treliss policeman, advancing towards them.



VIII


He was free; it was from the moment that the red-faced policeman,
smiling upon him benevolently, had informed him that, for the moment, he
had had from him all that he needed, his one burning and determined
impulse--to get away from that hall, that garden, that house with the
utmost possible urgency.

He had not wished even to stay with Hesther and Dunbar. He would see
them later in the day, would see them, please God, many many times in
the years to come.

What he wanted was to be alone--absolutely alone.

The cuts on the upper part of his body were nothing--a little iodine
would heal them soon; it seemed that there had come to him no physical
harm--only an amazing all-invading weariness. It was not like any
weariness that he had ever before known. He imagined--he had had no
positive experience--that it resembled the conditions of some happy
doped trance, some dream-state in which the world was a vision and
oneself a disembodied spirit. It was as though his body, stricken with
an agony of weariness, was waiting for his descent, but his soul
remained high in air in a bell of crystal glass beyond whose surface the
colours of the world floated about him.

He left them all--the doctor, the policeman, Dunbar and Hesther. He did
not even stop at Jabez's cottage to inquire. That was for later. As
half-past seven struck from the church tower below the hill he flung the
gate behind him, crossed the road, and struck off on to the Downs above
the sea.

By a kind of second sight he knew exactly where he would go. There was a
path that crossed the Downs that ran slipping into a little cove, across
whose breast a stream trickled, then up on to the Downs again, pushing
up over fields of corn, past the cottage gardens up to the very gate of
the hotel.

It was all mapped in his mind in bright clear-painted colours.

The world was indeed as though it had only that morning been painted in
green and blue and gold. While the fog hung, under its canopy the
master-artist had been at work. Now from the shoulder of the Downs a
shimmer of mist tempered the splendour of the day. Harkness could see it
all. The long line of sea on whose blue surface three white sails
hovered, the bend of the Downs where it turned to deeper green, the dip
of the hill out of whose hollow the church spire like a spear
steel-tipped gesticulated, the rising hill with the wood and the tall
white tower, the green Downs far to the right where tiny sheep like
flowers quivered in the early morning haze.

All was peace. The rustling whisper of the sea, the breeze moving
through the taller grasses, the hum of tiny insects, a lark singing, two
dogs barking in rivalry, a scent of herb and salt and fashioned soil,
all these things were peace.

Harkness moved a free man as he had never been in all his life as yet.
He was his own master and God's servant too. Life might be a dream--it
seemed to him that it was--but it was a dream with a meaning, and the
events of that night had given him the key.

His egotism was gone. He wanted nothing for himself any more. He was,
and would always be, himself, but also he had lost himself in the common
life of man. He was himself because his contact with beauty was his own.
Beauty belonged to all men in common, and it was through beauty that
they came to God, but each man found beauty in his own way, and, having
found it, joined his portion of it to the common stock.

He had been shy of man and was shy no longer; he had been in love, was
in love now, but had surrendered it; he had been afraid of physical pain
and was afraid no longer; he had looked his enemy in the eyes and borne
him no ill-will.

But he was conscious of none of these things--only of the freshness of
the morning, of the scents that came to him from every side, and of this
strange disembodied state so that he seemed to float, like gossamer, on
air.

He went down the path to the little cove. He watched the ripple of water
advance and retreat. The stream of fresh water that ran through it was
crystal clear and he bent down, made a cup with his hands and drank. He
could see the pebbles, brown and red and green like jewels, and thin
spires of green weed swaying to and fro.

He buried his face in the water, letting it wash his eyes, his forehead,
his nostrils, his mouth.

He stood up and drank in the silence. The ripple of the sea was like the
touch on his arm of a friend. He kneeled down and let the fine sand run,
hot, through his fingers. Then he moved on.

He climbed the hill: a flock of sheep passed him, huddling together,
crying, nosing the hedge. The sun touched the outline of their fleece to
shining light. He cried out to the shepherd:

"A fine morning!"

"Aye, a beautiful morning!"

"A nasty fog last night."

"Aye, aye--all cleared off now though. It'll be a warm day."

The dog, his tongue out, his eyes shining, ran barking hither, thither.
They passed over the hill, the sheep like a cloud against the green.

He pushed up, the breeze blowing more strongly now on his forehead.

He reached the cottage gardens, and the smell of roses was once more
thick in his nostrils. The chimneys were sending silver skeins of smoke
into the blue air. Bacon smells and scent of fresh bread came to him.

He was at the hotel gates. Oh, but he was weary now! Weary and happy. He
stumbled up the path smelling the roses again. Into the hall. The gong
was ringing for breakfast. Children, crying out and laughing, raced down
the stairs, passed him. He reached his room. He opened the door. How
quiet it was! Just as he had left it.

Ah! there was the tree of the "St. Gilles," and there the grave friendly
eyes of Strang leaning over the etching-table to greet him.

Just as they were--but he!--not as he had been! He caught his face in
the glass smiling idiotically.

He staggered to his bed, flung himself down still smiling. His eyes
closed. There floated up to him a face--a little white face crowned with
red hair, but not evil now, not animal--friendly, lonely, asking for
something. . . .

He smiled, promising something. Lifted his hand. Then his hand fell, and
he sank deep, deep, deep into happy, blissful slumber.



THE END.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: A Romantic Macabre" ***

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