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Title: The wiser folly
Author: LM (Leslie Moore)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The wiser folly" ***
_By Leslie Moore_
The Peacock Feather
The Jester
The Wiser Folly
[Illustration: “FOR ALL HIS OUTWARD CALM, FOR ALL HIS LEVEL, EASY,
CARELESS VOICE, HIS HEART WAS IN A TUMULT.”
Drawn by D. C. Hutchison
(_See Page 179_)]
THE WISER FOLLY
BY
LESLIE MOORE
AUTHOR OF “THE PEACOCK FEATHER,” ETC.
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY
LESLIE MOORE
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE 1
CHAPTER
I.--CONCERNING THE VILLAGE OF
MALFORD 5
II.--A RUMOUR 17
III.--A MEETING 20
IV.--A BLACK AND WHITE GOAT 25
V.--MURAL PAINTINGS 39
VI.--MRS. TRIMWELL 46
VII.--FLIGHTS OF FANCY 56
VIII.--AN OLD PRIEST 61
IX.--AN OLD-TIME TRAGEDY 74
X.--CORIN THEORIZES 85
XI.--IN AN OLD CHURCH 92
XII.--THE WICKEDNESS OF MOLLY
BIDDULPH 105
XIII.--AT DELANCEY CASTLE 113
XIV.--A POINT OF VIEW 121
XV.--JOHN PLAYS THE SAMARITAN 128
XVI.--CORIN DISCOURSES ON KARMA 138
XVII.--A RARE ABSURDITY 143
XVIII.--IN FATHER MALONEY’S GARDEN 145
XIX.--A BEWITCHING 152
XX.--A VITAL QUESTION 156
XXI.--A REQUEST 161
XXII.--THE WONDERFUL WOMAN 162
XXIII.--THE CACHE 167
XXIV.--DAVID DINES AT THE CASTLE 181
XXV.--JOHN MAKES A DISCOVERY 187
XXVI.--A FUNNY WORLD 192
XXVII.--THE OLD OAK 199
XXVIII.--ON THE TERRACE 207
XXIX.--AN UNEXPECTED LETTER 216
XXX.--ELIZABETH ARRIVES ON THE
SCENE 222
XXXI.--IN THE EARLY MORNING 226
XXXII.--THE NOTE OF A BELL 233
XXXIII.--THE GREEN MAN 235
XXXIV.--ELIZABETH GIVES ADVICE 246
XXXV.--THE BURDEN OF CONVENTIONALITY 255
XXXVI.--CONSPIRATORS 261
XXXVII.--CORIN TAKES A WALK 269
XXXVIII.--CONCERNING AN ARGUMENT 277
XXXIX.--A DUMB DOG-- 288
XL.--SPEAKS-- 290
XLI.--AT SOME LENGTH 291
XLII.--A QUESTION OF IMPORTANCE 309
XLIII.--MOLLY ARRANGES AFFAIRS 316
XLIV.--AN ODD SENSATION 320
XLV.--THE OAK FALLS 323
XLVI.--TOLD IN THE STORM 325
XLVII.--AFTER THE RAIN 328
XLVIII.--IN SEARCH 331
XLIX.--THE FALLEN OAK 345
L.--A MIRACLE 347
LI.--AND SO THE STORY ENDS 352
The Wiser Folly
PROLOGUE
WHEN the Delancey affair had been brought to a conclusion, it was not
uninteresting to note the various opinions set forth regarding its
happy termination.
Biddy, at once autocrat and indulger of at least three generations of
juvenile Delanceys, maintained, and stoutly, it was entirely due to
her own prayers to her patron saint. She took, so to speak, a monopoly
of the business as far as any human agency was concerned. But, as one
cannot, with any degree of modesty, parade one’s private devotions to
the world at large, it was hardly probable that this view of the matter
would be universal.
The village in general, with the exception of Mrs. Trimwell, laid the
whole credit at the feet of Lady Mary Delancey. Doubtless this was
on account of the wave of relief which had surged over it, and which
exalted her ladyship, for the time being at least, to a pinnacle of
almost giddy height.
Mrs. Trimwell had her own private views on the matter. What they were,
will, no doubt, be realized later.
Corin Elmore believed the whole thing due to karma, though it is true
that this particular arrangement of karma puzzled him not a little.
John Mortimer, while maintaining on the whole a strictly neutral
attitude, allowed his opinion of the credit due to sway slightly, if
it swayed at all, in the direction of his sister Elizabeth. And in so
doing, he swayed nearer the mark, if you will believe me, than the
majority of folk with opinions on the subject.
Father Maloney was heard to announce that “surely to goodness the fella
himself might be allowed a taste of the credit.” The “fella” was David
Delancey. But more of him anon. Father Maloney made the announcement
with a twinkle in his eye, and a slight exchange of glances with Lady
Mary. That exchange of glances puzzled more than one of those who had
happened to surprise it. Its meaning, however, was never fathomed.
There was no question but that Lady Mary and the priest were past
masters in keeping their own counsel when they chose. He would be a
bold man who put any question savouring of impertinence to Lady Mary.
For my part, I had sooner face a whole battery of artillery than have
Lady Mary’s tortoiseshell-rimmed lorgnettes turned slowly upon me, her
grey eyes glinting through them with steely courtesy. The courtesy was
never absent, you may be sure, but then neither--on occasions--was the
steeliness. Nor would it be well, if you wished to retain the smallest
atom of self-respect, to question Father Maloney unduly. That soft
tongue and speech of his could shrivel your complacency to the likeness
of a withered leaf when you deserved it. And you may be very sure that,
when they did shrivel it, you were left in no manner of doubt as to
your deserts in the matter.
Lady Mary herself never ventured the smallest hint of an opinion as
to whom the credit was due. In fact from first to last she kept a
dignified silence on the whole affair, save when sheer necessity
demanded speech from her. Her silence and dignity alone prevented it
from sinking to melodrama, and truth obliges me to confess that it
had more than once a distinctly suspicious flavour of that obnoxious
quality.
But this is beginning at the wrong end of the skein, a proceeding which
will indubitably result in a most fearsome tangle. Therefore, with your
permission, I will break off and start anew.
CHAPTER I
CONCERNING THE VILLAGE OF MALFORD
“YOUR idea,” said John meditatively, “as far as I can elucidate it from
your somewhat wordy discourse, is that I should accompany you to this
exceedingly out-of-the-way, this on your own showing entirely remote,
secluded, and sequestered spot, for the sole purpose of affording you
amusement in your so to speak out of work hours.”
“That,” returned Corin admiringly, “is the idea _in toto_. It is
marvellous with what ease and skill you have grasped and summed up the
entire situation.”
John sighed.
“And might one be allowed to question what are the advantages to be
gained from such a sojourn? What manner of recreation can the place
afford? In a word, where do I come in?”
“Advantages!” Corin raised his eyes to the cobwebby rafters. “Heavens
above! Isn’t my companionship an advantage? And for recreation what
more can you desire than the contemplation of country lanes and wide
moorland this glorious summer weather? Think of it, man! The earth
ablaze with purple heather, the sea blue and golden,--breathing,
living, colour. Anon there will be blackberries, great luscious
clusters of blue-black fruit hanging ready for the plucking in every
hedgerow. Again, I ask, what more can you desire?”
John smiled grimly.
“I am not, I would have you observe, either an artist or a boy. Your
inducements fail to move me.”
“My companionship,” urged Corin.
“The blatant conceit of the man,” sighed John.
Corin changed his tone, descended to wheedling. “Consider my
loneliness,” he remarked pathetically. “From six o’clock--I can’t put
in more than an eight-hour day--till midnight alone and unoccupied. Six
hours!”
“Go to bed at nine and reduce the six hours by a simple process
of subtraction to three, or play patience,” returned John
unsympathetically.
“Inhuman brute,” mourned Corin.
John merely laughed.
He was a tall young man, thirty or thereabouts, clean-shaven, bronzed,
grey-eyed, and with a thin hooked nose. His mouth, below it, was
slightly grim in repose. But, when he smiled, you forgot the grimness,
and smiled involuntarily in response. Also, you found yourself watching
for the smile to come into play a second time. It had a curious manner
of leaping first to his eyes in a sudden and illuminating flash.
Deserting them, it passed equally suddenly to his mouth, leaving the
eyes sad. It was a disconcerting trick, a baffling magician’s trick,
and left you wondering. In the matter of dress he was fastidious to
a degree. At the moment his attire was the most immaculate suit of
London clothes, grey trousers, frock coat, and all the rest of the
paraphernalia. His silk hat, exceeding glossy, reposed on a worm-eaten
oak chair near him. He had removed a pile of sketch books and a bunch
of dilapidated lilies to make place for the hat. They lay now on the
floor.
With Corin, by contrast, clothes were a matter of necessity as mere
covering, and no more. His tweed trousers and Norfolk jacket had an
out-all-night-in-the-wet-and-then-sat-upon air. In two words they
looked loosely crumpled. Paint spots adorned the left sleeve, in
the crook of the elbow where his palette was wont to rest. His soft
collar, attached to his shirt, was unbuttoned, and merely held together
by a smoke-grey tie. Briefly, in the matter of clothes, he was the
prototype of the modern novelist’s art-student,--the type that emerges
paint-stained, careless-clad, cheerfully Bohemian, from the chapters of
such novels as deal with the art world in Chelsea.
But here it behoves me to walk warily lest I should hear a whisper of
“glass houses,” for does not this very Corin himself dwell in that most
fascinating region of London? Is not his studio within a bare five
minutes of the dirty, muddy, grey, but wholly adorable Thames, where
it drifts past Carlyle’s statue, smoke-grimed and weather-worn, and on
past the old herbalist’s garden set back across the street?
In face, this same Corin was plump, smooth-skinned, rosy-cheeked,
fair-haired, with short-sighted blue eyes that gazed at you kindly from
behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His own appearance caused him moments
of acute anguish.
“Look at me!” he would cry on occasions, having met his reflection in
some unexpected mirror in a friend’s house or studio, “Look at me! The
soul of an artist, and the appearance of a benign and grown-up baby!
If I didn’t know my own nature and character, I vow I’d be taken in. I
_am_ taken in when I come upon myself in this disgusting and unexpected
fashion. Who’s that odd, kindly, little pink-faced man? I ask myself.
And then I realize it’s me, _me_, ME! And, even while I’m swearing at
the sight of myself, I look no more than a cross baby yelling for its
feeding bottle. Talk of purgatory! I get ten years of it every time I
come opposite a looking-glass. The things ought to be abolished. They
ought to be ground to powder, scattered like dust to the four winds of
heaven. They merely pander to woman’s vanity. No man wants to look into
one. If he looks like a man he doesn’t bother about it. If he looks
like me--” At this juncture his anguish would become too acute for
further speech.
There was a pause in the conversation, quite an appreciable pause,
seeing that it lasted at least two and three-quarter minutes. Then:
“So the matter is definitely settled,” announced Corin with an air of
finality, “and on Tuesday next you and I, a couple of boon companions,
wend our way to the charming, the altogether adorable and old-world
village of Malford, situated, so the guide-books tell us, precisely
seven miles from Whortley station, as the crow flies. Why as the crow
flies,” he continued ruminatively, “I have never been able to fathom.
The information is of remarkably small use to the feathered species,
and I have not yet been able to grasp what precise and particular use
it is to mankind at large.”
John, whose attention had been wandering, roused himself.
“For sheer pertinacity,” he remarked suavely, “commend me to one, Corin
Elmore, painter, poet, musician, theosophist, and fortune-teller; in
short, dabbler in the arts and the occult sciences.”
“At all events _you_ can hear Mass at Malford,” retorted Corin
succinctly. It would appear that “dabbler in the occult sciences” had
pricked.
“Truly?” John’s tone was politely interrogative. “At what distance from
Malford, as the crow flies?”
“You can hear Mass _in_ Malford, _in_ the Chapel, _in_ Delancey
Castle.” The statement was triumphant.
“Delancey Castle!” ejaculated John. For the first time interest,
genuine interest, stirred in his voice. He began, in a manner of
speaking, to sit up and take notice.
“Delancey Castle,” reiterated Corin. And then suspiciously, “But why
this sudden interest?”
“Merely that I have heard of the place,” said John nonchalantly.
“Who hasn’t?” Corin’s voice was faintly edged with scorn. “One of the
oldest baronial castles in England; situated in a park famed for its
oaks and copper beeches; Norman in origin, enlarged during the Tudor
period; minstrel’s gallery, secret chambers, terraced gardens. From all
accounts it breathes the very essence of romance and bygone forgotten
days. Heavens above! were there indeed tongues in trees, and sermons in
stones, I’ll swear there’s many a tale those old walls and the trees
around them might disclose.”
“It is a matter for devout thanks,” returned John piously, “that the
tongue of Nature wags, in a manner of speaking, rather in accordance
with our mood of the moment than by any actual physical volition of its
own. We have quite enough to do to stop our ears to the human tongues
around us. But, seriously, I had no idea that Delancey Castle was
situated in this sequestered spot of yours.”
“Sequestered spot of mine!” ejaculated Corin. “I lay no claim to the
spot. It exists not for my benefit, save in so far, I would have you
note, as certain pecuniary advantages will accrue to me for work done
in its lonely regions. Nevertheless Delancey Castle is situated there,
unless some good or evil genius has seen fit to remove it piecemeal
since last Thursday week. I saw it on that date with my own eyes, ‘set
on an eminence’--again the guide-books--‘above the small village of
Malford. Glimpses of its rugged grey towers may be observed among the
lordly oaks and magnificent copper beeches for which the park is justly
famed.’ I refer you to page one hundred and twenty-two of Sanderson’s
_Guide to Country Houses_ for the accuracy of my quotation.” He broke
off to light a fresh cigarette, then looked at John, challenging him
through his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Oh, I’ll not question the accuracy of your quotation,” retorted John.
“But how about your _former_ statement regarding the situation of the
Castle? You stated it was _in_ the village. Now I learn it is on an
eminence above it.”
“Hark to the quibbler!” cried Corin.
“Not at all,” returned John. “A Castle _on_ an eminence is a very
different pair of shoes from a Castle _in_ a village, especially when
it is incumbent upon one to seek that said Castle in order to fulfil
one’s devotional obligations.”
“If,” said Corin reflectively, “I were a Catholic--don’t get excited,
there’s no smallest prospect of your ever claiming me as a convert--but
if I were a Catholic, I should not be so disgustingly slack about my
religion as to object to walking up a small hill in order to attend my
religious services.”
“I never said I objected to walking up a small hill,” remarked John. “I
was merely pointing out the inaccuracy of your former statement.”
Corin sighed patiently. “You make me tired with your quibbling. And
that last remark distinctly wanders from the truth.”
John smiled, not deigning further reply. It began as a small pitying
smile for Corin’s weakness of retort, it continued with a hint of
pleasure, a tiny secret excitement as at the possibility of the
fulfilment of some concealed desire. His heart had beaten at least
three degrees quicker at the mention of Delancey Castle, and it had not
yet resumed its normal gentle throbbing.
He waited silent. There was now but one thought uppermost in his mind.
Yet he could not voice it. The renewed suggestion--it surely would
be renewed--must come from Corin. For John to give spontaneous hint
of yielding in the matter of recent discussion would be to run the
risk--though possibly merely a faint risk--of giving himself away.
Faint or blatant, the risk was to be avoided at all cost. He smoked
on, therefore, imperturbable, his eyes for the most part on a desk in
a corner of the studio, an extremely untidy desk, covered with papers
that looked for all the world as if they had been tossed thereon by a
whirlwind, and then stirred by an exceedingly vigorous arm wielding a
pitchfork. Yet, for all that his eyes were upon the desk, his thoughts
were upon Corin.
“Speak, man, speak,” he was urging him by that mental process which is
termed “willing.” “Renew your persuasions; beg me again to accompany
you on your lonely sojourn.”
But either Corin was no medium, or John was no medium,--I have never
been fully able to fathom whether the willer, or the willed, or both
must be possessed of the mediumistic faculties for satisfactory results
to accrue,--certain it is that Corin sat placidly silent, apparently
entirely oblivious of John’s mental efforts in his direction.
Willing can be an exhausting process, at all events to one who
is not an adept in the art. In John’s case, as the vigour of his
efforts increased, his muscles grew tighter and tighter, till his
very toes curled with spasmodic tension inside his shiny, polished,
patent-leather boots, while a portentous frown drew his eyebrows firmly
together till they practically met above his thin hooked nose.
Corin, glancing suddenly in his direction, surprised an almost
anguished expression of countenance.
“Are you ill?” he ejaculated dismayed, and with a swift half-movement
towards the cupboard where the brandy decanter was situated.
John’s face relaxed on the instant.
“Not in the least, thank you.”
“Then what on earth were you making such faces about?” demanded Corin.
“I was not aware that I was making faces,” said John with some dignity.
“I was merely thinking.”
“Thinking!” Corin’s light arched eyebrows rose nearly to his fair hair.
“Then, man, for Heaven’s sake don’t do it again. It’s--it’s really
dangerous.”
John heaved himself out of his chair, bitterly conscious of the
futility of his efforts.
“Going?” said Corin. And then solicitously, “Sure you’re really all
right?”
“Quite, thanks,” returned John with faint asperity.
Corin strolled with him to the door. John was half-way down the stairs
when he heard a voice call after him:
“I’ll let you know about the train on Tuesday.”
John halted, turned.
“Well, really!” he ejaculated.
CHAPTER II
A RUMOUR
THAT evening John wrote a letter to his sister, Mrs. Darcy, who lived
in Ireland. The letter contained the following paragraphs:
“I am going down to Malford on Tuesday, an out-of-the-way spot near
Whortley. Corin Elmore--the painter fellow, you know who I mean--has
bothered me into it. He has got a job there, uncovering and restoring
the mural paintings in a pre-reformation church. All seems grist
that comes to his mill. Apparently the only attractions the place
has to offer are gorgeous scenery, and later a superabundance of
blackberries, if I choose to await their ripening. I don’t know for
how long I shall find such attractions all-satisfying.
“Address after Tuesday next till further notice, The White Cottage,
Malford, near Whortley.
“I hope Maurice and the kiddies are flourishing.
“Your loving brother, John.”
The morning before he left town John received a reply to his letter.
“A sojourn, even for a short space, in such a remote region sounds
extraordinarily unlike you. Perhaps it will have its compensations.
You will deserve them, as I am sure you are doing this entirely on Mr.
Elmore’s account. I wonder if you will chance to meet the Delanceys.
From all I have heard Lady Mary must be a charming woman, and I once
met her granddaughter, Rosamund Delancey. She is an exceedingly pretty
girl. Maurice raved about her in a way that might have made a younger,
and less experienced, woman than myself jealous.
“I heard an extraordinary rumour some weeks ago regarding the Delancey
estate,--that an American claimant had turned up. Personally I gave
little credence to the report. It savours too much of melodrama for
this prosaic twentieth century. My informant had her facts pat enough,
though. But it is too long a story to deal with in a letter, certainly
too long when it is, as I believe, pure fiction. Anyhow there’s a
missing document, a murder, and a wolf-hound connected with it. True
Adelphi melodrama!
“I hope you may chance to meet the Delanceys....”
John glanced up at a small statue of Our Lady, which stood on his
mantelpiece.
“Blessed Lady,” he said aloud in a tone at once respectful, fervent,
and charmingly friendly, “join your prayers to her hopes.”
CHAPTER III
A MEETING
IT was midday in the month of August, the sun ablaze upon wood and
field. Only under the trees and hedges the shadows lay blue and
still,--intensely, deeply blue, the warm restful blue of summer
shadows. Overhead stretched another blue, a vault of brilliant azure,
a vast cup-shaped dome, spreading downwards from the illimitable space
above, to the hazy distant hills, to the far-off peacock-blue sea,
sun-kissed and radiant. The warm earth breathed forth the languorous
yet wide-eyed repose of perfect summer. Here was Nature at the
maturest moment of her beauty,--the fields golden with full-eared
corn, waiting in the richness of their dower for the first stroke of
the sickle; the moors purple with heather, and rich with a hidden
wealth of whortleberries; the hedges hung with clusters of scarlet
brambleberries, even now tinged with the deeper hue of ripeness.
On a gate, set, after the general manner of gates in the west of
England, between two hedges, one to the right and another to the left,
sat our friend John. From the gate, a view stretched before him, which
many an artist might have been excused for attempting to seize and
transfer to canvas.
In the foreground stood a birch tree, a slender, dainty, silver-barked
thing, rising straight out of a purple mass of heather. Its fairy
lightness was backgrounded by a wood of firs, while past it, to the
right, you got a stretch of undulating moorland across a valley, a
strip of blue sea, and a hazy coast line of white cliffs.
“It really might be called a fine view,” said John aloud. And then he
broke off, for a voice had sounded behind him,--a very young voice, a
clear treble.
“There’s a man sitting on the gate.” The statement was made with the
frank obviousness of childhood.
John swung himself off the said gate, and turned. This latter
proceeding was distinctly simpler to accomplish from the safety of
solid earth than from the topmost of five bars. Doubtless his guardian
angel prompted the action, for, on the moment of turning, his heart
jumped, leaped, and pounded in a manner peculiarly perilous. Picture
his danger with a heart in this condition had he retained his former
attitude.
On the other side of the gate, coming across the grass, and not more
than twenty paces from him, was a lady accompanied by two small boys.
She was a young lady, tall and slender, in a white linen frock, and a
big shady straw hat. Her hair beneath it was red gold, like burnished
copper, a vivid note of colour. The two boys, one on either side of
her, were clad in emerald green knickerbockers, and soft white shirts.
Floppy straw hats were on their heads. Beneath the hats you caught a
glimpse of copper-coloured hair. A vivid, vital enough picture they
presented. The smaller boy, four years old or thereabouts, gazed
solemn-eyed towards the gate; the other, some two years or so his
senior, pointed towards our John, his face eager, alive. A stranger was
a bit of a rarity in those parts, it would appear.
John saw the woman turn towards the child, caught a hint of murmured
words. The boy dropped the pointing hand. Doubtless she had made
the suggestion--delicately put of course--that it is not altogether
the best of manners to point at strangers, however unexpected their
appearance, as if they were some curious beast newly escaped from the
Zoo.
The lapse of time, from the first acclamation of John’s position on
the gate, to the dropping of that accusing finger, had been of the
briefest, nevertheless it had allowed for a few further steps to be
taken across the grass, and the distance between John and the three
had, at the outset, been none so great. It was clearly obvious that the
intention of the three was to pass through the gate. Seeing this, John
bent to the fastening. By good luck it was not padlocked. Had it been,
it would have spoiled the dainty march of the procession, actually as
well as figuratively. He swung the gate open, raising his hat at the
same moment. She bent her head, a slight though entirely courteous
gesture, gave “thank-you” in a low round voice.
“Now Heaven be praised,” murmured John, “that she did not say
‘thanks.’” By which token it will be seen that John was a trifle
fastidious as to modes of expression.
The two boys, having defeated the difficulties of elastic beneath
the chin, had likewise removed their hats. They accomplished the
restoration of them to their heads with extraordinary dignity. John,
beholding the feat, marvelled. Then the little cavalcade of three
passed on across the heather.
John gazed after them.
CHAPTER IV
A BLACK AND WHITE GOAT
JOHN gazed after them with longing in his eyes and resentment in his
heart. The longing was for the unattainable; the resentment that it
should be unattainable.
What a crassly idiotic, what an altogether blindly stupid, doltish,
and utterly mulish thing was convention! Here were three young, gay,
and delightful creatures enjoying the summer day in company, together
revelling in the glowing sun, the caress of the air soft as thistledown
upon one’s face, the scent of the flowers and the warm earth, while
he--John--was condemned to loneliness, because, forsooth, of the lack
of four words. “May I introduce you.”
There was the password, the magic utterance which would have smoothed
away all difficulties. It could be spoken carelessly as you please.
It could be spoken by his worst enemy with as great effect as by his
dearest friend. Without it a barrier, high as the highest peaks of the
Andes, loomed between him and them, a barrier to him insurmountable,
indestructible, and named, labelled, and placarded in letters at least
a foot long, Convention. Small wonder that John fumed inwardly, the
while his eyes gazed after the vanishing three, distilled essence of
concentrated longing in their depths.
Chance alone could destroy the barrier,--Chance, the freakish, puckish
sprite, who sits with watchful eyes, smiling softly, impishly, till the
chosen moment arrives. Then, heigh presto! Chance springs light-footed
to your aid, is caught by you laughing, or in deadly earnest, according
to your needs. And if the latter, and your grasp is sure, you will
find it is no longer an impish, freakish sprite you hold, but a very
little demon, battling for you, trampling upon well-nigh incredible
difficulties, leading you triumphant to victory.
We cannot see Chance coming in deadly earnest to John at the moment.
The imp came mischievous, laughing, and perched, if you will believe
me, between the horns of a goat,--a large, a black and white, an
over-playful goat. It came prancing over the purple crest of the hill,
and bounded, curved, and gavotted in the direction of the momentarily
unconscious three.
The younger boy was the first to see it. He turned, startled atom,
to clutch at the lady’s white dress, thereby causing her to become
aware of the presence of the intruder on the scene. The elder boy,
likewise made aware of its presence, seized a small stick from among
the heather, a fragile enough weapon, but with it he stood his ground,
a veritable small champion, facing the enemy boldly.
But think you that Chance, perched between those horns, was to be
daunted by a small boy in green knickerbockers, and holding a flimsy
stick? Not a bit of it! For no such paltry pretext would he desert our
John. I am very sure he but urged the goat forward, its advance in the
face of this defence lending greater colour to the danger.
“Oh!” breathed the white-robed lady, her hands going out protectingly
to the little figure clutching at her skirts. And then, “Take care,
Tony,” on a note of intense anxiety.
Here was the moment supplied by the mischievous imp. John recognized
the sprite’s wiles with fine intuition, cried him a fervent word of
thanks, and sprang to the rescue.
That Chance had never intended the slightest peril to the three, you
may be certain; since, once seized laughing from his perch by John, he
joined with him in ordering the goat to retire. Slightly bewildered at
this change of front, the goat gazed for a moment with reproachful eyes.
“I was but playing the game you told me to play,” you could fancy him
murmuring. Nevertheless, perceiving that the game was indubitably at
an end, he indulged in something very akin to a shake of his head, and
retired disconsolate whence he had come.
“Oh, thank you,” breathed the lady in white fervently. “Boys, thank--”
she paused. “This gentleman” savours too largely of the shop-walker;
the word has long since lost its rightful meaning. “Our preserver”
smacks of the pedant.
“My name is John Mortimer,” announced John, with one of his inimitable
smiles.
“Mr. Mortimer,” she concluded, the word supplied. “I am Rosamund
Delancey, and this--” she indicated the whilom champion, “is Antony,
and this is Michael. It was very good of you to come to our rescue.”
John murmured the usual polite formula. For the life of him he could
find no original observation to make.
“Possibly,” continued Rosamund, half-meditative, a trifle rueful, “the
goat intended mere play. But as Biddy, our old nurse, often used to
say--and still does, for that matter--‘There’s play _and_ play, and if
one of the parties ceases to be liking it, it will be no play at all.’”
The little laugh in her eyes found reflection in John’s.
“A very sound maxim,” quoth he. And inwardly he found himself
ejaculating, “What an adorable voice, what an altogether flexible,
musical and charming voice.”
Rosamund was looking down the heather-covered slope. At the further
side, a quarter of a mile or so away, was a hedge, and in the hedge a
gate. Beyond the gate was a lane, which, after a series of turns, would
lead one eventually to the village and Delancey Castle. This latter, it
is perhaps somewhat obvious to remark, was her goal, and the way across
the heather towards the gate by far the nearest route to it. Yet how
attempt that route with the black and white goat still at large adown
the hill, eating sprays of heather--or what appeared to be sprays of
heather--in a deceitfully placid and amicable manner?
“I wonder if that goat--” she began, her eyes vaguely troubled, her
brow slightly puckered.
“Which way do you want to go?” demanded John promptly, the promptitude
mingled with a nice degree of deferential courtesy,--the courtesy quite
apparent, the deference a tiny subtle flavour.
“To that gate.” She indicated it.
“Then,” said John, “please allow me to accompany you. I think Antony
and I between us will prove a match for goats. I dare to boast on our
behalf, since we have already proved our prowess in the matter.”
He threw Antony a glance, a little friendly, understanding glance. By
such glances are bonds established that will last a lifetime.
“Me too,” quoth Michael, breaking silence for the first time.
“In very sooth, you too,” said John. “Antony as advance guard,--not
more than a couple of paces advance, mind you,--Michael and I on
either side. Are we ready? Then, quick march.”
This last was mere pandering to accepted custom. You cannot well say,
“Slow march,” though it is what your whole soul intends. Here is a fine
illustration of the fact that speech is but a poor mode of expressing a
man’s thoughts. And then an inspiration came to him.
“Not too quickly,” said he to the advance guard. “If he thinks we
are attempting to elude him, he may pursue us. A nonchalant, a mere
careless strolling, will be our wisest course.”
“Oh, do you think he might follow?” cried Rosamund. The suggestion had
evidently given cause for renewed anxiety.
“It is possible,” returned John gravely, “though, I fancy, not
probable. However, we will take no risks.”
Slowly, therefore, in mere dilatory fashion, they set forth. The goat
raised his read to look at them; but, having his orders, he dropped it
again towards the heather.
Some hundred yards or so they walked in silence, two, at least, of the
party casting occasional furtive glances to the right. John was the
first to speak.
“This,” he said, with the air of a man who has just made a discovery,
“is really beautiful country.”
“It is your first visit to this neighbourhood?” queried Rosamund.
“My first,” returned John, “but I dare swear it will not be my last. My
friend, Corin Elmore, dragged me down here, somewhat against my will
at the outset, I’ll allow. He’s uncovering the mural paintings in the
church down yonder.”
“Ah!” Rosamund turned towards him, a light of interest in her eyes.
“Has he found much?”
“He only started on the job this morning,” returned John. “We arrived
last night. But he’s full of confidence. There must be a curious
fascination in the work,--delving into the past, bringing traces of
bygone, forgotten ages into the light of day.”
“And a certain sadness,” she suggested.
“And a certain sadness,” echoed John, “though I doubt me if Corin
experiences it greatly. He’s an anomaly. For all that he’s a poet and a
bit of a dreamer, there’s a strain of the scientific dissector running
through him. It finds its outlet in theosophic tendencies.” John pulled
a wry face.
He had forgotten that he was talking to an absolute stranger. Yet was
she a stranger in the true sense of the word? One afternoon--six months
ago as we crudely count and label time, though to John it was centuries
ago--he had had sight of her, a mere passing glimpse, truly, since it
was of length only sufficient to allow of her mounting the steps of the
Brompton Oratory, at a moment when John was about to descend them. He
had put a question to a friend who was with him. And thenceforth John’s
dreams had been coloured--I might almost say suffused--by one subject,
a face with dark eyes, framed in copper-coloured hair, and shadowed by
a largish black hat. Being, therefore, no stranger to his dreams in
spirit, it was small wonder that he regarded her as no stranger to his
perceptions in the flesh.
Rosamund looked at him, half amused, half questioning.
“But why theosophic tendencies?” she demanded. “I am,” she added,
“peculiarly ignorant of that trend of thought.”
John laughed.
“Nor am I vastly learned, for that matter. If I were to attempt to
define I think I should say that, where your scientist pure and simple
may deny the existence of God at all, your man, like Corin, with the
curious intermixture of a dreamer, acknowledges the existence of this
Supreme Power, even endows that Power with a certain mysticism, but
at the same time reduces--or attempts to reduce--all the actions and
manifestations of the Power to terms comprehensible by the finite
understanding.”
“Yes?” she queried. It was evident she desired to hear more.
“Oh,” smiled John, “it’s too complicated an affair to compress into
a sentence or two. But take, for instance, pain--the apparently
undeserved and ghastly suffering with which one is sometimes brought
in contact. Instead of saying, as we do, that there are endless
mysteries of pain and suffering which our finite minds cannot possibly
understand, they wish to find some quite definite and tangible
solution, therefore they adopt the Buddhistic theory of reincarnation
and karma. We work out, they say, our karma in each succeeding
incarnation for the sins of the last. There is, in their eyes, no such
thing as an innocent victim--with one exception. All suffering, even
that of the veriest babe, is the suffering it has deserved for former
sins.”
“Oh!” A moment she was silent. “How about the exception?”
“The exception, in their eyes, is any great teacher, who, having
fulfilled all his own karma, voluntarily returns to teach and aid those
in a lower state of evolution. You understand that, according to their
theory, a man is bound to return to this earth, whether he will or no,
till his debt of karma has been paid. It is only when that debt is
paid, that the return becomes voluntary; and, when sought, is purely
for the good of mankind.”
She looked across the heather.
“It would seem,” said she reflective, “that even that theory makes
something of a call upon faith.”
“It does,” returned John. “And yet you must see that it reduces
the mystery of pain to terms capable of being grasped by the human
intelligence. It’s the same with every other mystery. There’s the
makeshift in the whole business. On the one hand they allow the
existence of a God presumably infinite; but, on the other hand, they
wish to reduce Him, and His dealings with creation, to terms capable
of understanding by their finite intelligence. But I forgot, strictly
speaking they would not, I suppose, consider their intelligence finite,
since, according to them, there is in every man the potential divinity.”
“What do they mean?” she asked. “Are they talking about the soul?”
“In a sense, yes,” returned John. “But the soul, apparently, has no
exact individuality of its own; at least, not a lasting individuality.
It is a spark, an atom, of the Great Whole, which when it has developed
to its utmost, and finished all its work, including possible return
in the body to the earth as a teacher, will eventually receive its
reward by becoming merged and absorbed in the Divine Whole from
whence it proceeded. Apparently, also, if a soul refuses to develop,
it can eventually be extinguished, or what is equivalent to being
extinguished.”
“It doesn’t seem exactly a pleasant creed,” said she meditative.
“Absorption or extinction, as the two final alternatives, are not what
one might term precisely satisfactory to contemplate. It is certainly
nicer to believe that one retains one’s individuality.”
“That,” John assured her, “is merely our unconquerable egotism.”
“Then,” she retorted smiling, “let us hope that it is an egotism your
friend will shortly acquire.”
There was a little silence. _Monsieur le Chèvre_ had been, for the
moment, forgotten. Certainly his own quiet self-effacement was
conducive to their forgetfulness of him. They were almost at the gate
before she spoke again.
“I suppose,” she remarked tentatively, “your friend is not perverting
you to his theories.”
“I trust not,” said John solemnly. And then he added, “I am a Catholic.”
“Oh!” The ejaculation held the tiniest note of pleasure. Then, after a
second’s pause. “You know that we have a chapel at the Castle.”
They had gained the lane by now. Antony, who had felt the full
responsibility of defence to rest on his shoulders from the moment
John’s attention had been occupied by a wholly unintelligible--and
probably, in Antony’s eyes, unintelligent--conversation, heaved a deep
sigh.
“Goats,” said he, “are horrid things.”
“Do you know,” quoth John, “I really have a slight partiality towards
goats myself.”
Which speech would have savoured more strongly of truth had the
partiality remained unqualified.
CHAPTER V
MURAL PAINTINGS
JOHN walked up the flagged path of the churchyard. Sounds of work came
to him through the little Norman doorway--the beating of hammers, the
rasping of saws, the jangle of buckets.
Arrived at the doorway he paused for a moment to look at the scene
before him. It would seem almost incredible that order should ever be
abstracted from the present chaos, at all events in the space of time
proposed. Doorless, windowless,--in the matter of glass,--it was a mere
shell of a church, filled with scaffolding, planks, barrows, buckets;
echoing with the ceaseless sound of hammering, sawing, chiselling,
planing; while, within the shell, the creators of the various noises
moved and worked like a handful of restless ants.
John looked towards the scaffolding surrounding the east window.
Perched high on a narrow planked platform was Corin, absorbed in his
work, entirely lost to the sounds around him.
John picked his way among the scattered débris made for the chancel.
Here there was a ladder roped against a lower platform, from whence, by
means of a second ladder placed thereon, Corin’s eyrie might be gained.
John had his foot on a rung of the first ladder in a trice, swarmed up
it, and a second or so later was giving Corin warning of his approach
by:
“Behold the little cherub perched aloft.”
Corin turned.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? Well, just come and look.” There was suppressed
exultation in his voice.
John scrambled on to the platform, came alongside Corin,--Corin who
pointed with a triumphant chisel.
Some half-dozen or so square yards of wall had been cleared of many
coats of plaster, and there, on the original groundwork, stood out thin
red lines vertical and horizontal, flowers in bold outline.
“Masonry, they call it,” announced Corin, “and the flower is the herb
Robert. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
Now to the purely uninitiated, to the mere casual observer, the adverb
might have appeared unduly extravagant. What, such a one might have
demanded, was there in a few crude brush lines to justify this mode of
speech? Yet John, artist though he was not, understood, and not only
understood, but endorsed to the full Corin’s rapture. Here was the work
of age-old centuries, the frank expression of some long-ago-forgotten
painter, brought once more to the light of day. Fresh as when first
limned the simple lines glowed crimson from the cream-coloured surface
of the wall.
“It’s--it’s fine,” said John simply.
Corin, radiant, beaming, waved his chisel in a comprehensive sweep
around the walls.
“And think,” cried he exultant, “what more there may be, there
assuredly is, to find. Think what further glories this plaster hides.
Man, it’s hard to restrain one’s impatience and not hack, which would
be a truly disastrous proceeding.”
John laughed.
Then, “Try another spot,” he urged. “Here, close by the east window.
I’ll not divert the stroke of the chisel by the faintest whisper.”
Pretending to a half-reluctance, though at heart, truly, he was nothing
loath to consent, Corin let himself be persuaded. He shifted his
position. By the outer edge of the window splay he raised his chisel
and set himself to work.
The outer coats of plaster fell in thick flakes before that same
remorseless chisel; they crumbled on to the platform upon which Corin
stood. Below the plaster was a thin substance lying on the wall like a
film. Here the chisel came lightly into play; that film must be removed
carefully, with touch as delicate as the touch of a butterfly’s wing.
It entailed a suspension of breath, an excited prevention of the merest
involuntary quivering of a muscle. The film broke and powdered at the
lightest stroke, covering Corin’s hand and wrist with a soft grey dust.
Breathless he pursued his work; then, suddenly, he stopped, his eyes
gleaming with pleasure.
John bent forward. Here assuredly was novelty,--no longer the crimson
masonry, but black chevrons set within two narrow black lines showed
on the cream-coloured wall, and extending, it was evident, around the
whole window.
“Ah!” breathed John.
Corin nodded, his chisel again raised.
In places the plaster adhered like glue to the walls; it had to be
chipped away inch by inch, and through sheer force. Here it was that
the work required the greatest skill and dexterity. The pressure of
the chisel by an extra hair’s breadth would have meant the cutting
through of the film below the plaster, and destroying the painting that
lay beneath. It required a fine strength of wrist, the calculation
to a nicety of the depth to which to cut, above all, an infinity of
patience. Yet, again, there were patches where not only the plaster,
but the film with it, flaked away at the lightest stroke, and here the
painting was at its freshest.
For full twenty minutes John gave close eye to the proceedings. At the
end of that time he sighed, a mere tiny sigh. If Corin heard, he heeded
not. Stepping back a pace he regarded his work, head on one side, soul
absorbed.
John took him firmly by the arm.
“I vowed I’d not divert the stroke of the chisel by the faintest
whisper,” he announced. “At the moment shouting would be harmless.
Therefore let me tell you in merely normal tones that I’m hungry.”
“Hungry!” Corin blinked at him. “What’s the time?”
“Long past the luncheon hour,” John assured him. “Come!”
Corin reluctantly laid down his chisel, turned for a final look at
masonry, herb Robert, and chevrons.
“And to think,” he ejaculated, “that the plaster hides all this! There
must be ten coats of plaster or thereabouts. After the first Goth,
the first horrible Philistine, plastered, no one can have known what
was hidden, and they just went on plastering at intervals. I’ve made
out six plasters for certain,--grey, green, white adorned with awful
scroll-work, purple, green again with more scroll-work, and then this
dingy brown,” he waved his hand towards the walls. “There are other
plasters so stuck together no one can distinguish them, and underneath
it all, this.” He touched a flower in a kind of subdued and dreamy
ecstasy.
John took him once more kindly but firmly by the arm.
“It’s extremely beautiful,” he said in a tone conciliatory. “Presently
you shall rhapsodize again to your heart’s content and I’ll help you.
At the moment,” he propelled him gently towards the ladder, “we leave
ecstasy for the mundane, the mere sordid occupation of eating.”
CHAPTER VI
MRS. TRIMWELL
MRS. TRIMWELL, brisk, black eyed, white-aproned, entered with a covered
dish.
Corin, deep in an armchair, was smoking a cigarette.
“I wonder,” said he meditative, between the inhalations of smoke, “what
the old painter of the church down yonder thinks of our proceedings.
It would be interesting to hear his own reflections on the subject.
Presumably he does reflect. If his spirit haunts the church, possibly
some fine evening I shall see him. Then I shall put a question or two.”
John merely laughed, and approached the table. Mrs. Trimwell, raising
a dish-cover, disclosed two golden-brown soles, perfect samples of her
culinary art.
“I have never,” continued Corin, still reflective, “seen a spirit, but
I firmly believe that one might be seen under favourable conditions.”
“Come and eat,” laughed John.
Mrs. Trimwell eyed Corin for a moment in hesitating fashion. Then she
spoke with the air of one embarking on a weighty question, though
addressing herself to John.
“There’s never no knowing, sir, what it mightn’t be given you nor any
one to see. I seed an angel myself once.”
Corin paused in the act of handing John a plate on which reposed one of
the soles.
“An angel!” he ejaculated.
John took the plate.
“An angel!” he echoed dubious.
“I seed it,” reiterated Mrs. Trimwell, “as plain as I see you. I was
doing my bit of ironing, the baby--that’s the youngest, sir--asleep in
the cradle under the table, so as I could give the rocker a jog with my
foot now and again, and the angel comed in.”
She paused, watching the effect of her words.
“But how?” queried John busy with the sole. “Through the window, the
ceiling, or the floor? Angels, you know, are spirits, not corporeal
weighty humans like ourselves. They’d never,” concluded John gravely,
“make an ordinary, an expected entrance.”
Corin glanced at him sternly.
“I should have imagined you would have held the matter too sacred for
joking about,” he remarked.
John smiled gently.
“This one,” said Mrs. Trimwell firmly, “came through the door. I heard
the outer door click, and said I to myself, ‘That’s Robert for sure.’
I thought he’d come home a bit earlier. Then the kitchen door clicked.
It opened just a little ways, and the beautifullest angel you ever seed
comed in all floaty-like. I was that scared I dropped my iron--there’s
the heat mark on the baby’s robe to this day--and I made a clean bolt
for the back door. I never thought of the baby nor nothing. And as I
bolted I squinnied over my shoulder, and I seed that angel by the table
all white and shiny.”
Again she stopped, and regarded John, who was eating steadily. To
Corin, who was all agog for a continuance of the story, she perversely
paid no heed.
“But--” began John dubious.
“You may doubt me as much as you like, sir. I wasn’t going back to that
kitchen without a neighbour. I told Vicar myself, sir, and he didn’t
believe me neither, though I’m a truthful woman. For as I says to my
children: ‘You tell the truth at all costs. If you’re in a hole don’t
tell a lie to try and get out of it. Truth will always give you the
surest hand up even though her clutch is a bit severe.’ I’d not deceive
you, sir, and ’tis the truth I’ve spoken as I spoke it to Vicar. I seed
that angel.”
Finality in her tone she stood there, slightly challenging, yet
respectful withal.
“Hmm!” mused John. “Your integrity, Mrs. Trimwell, is, I am convinced,
above suspicion. Yet why, do you imagine, should the angel come? What,
do you take it, was the motive for his visit?”
Mrs. Trimwell approached a step nearer. She lowered her voice to a
confidential whisper.
“’Twas that day to the minute, sir, as my uncle died.”
“Ah!” John’s eyes, non-committal in expression, sought the window.
Corin cast a look of scorn at him; then turned, eager, to Mrs. Trimwell.
“Did you tell the Vicar that?” he demanded.
“I did, sir,” replied Mrs. Trimwell, including him for the first time
within her range of vision. “But, Lor’, where’s the use of telling
things to he! He don’t understand no more than a Bishop.”
“Why a Bishop?” thought John in parenthesis.
“When my Tilda was down with pneumony,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell
reminiscent, “and the doctor said there wasn’t no chance for her, ‘I’ll
see about chances,’ says I. Vicar, he talked about the Will of the Lord
and submitting. ‘It’s not the minute to be talking about submitting
yet,’ says I to him. ‘The Lord may do the willing, and I’m not one to
deny it, but ’tis we do the doing, and it kind of fits in. And if you
think I’m going to leave off fighting for my Tilda till the time comes
as she’s ready to lay out, you’re much mistook.’ He was mistook, sir,
for she’s in the kitchen now a-minding of the baby.” She ended on a
note gloriously triumphant.
The triumph found quick response in John’s eyes. I fancy he saw here
reflected the attitude of that old-time king, who strove in prayer for
his child, till striving and prayer were no longer of avail.
“The fighting chance,” murmured Corin, swallowing his last mouthful of
sole.
Mrs. Trimwell removed the plates and placed cold chicken and salad on
the table.
“In a manner of speaking it was,” said she, eyeing him with approval.
She moved towards the door, then turned.
“You will take coffee after lunch?” she asked.
John looked his assent, yet left it to Corin, as in a manner host, to
give verbal reply to the query.
“By all means,” replied Corin. “I need,” he assured her, “every atom of
support at your avail.”
Mrs. Trimwell looked at him commiseratingly.
“I’ll be bound it’s hard work down there,” said she sympathetically.
“How do you find it, sir?”
“Interesting,” returned Corin, “distinctly interesting. I feel like an
explorer of bygone centuries penetrating through modern hideousity,
early Victorian crudeness, Puritan dreariness, and various other
glooms, to the sweet, kindly simplicity, the grace, the freshness, the
love of beauty, appertaining to the olden days. I am,” concluded Corin,
helping himself to salad, “crumbling to pieces that which has hidden
beauty, and exposing beauty to the light of day. In other words, I’m
scraping the plaster off the walls of the church, and enjoying myself.”
Mrs. Trimwell nodded, frank approbation plainly visible on her face.
“And time it was scraped, too. A mucky looking place it was with them
walls all stained and chipped and mildewed. Not that it hurt me much,
seeing as I never go inside it, except it’s for a christening or a
burial.”
“Oh!” remarked Corin, and somewhat feebly, be it stated.
John cast a whimsical look in his direction.
“I don’t hold with church-going,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell calmly. “Say
your prayers at home if you want to say them, says I. And as for
sermons,--if you’ve heard Vicar talk out of the pulpit whether you will
or no, you don’t run off smiling to hear him talk in it. Leastways I
don’t. There’s some as does, I know.”
“Oh!” said Corin again, and this time more feebly. (John, I fear me,
was laughing inwardly.) To disagree with Mrs. Trimwell would, Corin
felt, be tantamount to calling her a black kettle, setting up himself
the while as a shiny brass pot, to which title he knew he possessed no
manner of right. Yet to agree!--Well, Corin’s conscience, some hidden
fragment of convention--call it what you will--felt a slight hint of
repugnance at her sentiments.
There is your man, your male individual, all over. Dogmatic
religion--however vague the dogma--church-going is often outside his
own category, yet for his women folk--any women folk--to speak against
it holds for him a hint of distaste. It just serves to destroy that
soft light of idealism with which he loves to surround women. Every man
has one woman, at least, in this idealistic shrine, or, if he has not,
he is of all men most miserable. And here it is that your adherents
to the old Faith--the oldest Faith in Christendom--have a pull over
your so-called enlightened individual. There is always One Woman to
whom those of that old Faith can turn, one for whom no shrine is too
fair, too lofty,--can be bedecked with no too costly wealth of love and
homage. Here, in this shrine, at her feet, may every idealistic thought
of man towards woman be placed, preserved, and cherished.
Corin, as already stated, said “Oh!” an ejaculation at once feeble,
utterly lacking in significance of any kind, a mere signal that his
ears had received the speech.
“Miss Rosamund don’t hold with my views,” went on Mrs. Trimwell, while
John’s heart gave a sudden throb. “Not that I pays over-much heed to
her, being a Papist what’s bound to go to Church and obey their priests
if they don’t want any little unpleasantness in the next world, which
I takes it may be a considerable more unpleasantness than you nor I
would suppose. Still I will say she has a wonderful way of talking a
thing clear, and if I didn’t _know_ that popery was no better than a
worshipping of graven images, I might go for to believe her.”
Corin glanced anxiously in the direction of John,--John who was eating
chicken with an expressionless face, though I’ll not vouch that his
shoulders didn’t shake a little now and then.
“Not that Miss Rosamund talks goody talk,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell,
“which is a thing I never could abide in grown-up or child, and burnt
them little tracty books they give my Tilda up to Sunday-school,
setting of her off to talk texes to me and her father, which we didn’t
smack her for though she deserved it. But there, she’d have been
thinking she was an infant prodigal and a Christian martyr if we had.
No; I just said how if she was so fond of texes she could learn a few
more instead of going along blackberrying with the other children, and
I sets her down to get a chapter of the Gospels by heart. We didn’t
hear no more of texes after that, didn’t me and her father,” concluded
Mrs. Trimwell dryly.
Indubitably the corners of John’s mouth were twitching now. Then Mrs.
Trimwell’s eye caught his. Laughter came, whole-heartedly to John, to
Mrs. Trimwell first with a note of half apology, over which the entire
humour of the reminiscence presently got the upper hand. Corin joined
in somewhat relieved. He had feared lest John’s feelings might be hurt.
“When I thinks of Tilda setting there not knowing whether to sulk or
pretend she liked it!” ejaculated Mrs. Trimwell after a moment. She
wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes with her apron. “But there,
it was coffee I was going after, and not memories of my Tilda.”
Mrs. Trimwell vanished.
CHAPTER VII
FLIGHTS OF FANCY
CORIN looked dubiously at John.
“She talks a good deal,” quoth he tentatively.
“I have,” returned John, “conceived a great affection for Mrs.
Trimwell. Her ideas are original. She has, also, a distinct prejudice
in favour of speaking her mind with a candour and verve which I find
undeniably refreshing. Yes; certainly I have conceived an affection for
her.”
Corin snorted.
“Every man to his own taste,” said he. “For my part I find her
over-fluent of speech.”
“That,” replied John, “arises merely from a tendency I have frequently
noted in you to monopolize the whole conversation; to mop it, so to
speak, into your own sponge, thereby leaving the sponges of others bone
dry.”
“I have never,” retorted Corin, “observed that your sponge lacked
moisture, if you will use terms of parable instead of straightforward
words. But to leave Mrs. Trimwell for the moment. How did you enjoy
the morning? Did I expand one whit too freely on the glories of the
surrounding country? Is there not colour,--radiant, vital colour at
every turn?”
“I’ll allow there’s sufficient beauty hereabouts,” conceded John.
“And you had a pleasant time? Own to the truth. It was worth while
sacrificing sun-baked streets for wide stretches of glorious moorland?”
“Oh, I’ll own to the worth whileness of it,” laughed John, hugging a
delicious secret to his heart.
Corin shrugged his shoulders.
“You might be a trifle more expansive,” he grumbled. “You might give
me an epitome of your morning’s experiences. There was I, perched
like a hen on a henroost, slaving my life out for four hours, while
you were enjoying glorious freedom. I said to myself, he’ll return
enthusiastic. I’ll have, at least, a second-hand experience of purple
moorland, sun-kissed sea, and cool green woods. And all the man has
done is to smile oracularly, and admit to beauty when the admission
was fairly dragged from his lips. No; don’t begin to rhapsodize now.
It’s too late. I wanted spontaneity, a first fine careless rapture. And
by dragging, pulling, and tugging, I get a bare admission of beauty
grudgingly made.”
John laughed again. It must be confessed that he was in a peculiarly
lighthearted mood.
“I’ll attempt no rhapsody, no poetic flights of fancy, since the
psychological moment for so doing has, according to you, passed. I’ll
give you the mere salient facts of the morning, the chiefest being that
I played St. George to the dragon.”
Corin eyed him suspiciously.
“I have an idea I heard you remark ‘no poetic flights of fancy,’ a
moment agone,” he suggested.
“I did,” retorted John, “and I adhere to that remark. Here is fact
pure and simple. But, for your better convincing, I will state that
the dragon had for the moment disguised itself as a goat,--a large, a
playful, black and white goat. The disguise was good, I’ll allow, but,”
concluded John dramatically, “I penetrated it.”
Corin sighed.
“If you could divest your speech of symbolism,” said he pathetically,
“and give me facts in plain English.”
“No symbolism I assure you,” protested John. “It was a goat,--a black
and white goat. It curved, it gavotted, it gambolled, thereby causing
much distress to a fair lady and her two attendant knights, who were,
believe me, hardly of an age to deal convincingly with either goats or
dragons. Then, behold, enter St. George.” He struck himself upon the
chest.
“Oh!” Corin began to find a thread of reasonableness among the
nonsense. “Who was the lady, I wonder?”
“She told me,” said John, “that her name was Miss Rosamund Delancey.”
He experienced a strange sensation of pleasure in pronouncing the words.
“Oh!” said Corin a second time. “From the Castle.”
“From the Castle,” echoed John.
Corin reflected, mused. Finally, seeing that John had come to an end of
the repast, he pushed back his chair, rose from the table, and lighted
a cigarette.
“I have heard a rumour,” said he, the cigarette lighted, “that they
are shortly leaving the Castle on account of some claimant who has
turned up. I can’t remember the whole story. I know it struck me as
sufficiently melodramatic at the moment,--murders, missing documents,
and little Adelphi touches of that kind were mixed up in it. But I
daresay it’s nothing but a rumour.”
“Let us trust so,” said John devoutly.
CHAPTER VIII
AN OLD PRIEST
FATHER MALONEY was in a mood, which, it must be confessed, was
distinctly unfavourable to his peace of mind. And not only his peace
of mind, but his appetite had suffered considerably thereby. Cold
corned beef and plum tart had been so much sawdust between his lips,
flavourless and exceeding dry. Even his after-luncheon pipe failed to
rouse him to a cheerier outlook on life in general. Now, when the joys
of tobacco had ceased to woo him, matters had, indeed, come to a pretty
pass. Anastasia, his housekeeper, clearing away the débris of the meal,
eyed him solicitously.
“You’re not ill, Father?” she asked, her black eyes snapping anxiety in
his direction.
For a moment he roused himself.
“Not at all, not at all,” he responded with a show of briskness, only
to relapse once more into gloom.
Anastasia shook her head.
“It’ll be that moidering business up to the Castle, I’m thinking,”
quoth she to herself, her lips tightening in a manner that would have
augured ill for the author of the business had he been anywhere within
sighting distance.
Returning to the kitchen she addressed a fervent, and, it must be
confessed, slightly authoritative decade of the rosary to Our Blessed
Lady, before beginning to wash up plates and dishes. To her mind
_something_ had to be done. Herein her mind and that of old Biddy the
nurse up at the Castle were distinctly in accord.
For one hour--two hours, perhaps--Father Maloney sat in his old
armchair. During that time he endeavoured, with some degree of success,
to say his office with attention. Then he once more lapsed into gloomy
retrospection and anticipation.
Since midday the world--the pleasant, material, sunny world--had been
turned upside down for him. It is true that this inversion had been
looked for, feared, for the last six months, but that fact did not
prevent the present phenomenon from being any the less unpleasant when
it actually occurred. It requires a peculiarly level head, not to say
a certain degree of something almost akin to callousness, to regard
matters from so totally different a point of view. It is a position to
which you cannot readily adjust yourself. At all events Father Maloney
found it one to which he could not readily adjust himself. It required
a supreme effort on his part merely to hang on, so to speak.
“Sure, and I ought to have been more prepared for it,” he muttered to
himself.
Getting out of his chair he went into the little hall, reached down his
hat, and took his stick from the stand. Anastasia saw him through the
open door of the kitchen. She came to it, a small dried-up woman.
“You’re not going out without your tea, Father,” she protested. “The
water in the kettle is boiling this very minute.”
“I’ll not be wanting any tea,” returned Father Maloney opening the
front door.
Anastasia went back into the kitchen, shaking her head sorrowfully at
the steaming kettle on the stove.
Father Maloney went slowly down the lane. It was powdered thickly with
white dust, since, for a fortnight past at least, the sky by day had
been blue and brazen, at night starlit and cloudless.
Two small girls passed him, belonging to his own flock. They dipped him
profound curtseys, glancing at him with bright bird-like eyes. He gave
but abstracted response to their salutation, which fact elicited from
them surprised and regretful comment as soon as he was out of earshot.
Though, for that matter, they might, at the moment, have reproached him
under his very nose, and gained no hearing.
Leaving the lane presently, he turned through a gate, and up the slope
of a grassy field. He had need of wider expanses than the hedged-in
lane afforded him.
He climbed slowly, pausing every now and then to take breath. At last
he gained the summit. Finding the sun distinctly warm, and being heated
by the ascent, he lowered himself slowly on to the short dry grass. So
busy was he with his own reflections, that he did not perceive a young
man lying in the shade of a blackberry bush some hundred or so paces
to his right. But it is very certain that the young man saw him; and,
seeing him, observed him intently.
* * * * *
When Corin had returned to his work, John had again betaken himself to
the open.
It was fairly obvious, so concluded John shrewdly, that a route
chosen for a morning ramble was not likely to be again sought in the
afternoon. The proceeding would savour too strongly of unoriginality of
ideas. But, so he pondered within his mind, it was just possible that
some other route might be chosen, and that by the favour of the gods he
might hit upon it. Therefore he had set out, leaving matters to those
same gods.
Having, after circumlocutious and disappointed walking, gained
his present post of eminence, he had lain down in the shadow of a
blackberry bush to muse over, and carp at, the fickleness of the gods
to whom he had trusted, and incidentally to survey the surrounding
country for a moving white-robed figure.
Till this present, no figure of any kind had come within his range of
vision; then, five minutes or so agone, turning his eyes leftwards, he
had perceived a stout elderly priest climbing the hillside towards him.
Here was some solace. If it were not the rose herself, it was at
least one who, it might pretty safely be concluded, was tolerably
well acquainted with the rose. A small backwater of a place, such as
Malford, does not, he might suppose, yield many priests, nor even,
presumably, more than one. There was little doubt in his mind but that
the approaching figure was the priest who officiated at Delancey Chapel.
John observed him intently, as I have said. He saw him lower himself on
to the grass with the slow deliberate movement of a stoutish man, saw
him gazing straight in front of him. From his position John had a view
of his face in something less than profile, but it was the dejection of
his attitude, rather than his face, that at the moment impressed our
John. He watched him, intent, absorbed.
“Something,” observed John mentally, “has recently upset his
equilibrium. Like a wise man he has come into the open to gain
restoration of balance.”
Which mental observation showed John to be possessed of no little
shrewdness, as you will perceive. And then, by a really marvellous leap
of intuition, he bounced straight into the heart of affairs, went in
with a splash, and came up gasping.
“Oh!” cried John to his soul, “that rumour, that obnoxious and
detestable rumour is true, and he has just been made aware of the
unassailable fact. The poor old fellow!”
No wonder he looked dejected, no wonder he gazed with all his eyes in
the direction of the towers of Delancey Castle plainly visible above
the distant trees. If the rumour were true, and John was now very
certain of its truth, it was enough to wring tears from the heart of a
flint, to call forth protestation from the tongueless trees and mute
stones of the old Castle itself.
An American claimant to that place! that utterly and entirely English
place! Its very walls, its surrounding trees and fields, were so
unmistakably and undeniably English. You might have taken up the whole
thing and planted it down in any remote and unexpected quarter of the
globe that you had chosen, and its whole atmosphere would have shrieked
its English origin dumbly, but quite, quite explicitly, at you. At any
time its origin would have been unassailable, and truly fifty times
more so at this present moment, as it lay serene and peaceful in the
blue and golden warmth of an August afternoon.
And now it was to be claimed by an American.
John suffered from no racial prejudice, I would have you to believe;
but there were some things that could be, and some things that could
not be. And for Delancey Castle to be in any but English hands would
be, to his way of thinking, a thing as incongruous and impossible as
that a Chinese should don the kilt of the Highlander, or that a South
Sea Islander should assume the Irish brogue. Oh, it was preposterous,
preposterous, preposterous. It was altogether unthinkable and
unimaginable.
And then suddenly he was aware of a difference in the old priest’s
attitude. It was a tiny difference, a subtle and quite inexplicable
difference, nevertheless it existed. And all at once John felt himself
a bit of an intruder, looking at what he had no atom of right to see.
Had he not feared that movement would make his presence known, he would
have moved on the instant. As it was he became absorbed in pulling up
small blades of grass from the ground. He pulled at them fiercely, his
eyes fixed upon them, the while he was most intensely aware of that
motionless old figure a hundred paces from him.
At length a sound--it might have been a half cough--caused him to raise
his eyes again. He saw the old priest pulling a pipe and tobacco pouch
from his pocket.
John watched him. The pipe filled, and the pouch replaced, Father
Maloney still fumbled at his pockets. It would appear that something
was missing.
“Matches!” said John. And cautiously he heaved himself to his feet.
Softly he advanced some steps, came to a line directly behind the old
priest, then marched boldly forward.
“Can I be of any use?” John held out a box towards him.
Father Maloney looked up surprised.
“I’m much obliged. Where did you appear from?”
“From over there.” John waved his hand in a backward and non-committal
direction. “I saw you intended lighting your pipe, but your intentions
were being frustrated.”
“Can’t think how I forgot them,” said Father Maloney pulling at his
pipe.
John dropped on to the ground beside him.
“What a view!” he announced in a pleasantly conversational tone. “And
what a day!”
“It is that indeed,” returned Father Maloney cheerfully.
John hugged himself inwardly.
“He’s got the hang of things again, brave old fellow!” he ejaculated
mentally. “But I’d give a very great deal to know the veritable
standpoint of affairs.”
Aloud he said. “Am I right in imagining that you are the chaplain of
Delancey Castle?”
“I am,” said Father Maloney. “What made you think so?”
“Well,” said John airily, “one does not expect to see a superabundance
of priests in a Protestant country, and when it comes to a minute spot
such as this, where you happen to know there is one priest,--well, when
you see him, you imagine he’s the one,” concluded John explicitly.
Father Maloney’s eyes twinkled.
“Under the circumstances, as stated by you, the inference might be
drawn,” quoth he.
And then followed a little silence. Both men were looking towards
Delancey Castle, and it may be pretty safely conjectured that the
thoughts of both were occupied by that same Castle.
John, if the truth be known, was longing--fervently longing--that the
old priest should give voice to that matter, which, he was fully aware,
was uppermost in their minds. For him to broach the subject would, he
feared, savour too strongly of impertinence on the part of a complete
stranger. Yet it is very certain that, without any undue curiosity on
his part, he desired intensely to know the actual rights of the case,
to arrive at the veritable truth of the rumour which had twice reached
his ears.
Now whether John’s desire was sufficiently intense to communicate
itself to Father Maloney, or whether it was that the subject which
so absorbed the old priest’s mind was bound to find an outlet in
speech, you may settle as best pleases you. For my part, I have no
definite opinion to offer on the matter, though I sway slightly in
favour of the latter conclusion. When every nook and cranny of the
mind is filled with a thought which increases in volume the more it is
absorbed, there comes a point when an outlet in speech is practically
a necessity, and, to my thinking, this point had been reached in the
present case of Father Maloney’s mind. Also it is quite possible that
he recognized the silent and unobtrusive sympathy of John. Certain it
is that he began to speak.
“I suppose you’ll have heard the news of yonder Castle?” he asked,
pulling at his pipe.
“I’ve heard rumours,” acquiesced John, “which I devoutly trusted were
nothing more.”
“I trusted that myself,” said Father Maloney grimly. “But the truth of
them is clinched now, and that’s a fact.”
“Ah!” said John quietly. And then, “Would you tell me the story? I
should like to hear it, if you wouldn’t mind telling it.”
“Not at all, since you’d be caring to hear it But it’s a longish tale,
and a bit complicated at that. It might be boring you.”
“Not a bit of it,” declared John fervently. “I’ve been wanting to hear
the truth of the matter ever since the first rumour reached my ears.
Honestly,” he continued smiling, “it has been nothing but the fear of a
snub that prevented me from broaching the subject the first moment I
dropped on the grass beside you.”
Father Maloney smiled.
“Ah, well,” he said.
CHAPTER IX
AN OLD-TIME TRAGEDY
AFTER a moment, during which Father Maloney was, I imagine, sorting
his ideas, seeking for the best beginning to the promised complicated
story, he began to speak.
“Well, you’ll know, of course, that the Delanceys are a very old
family. The baronetcy dates back to the time of the Crusaders. The
family have never lost the Faith, as we Catholics say. The matter which
has given rise to the present upset happened in the year seventeen
hundred and thirteen. The then baronet was one Sir Michael Delancey,
his wife, Helen, _née_ Montgomery. But sure that’s nothing to do with
the tale at all. There were three children by the marriage, Henry,
Antony, and Rosamund. It was with Henry that the difficulty arose.
He was--well, I fear there’s no denying that he was a rogue, with no
decent feeling in him at all. A card-playing, drinking fella he was,
and not above doing a thought of cheating if it happened that the luck
was going against him. Well, it was in one of these card routs that
things came to a crisis. There was cheating and quarrelling and what
not, and at the end a duel. Henry killed his man, and raced off to his
home to lie low a bit in hiding. The old man--Sir Michael--was sick
of him and his ways by that time, I’m thinking. Anyhow he agreed to
smuggle him out of the country, but on one condition, and here’s the
first, and, for that matter, the whole point of the business. Before he
was shipped off he had to sign some paper or other renouncing all claim
to the property, indeed disinheriting himself in favour of his younger
brother, Antony. Somehow it seems that the old man had not the right to
disinherit him himself.”
“Entail, I suppose,” said John lighting a fresh cigarette.
“Something of the kind, I’ve no doubt,” returned Father Maloney.
“Legally, I’m thinking, he’d still have inherited the title, but
the bargain was that he was to go off for ever, be, in a manner of
speaking, dead to the heritage of his forebears in any shape or form.
And his heirs to be dead to it likewise. Be that as may be, he went
off, having renounced all claim to the property. Five years later his
brother Antony succeeded to it.”
Father Maloney paused, then a moment later resumed his tale.
“Antony married Margaret de Courcey, a fine woman from all accounts,
and by her he had four children, Antony, Richard, Rosamund, and
Michael. Now comes along the next point of interest. Ten years after
Sir Antony had succeeded to the property and title, Henry reappeared
upon the scene. There’s no doubt but that he had it in his mind to
make matters as unpleasant for Antony as might be. He was married, so
he said, and had two sons. Margaret was away from home at the time,
and the whole business is clearly shown in letters she received from
her husband, Sir Antony. The letters are still in existence. In them
Sir Antony tells her of Henry’s reappearance, and sets forth his
reluctance to do the obvious thing and inform the law his brother has
returned,--which would have been mightily unpleasant for Henry, I’m
thinking. Sure, he must have been a daring fella to have come back to
England at all. Sir Antony tells her, too, clearly enough, Henry’s
motive in coming, and it’s one a blind man might be seeing without
over-much difficulty. It was the paper he’d signed he was after. If he
could destroy that, why, it would leave his son free to inherit the
title and property at his death. He couldn’t think to be getting them
himself without more of a boggle than he’d have a liking for. But it
would be another matter for his son. You’ll be finding all this in the
first two letters Sir Antony wrote to Margaret, as well as the whole
history of the signing of the paper. Perhaps after a fashion she knew
of that before, but not over-definitely. Anyhow Sir Antony writes it
all down, and it is from that letter we know of the matter. A third
letter, and a shorter one, shows that Sir Antony is getting a trifle
uneasy with Henry hanging around, and that he means to remove the paper
from the strong box, where it was kept, to some hiding-place of sorts.
But never a hint did he give of where that hiding-place would be at
all.”
“Possibly,” remarked John shrewdly, “he had no mind to put his ideas on
paper.”
“’Tis more than likely,” returned Father Maloney grimly, “but it’s
a deal of trouble he’d have been saving if he’d given the merest
suspicion of a hint. A fourth letter was sent to Margaret Delancey,
written by one Francis Raymond, a priest. ’Tis a sad letter, and a
fine letter too, for that matter. He begs her to come home without
delay, and tells her of her husband’s death. He goes straight at what
he has to say, and then gives her the comfort the poor soul would
be needing,--though it’s plain he knows the manner of woman she is,
and the courage of her. There’s a hint in his letter of foul play of
some kind. Other papers, Margaret’s own diary among them, tell what
that foul play was. Sir Antony had been found in the park, under an
oak tree, shot through the head. Henry was lying near him, a pistol
not ten inches from his hand, and his throat torn out by Sir Antony’s
wolf-hound.”
“What a ghastly business!” ejaculated John, as Father Maloney stopped.
“You may well say that,” remarked Father Maloney. “The matter was plain
enough. Henry had shot his brother with the idea of getting hold of
that precious paper unhindered, but he had forgotten--or, maybe, never
realized--the presence of Sir Antony’s wolf-hound, Gelert. The dog
wasn’t one to let his master’s murderer go unpunished.”
Again there was a little pause. Father Maloney refilled his pipe.
“Well,” he said after a minute, “after Sir Antony’s death, his son
Antony came into possession. But--” Father Maloney emphasized the word
with an emphatic movement of his pipe, “that paper desired by Henry had
vanished. Wherever Sir Antony had hidden it, the hiding-place was a bit
too good. It has never been found.”
“Perhaps,” suggested John tentatively, “Henry had destroyed it.”
Father Maloney shook his head.
“Not a bit of it. If Henry had destroyed it before he shot his brother
there’d have been no need for the shooting at all. He shot his brother
to get at the paper, but Gelert was one too many for him. And never a
scrap of paper was found upon, or near him.”
“And,” said John ruminatively, “that has proved an awkward business.”
“It has that,” said Father Maloney drily. “A claimant has turned up.”
“Yes,” said John quietly.
“Oh, ’tis a pretty boggle,” went on Father Maloney, “it is that. This
fella, this David Delancey arrives from Africa----”
“Africa!” interrupted John. “I heard he was an American?”
“Well, ’tis Africa he has come from,” said Father Maloney. “He arrives
as cool as a cucumber. ‘I’m the rightful owner of this place,’ says he
in a letter to Lady Mary. ‘I’ve every proof, and send copies of them.’
’Tis a long rigmarole how he got hold of them. Of course there was
a lawyers’ investigation. That’s been going on for months. But ’tis
proved now beyond no manner of doubt that he is the direct descendant
of that scoundrel Henry, and not a scrap of legal proof have we got on
our side that Henry ever renounced the claim to the property. There’s
the whole business. Lady Mary got the letter from the lawyer fellas
this morning. ’Tis full of their jargon, but the meaning is plain
enough through it all. David Delancey is the rightful heir, and no
vestige of right has this little Antony here to stick or stone of the
old place.”
Father Maloney stopped.
“It’s--it’s preposterous!” ejaculated John hotly.
Father Maloney smiled, an untranslatable, an enigmatic smile.
“When does he take possession?” demanded John.
“Oh, he’s written a decent enough letter,” responded Father Maloney.
“He says there can be time enough taken for the handing over of the
property. ‘Take six months, or a year about it, for that matter,’ says
he. He’ll be coming down here in a day or so to the inn to look around
and get the hang of affairs, though he’s in no way anxious to intrude.”
“Intrude!” snorted the wrathful John.
“Well, well,” interpolated Father Maloney soothingly, “he’ll be within
his rights according to those lawyer fellas.”
John gazed sternly before him.
“I don’t believe he has an atom of right,” he announced emphatically.
Again Father Maloney smiled.
“Well, I’ll allow we’re all of us for that way of thinking ourselves.
But private opinion has never overridden the law yet, without proof in
the plainest black and white to back it up.”
John heaved a portentous sigh.
Here, at least, was fact indisputable. Matters for the present
inhabitants of Delancey Castle were at a deadlock, a deadlock of the
tightest and most emphatic kind. There was no denying that a stoic
philosophy was the only course open to them.
But stoic philosophy on such a matter! How was any living human
creature possessed of a drop of warm tingling blood in his veins to
encompass such a state of being? He saw the trio as they had come
towards him in the August sunshine that morning,--the girl tall,
graceful, breathing vitality, temperament; the merest casual observer
must have felt her extraordinary capacity for feeling things intensely.
Oh, it was no imagination on his part, imagination fed by the white
light of idealism with which he had surrounded her. Verily was there no
imagination on his part. She would suffer in every fibre of her being.
It would be to her like tearing her heart from her. And she would
suffer smiling, he knew that. That’s where the pain would be the more
intense. Those who can bedew a wound with tears bring easing to its
agony. And he told himself she would never shed one tear. He knew he
wasn’t being sentimental. It was the hard bed-rock truth.
And the boys too! Antony, gay, debonair, valiant little champion!
Michael, a mere clinging, cuddlesome baby! And there was Delancey
Castle before him in the sunlight.
Of course he didn’t know the place, he was perfectly aware of that
fact, but imagination could well make up for lack of knowledge. In
imagination he saw the gardens, the terraces, the old grey walls, the
dark interior lit by diamond-paned casement windows; he saw the blend
of harmonious colours; he smelt the old-time smell of century-mellowed
oak and leather, the fragrant scents of lavender and _pot-pourri_.
And it was this--this absolutely perfect and fitting frame for that
adorable trio (he had forgotten Lady Mary for the moment) that was
to be snatched from them, and made the frame for a modern, hustling,
nasal-voiced American.
“What do you think about it?” demanded John sternly, his eyes towards
the distant Castle, but his words intended for the old priest.
“Sure, I was thinking every bit the same as you’re thinking, till
twenty minutes or so agone,” responded Father Maloney.
“And now?” demanded John.
“Glory be to God, is it a sermon you’re wanting?” asked Father Maloney
with a little twinkle in his eyes.
CHAPTER X
CORIN THEORIZES
CORIN, from the depths of one armchair, regarded John in the depths of
another.
“For sheer, racy, brilliant conversation commend me to you,” he
remarked sarcastically. “For the last hour at least--I’ve had my eye on
the clock--you’ve uttered no single word. You’ve rivalled the immortal
William’s lover in your sighs. Talk of _a_ furnace, it’s like ten
furnaces you’ve been. Sigh, sigh, and again sigh. What’s the matter
with you, man? Is it love, sorrow, or remorse for an ill-spent youth?
Come, out with it. Disburden your soul of the worm i’ the bud which is
feeding on your damask cheek. Speak, I implore you.”
John roused himself.
“Oh,” he responded airily enough, “in the matter of conversation
I fancied we’d had enough of it at dinner--supper--whatever the
original, but wholly appetizing meal might be called. We conversed
pretty tolerably, I fancy.”
“Conversation!” Corin’s voice expressed a depth of utter scorn.
“Conversation! If that’s what he calls the airy, frothy, soap-bubble
words which fell from his lips! Oh, you didn’t deceive me. I saw
in them the mere cloak to an aching heart. You just over-did the
lighthearted careless rôle. You’ve said fifty times more in the last
hour. But now I want the translation, the interpretation. Where’s the
use of first frivolling, and then glooming? Strike the happy medium.
Come, consider me a confidant,” he ended on a note of coaxing.
John laughed. Then he relapsed into gloom, frowning.
“It’s no laughing matter,” he said.
“It wasn’t I who laughed,” urged Corin gently. “Come, tell me.”
“Oh, well,” said John stretching out his legs. And forthwith he set
himself to speak, succinctly, concisely.
“Bless the man!” cried Corin at the end of the recital, “so it’s that
that’s weighing on his mind.”
“Well?” demanded John surprised, and not a little injured. “And isn’t
it enough to weigh on a man’s mind? Isn’t it an entirely unparalleled
situation? Isn’t it an unthinkable, inconceivable situation?”
Corin waved his cigarette in the air.
“Oh, I’ll grant you all that. But you’re too susceptible. You’re
too--too ultra-sympathetic. It isn’t _your_ Castle. It isn’t _your_
relation that has appeared unwanted from the other side of Nowhere. It
isn’t _you_ who have got to take a back seat and see Americans vault
over your head into the position you have just vacated.” He stopped.
“Oh, well,” said John frigidly, “if that’s the way you look at things.”
Corin sighed.
“It’s the only sensible way.”
“Hang sense,” muttered John.
“My dear fellow,” urged Corin soothingly, “look at matters in a
reasonable light. Here are you sighing, frowning, suffering real
mental pain on behalf of a family--a quite picturesque and interesting
family, I’ve no doubt, but one with which you have the barest bowing
acquaintance, the merest superficial knowledge. Your attitude isn’t
reasonable, it’s altogether exaggerated and beside the mark.”
“It’s merely ordinary decent human sympathy,” retorted John.
Corin raised his light arched eyebrows till they nearly touched his
light straight hair.
“Then,” he remarked coolly, “defend me from your company when you are
suffering from extraordinary human sympathy. Seriously, though,” he
went on, “aren’t you being a trifle _exalté_ in the matter? Aren’t you
plunging the sword of sympathy a bit too deeply into your heart? For a
moment--just for one brief infinitesimal moment--consider facts as they
are. Here are we two, dropped by the merest chance upon this place,
fallen upon it by the merest freak of fortune--three weeks ago I’d
never even heard of its existence--and we’ve really no more individual
connection with it than with--with Mount Popocatepetl. What possible
reason, or, I might say, what right or justification, has either one of
us to take to heart the private and personal trials of a family living
here. It’s--it’s almost an impertinence. We aren’t in the picture at
all. We’re altogether superfluous to them. Look at the whole thing
from the point of view of an audience,” continued Corin blandly. “A
month or two hence the curtain will have fallen on this little drama,
as far as we are concerned. We aren’t on the stage at all.”
John smiled, a little grim smile, provoked, no doubt, by the eminent
common-sense of Corin’s statement.
“You have a really wonderfully level way of regarding matters,” he
remarked.
“Isn’t it common-sense?” demanded Corin.
“Oh, yes, it’s common-sense right enough,” conceded John airily.
“You see,” continued Corin, secretly immensely pleased with what he
considered the success of his theorems, “you see it is absolutely and
entirely impossible for us as individuals to take to heart, deeply to
heart, each individual grief of each individual person in the world.
Consider, man, if one did, every perusal of the daily papers would be
fraught with soul-agonizings, with horrible heart-burnings. It would
become a sheer wasting of the nervous tissues, an utter and entire
uneconomic expenditure of the sympathies. Also,” concluded Corin,
speaking now at top speed, “though you, in your isolated superiority of
an orthodox religion, refuse to admit my theories, it is nevertheless
a fact that all suffering is the outcome of justice, in a word, of
karma, the inevitable demand for the payment of those debts which every
individual has at one time or another voluntarily contracted.”
John grinned.
“I’ve heard that theory of yours before,” he remarked.
“Oh, I know your didymusical tendencies,” retorted Corin.
John laughed.
“I should have supposed,” quoth he, “that the shoe fitted another foot.”
But in his heart he was considering three points--three questions
raised by a previous speech in the foregoing conversation. Firstly, was
it a mere freak of fortune that had brought him to Malford? Secondly,
would the curtain presently fall on the drama so far as he was
concerned? Thirdly, had Father Maloney considered his palpable sympathy
in the business an impertinence?
To firstly and secondly his heart cried an emphatic negative. Thirdly,
after all, was a minor consideration; but, having in mind Father
Maloney’s shrewd old eyes, John was disposed to answer that question
likewise in the negative.
CHAPTER XI
IN AN OLD CHURCH
THE next two days were _dies non_ as far as John was concerned, since
never a glimpse did he obtain of white-robed figure or attendant
knights, despite sun-baked rambles along dusty roads, deep lanes, and
over purple moorland.
He began to carp at that freakish sprite Chance. Matters might have
been so differently arranged by him. Taking them in hand at all, they
could have been conceived with so infinitely greater diplomacy. Where,
after all, had been the use of a mere goat? Why could not a bull--a
ferocious, snorting, pawing bull--have been brought on to the stage.
A bull must have entailed some further acknowledgment of the heroic
rescue. He might even have been slightly injured in the course of that
same rescue. In that case inquiries would have followed as a matter
of course, maybe even a visit of sympathetic and grateful condolence.
But a goat! a mere goat! With time and safety in which to consider the
situation, it had doubtless presented itself to the lady’s mind as one
of ridiculous insignificance. Her alarm was, probably, by now almost
laughable in her own eyes; and, in the face of this calm consideration,
John’s advance to the rescue would, therefore, have savoured somewhat
what of an intrusion. Verily had Chance been freakish and ill-advised.
“Could I but build me a willow cabin at her gates,” sighed John. “But
to sit on the sun-baked road would undoubtedly gain one the reputation
of a madman in these prosaic, self-contained days.”
Nevertheless he wandered past those same gates more times than I will
venture to record, and gazed ardently along the avenue of oaks and
beeches, but with no reward for his pains.
To bring solace to his soul, he bethought himself of Sunday. Sight of
her, at least, must be then permitted him; speech with her, though a
good devoutly to be desired, was not probable of consummation. Also,
with distinct and genuine success he interested himself in Corin’s
labours.
The work in the church progressed. Daily the plaster fell before that
remorseless chisel, daily new delights shone forth to the light of
day. The tracery of the east window was uncovered; showing brilliant
blue-green, with glowing ruby eyes. Great splashes of colour, bold yet
simple outline, transformed the dreary, hitherto plastered place into
a thing of mediæval beauty. The progress of time vanished with the
falling plaster. You found yourself back in the old centuries, the dead
years revitalized.
John sought the church most willingly when the workmen’s hours were
over, when silence lay upon the place, when the only sounds that
came to him were the falling of fragments from the walls, the echo
of Corin’s foot upon the plank as he shifted his position, and the
twittering and chirping of the birds from the bushes in the sunny
churchyard without.
At such time imagination ran riot.
He pictured the village folk coming up the path among the lengthening
shadows, saw them entering by the little Norman doorway, taking holy
water from the stoup, then kneeling before Christ in the Blessed
Sacrament. To him the church was no longer an empty shell, but a place
of crimson draperies, dark oak pews, scattered shrines; with here and
there a kneeling figure; and above all, superseding all, the quiet
strength and peace of the Hidden Presence.
Presently he began to individualize his village folk. There was a
fair-haired girl who came to pray for her lover, to commend him
specially to Our Lord and St. Joseph, since he--her man--was a
carpenter. There was a dark-eyed woman who came to plead for the life
of her child lying sick of a fever; there was a young man who came
to dedicate his youth and strength to God; and there was an old, old
woman, who, having no living to pray for, came daily to pray for the
holy dead. The present had vanished, merged and absorbed in the past.
Despite all that has been lost, removed, abandoned, despite the denial
of entry to that Gracious Presence, does there not still linger in
these old churches some faint sweet breath, some hidden fragrance of
that which once has been?
You would never have imagined, seeing John sitting there in his most
immaculate suit of grey flannels, that such thoughts as these were
passing through his mind. But I have observed, and you may take my
observation for what it is worth, that to attempt to guess at the
minds of one’s fellow humans by their clothes and their superficial
appearance, is a distinctly dangerous task. To do so must inevitably
result in a series of vast surprises when the truth becomes known.
To my thinking it would be not unlike marching into some great clothing
emporium to examine coats. There they hang,--tweed coats, frieze coats,
fur coats, silk coats, velvet coats, satin coats, tinsel coats, even
second-hand and shop-worn coats. You turn them to look at the linings.
Now, here the shock begins. Where you expected to find warm linings you
find calico; where good material, rags; where flimsy useless linings,
cloth of gold and soft fur; where soiled linings, the most exquisite
satins. Therefore, if you desire to make a guess at the substance of
these coats, without actual knowledge of their linings, take them from
their peg and weigh them. A discrepancy between their weight and your
expectation of it may lead you nearer a fair guess at the lining.
I’ll be bound, that, on mere superficial observation, you’d have taken
our John for a mere summer coat of little substance and no weight;
but assuredly you’d find your mistake when you had examined a bit
closer. It is an idiosyncrasy of human nature, perhaps intentional
on the part of the individual, perhaps unavoidable, that the vast
majority invariably deceives the casual observer. No doubt this lends
interest to our acquaintanceships and friendships; often, too, lends
disappointment; and occasionally unexpected pleasure; but interest
certainly.
Here, however, I have advanced somewhat with John’s meditations,
carried them beyond those first days of which I began to speak.
Therefore to return on our traces.
That first Saturday afternoon John, sitting on an overturned
wheelbarrow, began something of those thoughts of which I have given
you the greater elaboration. I don’t believe for a moment that he knew
that he was thinking them. There’s the curious joy of such thoughts.
There is no conscious effort on your part. You don’t map out a route
in your mind resolving your progress along it, a conscientious
observance of the milestones you may pass. Insensibly you drift into
peaceful glades, silent and very sweet. Their atmosphere steals upon
you, holding your spirit in a breathless charm. Happiness, a strange
wonderful happiness, falls upon you. You accept it in its entirety,
taking, at the moment, no note of details. Later, returning to more
material consciousness and surroundings, the details present themselves
to your memory, and you then realize your awareness of them, even while
they were submerged in the whole.
* * * * *
It was cool in the church, in marked contrast to the heat without.
Being Saturday afternoon, John and Corin had the place to themselves.
Corin, up aloft, chiselled with vigour, or with suspended breath,
as the exigencies of the work demanded; John, on the overturned
wheelbarrow, was lost in thought.
Suddenly a slight sound made him raise his head. For a moment, for one
brief instant, he still remained in the past, almost believing his
thoughts to have materialized before him.
In the shadow of the little Norman doorway stood a white-robed figure.
Still half dreaming he looked to see her take holy water from the
stoup. Then actualities rushed upon him. His heart jumped; pleasure,
undeniable radiant pleasure, shone from his face. He got to his feet.
“Oh,” said Rosamund perceiving him. And she stopped, half hesitating.
John made her a little courtly bow.
“I thought,” said she smiling, “I should have found the place deserted.
It is Saturday afternoon.”
“It is deserted,” John assured her, “but for me and Corin.” He
indicated the indefatigably industrious figure aloft.
She smiled.
“I came,” said she, “with the intention of having a private view, a
little secret examination of the paintings Mr. Elmore was uncovering.”
“Oh!” said John. And then dubiously, “The uncovered paintings are, as
you see, at a goodly height above us.”
“Yes.” Her voice was regretful.
John heard the regret.
“I wonder--” he began.
“I _could_,” she assured him, with swift realization of his unspoken
thought.
He glanced towards the ladder.
“Really?” he queried.
She nodded. “Really. I am sure I could.”
“Come then,” said John.
They advanced towards the ladder. At the foot thereof she paused.
“Shan’t we be disturbing him?” she queried.
“Not a bit of it,” laughed John. “He’ll merely be flattered at your
interest. He’ll adore an audience.”
The situation had for him the hint of an adventure. To have told her
curtly,--or suavely, for that matter,--that it was impossible for her
to see those paintings would have resulted in her leaving the church.
There could have been no possible excuse for her remaining. This
thought justified him in suggesting the venture. Naturally it was an
infinitely greater venture in his eyes than in Rosamund’s. That is
probably understood without need of my mentioning the fact.
John, in advance, reached the first platform; turned, took her hand
firmly in his, and drew her to safety. A second time was this feat
accomplished in like manner.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Corin, surprised at the double apparition.
“Allow me,” said John, “to present my friend, Mr. Elmore. Miss Delancey
wanted to see the paintings.”
“Therein,” quoth Corin bowing, “she shows her judgment. Behold!” He
waved his chisel towards the wall.
“Oh!” breathed Rosamund. Just that, and no more.
Corin hugged himself with delight.
“Isn’t it gorgeous!” he ejaculated. “Isn’t it superb, adorable, and
dreamy! And heaven knows what more this plaster hides. The unutterable
Philistines who smeared and daubed it over from the light of day!”
“Is it not,” suggested Rosamund, “a matter for thankfulness that they
did merely smear and daub? It is possible, it is quite conceivable,
that they might have scraped.”
Corin shuddered.
“Don’t suggest such a possibility,” he implored. “I’ll confess my
thankfulness for the daubing.”
She barely heard him. She was engrossed in the work before her,--red,
black, turquoise blue, and crimson, she revelled in its colour. Daring
enough it was in parts, in others almost crude in its simplicity. She
was drawn, as John had been drawn, back into the bygone ages. Their
atmosphere enfolded her, enwrapped her. She saw in the work before
her, almost without realizing her thoughts, the interpretation of the
mind of the painter. Here was nothing petty, nothing niggled; it was
frank, simple, childlike. It was extraordinarily unselfconscious.
Therein lay its subtle charm. There was no intricacy of expression;
nothing laboured; almost, one might say, nothing preconceived.
“Well?” queried John at last.
“Oh,” she cried, turning towards him, “it’s--it’s so deliciously
simple, so utterly unstudied. It’s almost untutored in its crudeness,
and yet--I wonder wherein exactly the charm lies?”
“In its simplicity,” returned Corin promptly. “Whoever painted this
worked for pure pleasure. There’s--well, there’s so extraordinarily
little hint of even the thought of an audience. Do you know what I
mean?”
“Isn’t it,” she said laughing, “the entire expression of ‘when the
world was so new and all’?”
“_Exactly!_” cried Corin. “In those eight little words Kipling carried
us back into a clean fresh world with its face all washed and smiling;
when we laughed for the mere joy of laughter; when we wept if we wanted
to weep--only I believe we didn’t want to; when the tiresome stupid
phrases ‘What will people think? What will people say?’ were unknown in
the language; when we danced, and ate, and played in the sunshine for
the mere joy of living.”
“Only that?” she queried, her eyebrows raised.
“Only that,” said Corin firmly. “Kipling is a glorious pagan.”
“Oh!” She was dubious. “I wonder.”
“And this painter,” pursued Corin unheeding, “splashed his colours on
the walls, his blacks, his reds, his blues, his lines and curves, and
he laughed as he worked, and I think he sang too, and he didn’t care
one jot what people thought about him or his painting. He loved it, and
so--” He broke off with a gesture.
“But,” quoth she demurely, “I suppose you don’t intend to infer that
_he_ was a pagan?”
“Oh, you can _call_ him what you like,” returned Corin magnanimously,
“I only know that his mind was as untrammelled as his work.”
“I see.” She shot him a little quizzical glance.
Ten minutes later, standing once more on the floor of the church, she
said to John, smiling:
“I suppose Mr. Elmore considers your mind, and my mind, and, for the
matter of that, the mind of every Catholic in a kind of strait-jacket?”
“You’re not far beside the mark,” returned John laughing.
He went with her to the door. A moment she stood there; and, turning,
looked back into the church.
“After all, it’s sad,” she said.
“I know,” replied John.
“It’s--it’s the sense of loss.”
“I know,” said John again, “the sense of loss, in spite of the faint
fragrance that still lingers.”
She nodded, then turned towards the sunshine without.
“By the way,” said she suddenly reminiscent, “I left a note for you at
the White Cottage. My grandmother would be very pleased if you and Mr.
Elmore would lunch with us tomorrow at one o’clock. She would like to
thank you in person for your intervention on our behalf the other day.
Can you come?”
“With the greatest pleasure in the world,” returned John. And there is
no question but that his heart was in his voice.
CHAPTER XII
THE WICKEDNESS OF MOLLY BIDDULPH
YOU perceive, therefore, that Chance had truly played the game well.
John--a radiant John--apologized within his soul for his one-time
doubt of the Sprite’s arrangement of affairs. The sun immediately
shone brighter, the sky was bluer, the earth an altogether fairer and
lovelier place.
He made his way swiftly back to the White Cottage. There, in the
parlour, he found what he sought, a pale grey envelope lying on the
table. Quickly he broke the seal, perused the opening words:
“My grandmother desires me....”
John’s heart thumped madly. It was exactly as he had hoped,--her
handwriting, her signature! The faintest scent of lavender was wafted
to him from the paper.
“We shall be lunching at Delancey Castle tomorrow,” said John, with
a fine air of casualness, to Mrs. Trimwell, who was setting out the
tea-things. Inwardly he was aware that an almost idiotic smile of
pleasure was wreathing itself about his lips.
Mrs. Trimwell beamed. You might have fancied, seeing her, that the
invitation had been extended to herself.
“I’m glad,” said she, heartily and concisely. “You need cheering up a
bit.”
“I do?” John was surprised.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Trimwell. “I’ve noticed well enough that you’ve
been down on your luck like these last three days, and no wonder with
not a soul to speak to except Mr. Elmore, and him everlasting on
ladders chiselling of the walls, which it isn’t the easiest way to be
talking at the same time, I’ll be bound. You’ve done nothing but wear
yourself out a-trapezing round the country in the heat, and come home
that tired you’ve no stomach for your food. I’ve eyes in my head.” Mrs.
Trimwell nodded emphatically.
“Oh, but really--” began John feebly, and with something like a queer
sense of guilt, “I haven’t----”
“You’ve been dull,” reiterated Mrs. Trimwell firmly, “and if you _say_
you haven’t you don’t deceive me, no more than my Tilda did when she
come into the house half an hour agone looking for all the world like
a choir boy a-singing of hymns. ‘Where ha’ you been, Tilda?’ says I.
Tilda, she glinted at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Oh, round and
about, mother,’ says she. ‘And ’tis round and about with Molly Biddulph
you’ve been then,’ I says. And Tilda, she begins to snivel, knowing
I’ve told her times out of number I won’t have her going around with
Molly, who’s the worst young limb of mischief to the village. There’s
nothing that child won’t do, from getting unbeknownst into Jane Kelly’s
shop and changing the salt and sugar in the jars, to tampering with the
very books in the church itself. Did I ever tell you about her and the
banns of marriage, sir?”
“You did not,” replied John.
“It was her cousin from Dublin what helped her, I know,” announced Mrs.
Trimwell, “being a boy, and good at writing, and old enough to think of
the wickedness. But ’twas Molly stole the key, as Father Maloney got
her to own, and seeing she goes to his church, being Irish papists, I
wonder he don’t keep her in better order. Vicar, he was away for a
Sunday or two, and got another parson what he called a lokomtinum to
come down. Molly, she stole the key of the vestry from Henry Davies
what’s the verger, and used to keep the key in a china cat on his
parlour mantelpiece, but has carried it tied to his watch chain ever
since, and her and Patsie sneaked off down to the church when Vicar had
gone, and got the book of banns to be called. There wasn’t but one bann
to be called, Lily Morton’s, her that married the blacksmith over to
Bradbury three months agone. Patsie and Molly wrote down the rest. They
coupled off Mr. Healy and Miss Sweeting, and Mr. Porter and Miss Janet
Cray, and Mr. Lethbury and Miss Martha Bridges, what’s all over fifty
if they’re a day, and the respectablest spinsters for miles round, and
Mr. Healey he’s in his dotage, and Mr. Porter what’s afraid to look a
woman in the face, and Mr. Lethbury a married man with a wife a bit of
a termagent. They said afterwards--Molly and Patsie--they had to give
Miss Martha Bridges to somebody, and there wasn’t no unmarried men but
Mr. Healey and Mr. Porter, and they’d fixed them to Miss Sweeting and
Miss Janet Cray. Well, the lokomtinum he don’t know no more than Adam
who the people in the village are, and when it come to the banns, out
he reads the sinfulness them two have written down. Mrs. Morton, the
butcher’s wife, she was there, and she told me afterwards you might ha’
heard the gasp that went round the church up to the Castle. Mr. Porter
took and bolted, and hasn’t been seen outside his gates yet. Mr. Healey
wasn’t there, and Mr. Lethbury he sat with his jaw dropped and his eyes
a-sticking out of his head. Miss Martha Bridges had hysterics, and the
only ones that seemed a bit pleased and fluttery-like was Miss Sweeting
and Miss Janet Cray, specially Miss Janet. Suppose them two thought it
was a new kind o’ way of proposing, not having the courage to do it
otherways.” Mrs. Trimwell stopped.
“What happened?” asked John trying to keep his voice steady.
“Happened!” said Mrs. Trimwell. “There was talk enough in the village
that Sunday and a week after to last most people for a lifetime and
then them feel a bit of chatterboxes. Henry Davies he was mad, feeling
responsible like as verger. He guessed ’twas Molly at the bottom of it
as she’s at the bottom of all the mischievousness in the place and
her only eleven. But he couldn’t prove nothing finding the key in the
china cat Sunday morning same as it always was, Molly having put it
back. He ask her, and she up and lied straight. She’ll tell you a lie
and look you in the face as innocent as a dove. But I knows when she’s
lying for that she always turns her toes in when she lies. But I don’t
think other folk have noticed that, and for all she’s a bad child I’ll
not give her away that much. Henry Davies he went up to Father Maloney,
and he sent for Molly and Patsie, being a knowing man like, and the
sinfulness a bit beyond Molly’s years. They told him the truth fast
enough. I’ll say that for Molly, she don’t never lie to Father Maloney,
that I knows. And then all they’d say, as brazen as you please, was
that they were sorry they couldn’t have heard the banns read, because
’twould be a sin in them to go to a Protestant church. Henry Davies
said Father Maloney was that angry with them for such a speech he just
turned his back straight on them and walked over to the window. And
presently he said in a queer sort of voice that if Henry Davies would
go away for a bit he’d talk to Patsie and Molly. Henry Davies was
sure he was so upset at the wickedness of them being responsible for
their souls like that he couldn’t abide to have any one see what he was
feeling.”
“It would be a grief to him,” announced John gravely. “Did--did his
lecture have any effect?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Trimwell, “in a manner of speaking you might say
it had. Father Maloney went with Molly and Patsie to them six they’d
insulted--Father Maloney said ’twas an insult--and to Henry Davies and
the lokomtinum, and they apologized. Though Molly said afterwards that
Miss Janet and the lokomtinum were the only ones it had been worth
while apologizing to. She said it in Henry Davies’s hearing, which it
wasn’t pleasant for him to hear, and he’d have gone to Father Maloney
again but that Mrs. Davies persuaded him to let well alone seeing he
might ha’ been a bit to blame for not keeping the key safer. Father
Maloney made them own up to Vicar too, and say they were sorry. But
sorriness with Molly is water on a duck’s back and no more and no less.
And I’ve told my Tilda fifty times if I’ve told her once, that I’ll not
have her go with Molly. But it’s awful the way Molly gets a hold on
children with her coaxing ways.”
John shook his head in commiseration. Words, it would appear, failed
him at the moment.
Two minutes later, Mrs. Trimwell having departed, he betook himself to
a careful re-perusal of that pale grey letter.
CHAPTER XIII
AT DELANCEY CASTLE
“I SAW a new man in the park today.”
This statement, clear, emphatic, came from Antony’s lips. Sheer
courtesy had suppressed it long enough to allow of Father Maloney’s
saying grace, then it had shot forth, somewhat after the manner of a
stone from a catapult.
The hour was one of the clock; the place was the dining hall
at Delancey Castle. John, on entering it, had swept it with a
comprehensive glance. It was old-world, supremely, superbly old-world.
He had taken in the atmosphere in one delicious draught.
It was a dark place, oak-panelled, yet, so he assured himself, it was
utterly devoid of grimness. It was mellow, harmonious, softly shadowed.
High up on the oak walls, set against their darkness, were splashes of
colour,--shields of the houses with which the Delanceys had married.
Over the great fireplace was the Delancey shield itself, _Arg. a pile
azure between six and charged with three escallops counterchanged_.
The sunlight fell through long casement windows, patterning the floor
with diamond-shaped splotches of gold. At one end of the hall were two
steps leading to a little arched door. Through this you entered the
chapel. At the other end was the minstrels’ gallery. John could fancy
it peopled with musicians, heard in imagination the soft strains of the
harp and lute.
The table, uncovered, shone with the polishing of generations; silver,
glass, and red roses, were reflected in its glossy surface. At one end
sat Lady Mary. Her white hair, covered with lace, cobwebby, filmy, was
backgrounded by the darkness of her chair. Facing her was Rosamund,
white-robed, lovely, cordial. Opposite to John was Corin flanked on
either side by Antony and Michael; on his right was Father Maloney.
To John’s mind, he and Corin alone brought the twentieth century into
the dark old place; yet, bringing it, they failed to destroy the
abiding atmosphere. Of course the other five at the table did not date
back to their setting itself,--they were somewhere about eighteenth
century he conjectured,--but they linked on without a break to the
remoter ages; his thoughts ran smoothly from them to the past. In a
word, they and their setting “belonged,” and that, to him, summed up
the whole essence of harmony. He felt himself in a new old world,--new
to him, and yet old as Time itself. The day was centuries old, caught
out of the forgotten past, set down, sweet, fragrant with memories,
into the midst of this twentieth century. And the twentieth century
with all its movement, with all its modern innovations, fell away from
him, dissolved, vanished like fog wreaths before the sun.
“I saw a new man in the park today.”
The remark dropped into the harmony like a pebble into a still lake.
Why the simile presented itself to his mind at the moment, John could
not have told you; nevertheless it did present itself.
“And what manner of man may a new man be?” demanded Father Maloney.
Antony knitted his brows.
“Mr. Mortimer was a new man on Wednesday,” quoth he serious. “Mr.
Elmore is the newest of all.”
“Ah!” said Father Maloney, his eyes twinkling, “now we see daylight.
And what was this other new man doing in the park at all?”
“I think,” quoth Antony solemn, “he was trying to look at the Castle,
but he didn’t want any one to see him. Least I don’t think he did.”
“Hum!” said Father Maloney. “What makes you think that?”
“’Cos,” said Antony calmly, “when I said ‘Hullo,’ he jumped an’ said
‘Great snakes!’ I told him,” he continued carefully, “that there
weren’t any snakes in the park. Least not big ones anyway. An’ he said
he hadn’t concluded there were. He’d said ‘Great snakes!’ ’cos I made
him jump. S’pose it was same as Biddy says ‘Saints alive!’ an’ you say
‘Glory be to God!’”
Father Maloney looked down the table at Lady Mary. The glance was a
trifle grim.
“Did he say anything else?” asked Lady Mary in a level voice.
“He asked me who I was. An’ I told him my name was Antony Joseph
Delancey. An’ he said he reckoned I was the owner of the place. An’ I
said no, it was Granny’s place now, but I was going to have it when I
was a man. An’ he said, ‘Oh, you are, are you?’ An’ then he whistled.”
There was a little curious silence. As we calculate time it endured,
perhaps, not longer than two or three seconds, yet to John it
seemed interminable. It was broken by Antony’s voice, pursuing his
reminiscences the while he was busy with roast chicken and bread sauce.
“He talked quite a lot,” pursued Antony, cheerfully reflective. “He
asked me how old I was, an’ how long I’d lived here, an’ if I liked it.
An’ he wanted to know why we had a chapel built on to the Castle, an’
he said he hadn’t been inside a church for years, ’cos there weren’t
any churches where he lived, an’ when he came into a town he felt like
a fish out of water if he went inside one. An’ he lives in a house that
hasn’t got any stairs, an’ there’s mountains round it, an’ there’s
baboons what come down from the mountains to steal the mealies. Mealies
are Indian corn, he says. An’ he says lilies grow in the ditches in his
country, an’ great tall flowers grow in his garden,--I don’t remember
the name,--an’ wild canaries fly about among them. An’ he says the
sunshine out there is all hot an’ gold, an’ the shadows are blue as
blue. An’ he says we don’t know what sunshine is in England, ’cos even
when it’s sunny it’s like a gauze veil hung over the sun. An’ he’s shot
leopards, an’ little tiny deer, an’ killed big snakes. An’ he asked me
honest injun what I thought about him, an’ I said I liked him. An’ he
said perhaps I wouldn’t like him very long. An’ I said ‘Why?’ An’ he
laughed, an’ shook hands, an’ went away. An’ that,” concluded Antony
with satisfaction, “is all.”
Again there fell a little silence. It was probably infinitely more
poignant to John than to the other members of the luncheon table.
That is the worst of being possessed of a sensitive and imaginative
temperament. Your suffering is invariably duplex. You suffer for
yourself and the other, or others, as the case may be. And, in
suffering for others, your imagination, as often as not, passes the
bounds of actualities, for the very excellent reason that you possess
no real knowledge to bring it to a halt.
Corin, though certainly less imaginative, felt the slight tension.
He leaped to break it, in a manner highly praiseworthy, if slightly
abrupt. What his remark was precisely, John did not fully grasp, but it
certainly had his work in the church for a foundation. The leap taken,
he burbled joyously, expounding, theorizing. There was no egotistical
note in his expounding. After all, as he assured them, the work was not
his. He was, in a manner of speaking, but a digger, a scraper. The fact
left him free to be enthusiastic at will, and enthusiastic he veritably
was.
Possibly mere politeness first urged three of the elder members of the
party to suitable rejoinders. I omit John from the number. Later they
may have been fired by Corin’s exceeding enthusiasm. Be that as it
may, the tension was distinctly relieved. Conversation flowed easily,
smoothly. Dessert had been reached before it was suddenly jerked back
to dangerous quarters.
“I wonder,” said Antony, surveying a bunch of raisins on his plate,
“who he is?” There was, you can guess, no need for a more detailed
explanation.
“I think,” said Lady Mary quietly, “it was Sir David Delancey.”
It was out now. The words were spoken. To John, they somehow struck
the last nail in the coffin of his hopes.
“Same name as us?” queried an astonished Antony.
“Yes,” said Lady Mary.
“I liked him,” said Antony cheerfully. “Do you s’pose he’s staying
here? Do you s’pose I shall see him again?”
John caught his breath. Once more there was the fraction of a pause, a
little tense silence.
Then came Lady Mary’s well-bred voice.
“I think you will see him again. I shall ask him to come and see the
Castle before long.”
John looked up, amazed.
CHAPTER XIV
A POINT OF VIEW
“OF course,” said John to himself, “I see her point of view.”
It was, be it stated, at least the fiftieth time in the course of
the last four and twenty hours that he had assured himself of the
perspicacity of his vision. Also, it must be observed, it was because
his own point of view was so diametrically opposed to hers that he
found the assurance necessary. It emphasized, in a measure, his own
broadness of mind, his ability to perceive another’s standpoint even
while he disagreed with it _in toto_. You will doubtless have observed
this attitude of mind in such persons as are fully determined to adhere
to their own opinions.
Of course he realized Lady Mary’s point of view, her quixotic
determination to recognize the interloper as one of the family, now
that his claim to recognition had been fully established. Of course
it was noble, chivalrous, Christian to a very fine degree of nicety;
but it was, to John’s way of thinking, ultra-quixotic, unnecessary,
save to aspirers after saintship. And John, from a delightfully human
standpoint, saw no reason to imagine Lady Mary as an aspirer to this
exalted degree of perfection. Therefore, from a human standpoint, her
determination was tinged, distinctly tinged, with absurdity.
It was one thing, argued John, to bear a treacherous dog’s bite with
courage and equanimity, it was quite another to welcome and caress
the dog that has bitten you. There was treachery, unfairness, in the
whole business as far as the interloper was concerned; that fact made
John’s point of view the justifiable, and, indeed, the only sane one.
He saw precisely how he would have acted in the matter. He would
have given a dignified refusal to permit the interloper to put so
much as his nose inside the Castle, till such time as he himself and
his belongings had made a dignified exit from it. There was dignity
enough in John’s attitude, you may be sure. In fact it was a dignity
which, for the time being, entirely overrode his quite abundant
sense of humour. Therefore, you perceive, that the dignity was
coloured by a very decided sense of ill-temper. This last quality and
self-appreciation--and I believe our John was modest enough--alone are
capable of subordinating such humour.
“Of course,” said John again, “I see her point of view, but it’s such a
confoundedly quixotic one. It isn’t level; it isn’t sane; it--it won’t
work.” And then John frowned fiercely, and gazed glumly before him.
He was sitting in the shadow of a haystack, the afternoon being
intensely hot. The sleepy air was curiously still. Had John not been
entirely engrossed in his own reflections, it is possible he might have
read something ominous in this stillness. It is certain that he would
have done so had he looked past the haystack behind him, and seen the
purple-black clouds gradually massing up on the distant horizon. Before
him, however, all was serene, sunny, and drowsy; therefore he continued
to dream.
His thoughts leaving, for a time at least, a subject at once unfruitful
and irritating, they rambled over the incidents of the last few days.
Undercurrently, as a kind of connecting link to the scattered beads of
incident, was a half-wondering reflection on the inscrutable leadings
of Fate, Providence,--call it what you will. And if it wasn’t Fate
which had led him here, it was Providence, and if it was Providence
there was no gainsaying the plan, and so--and so-- He broke off.
Oh, he’d follow up the leading fast enough. It was his one whole and
sole desire. Hadn’t he had this desire for months past? Hadn’t it been
his one dream since five minutes to four precisely one windy March
afternoon? He’d follow hot afoot fast enough. The whole question was,
Would she come the merest fraction of a step towards him? Would she
even pause to await his coming? Or would he come to the end of the
pathway to find that she had eluded him,--a locked gate the end of his
quest? And there must be no stumbling, no clumsy blundering on that
pathway. Despite his desire for swiftness, he must walk warily. And
then his thoughts came to a halt, overcome, I fancy, by some suspicion
of their presumption. For a moment he staggered mentally, yet but for
a moment. Courage called high-handed to his heart. “On, man, and take
the risk,” she cried. “Cowardice and false modesty never yet led to a
fair goal.”
Now his thoughts went back slowly step by step, dwelling with interest
on each little incident that had brought him to his present vantage
point. It being a vantage point, this method of thought had its
fascination. It was pleasant enough to give mental fingering to each
little bead of incident, to marvel at their connection with each other.
Truly there are times when such a process brings pain, when each bead
will hold a tiny poisoned prick. But why think of such times? To John,
each bead was carved in happiness.
And then, suddenly, he was aware that the physical sunshine around him
had dimmed. Glancing upwards he saw the edge of a dark cloud. He got to
his feet and came out from the shelter of the haystack.
Rolling up from the westward, thunderous, leaden, were great massive
clouds. The air below was extraordinarily still; he was aware now of
something electric in its stillness. Overhead there was unquestionably
wind, since the clouds rolled up and spread with rapidity.
“We’re in for a deluge,” said John, making for the high road.
It led downhill, straight, dusty, and very white, flanked on either
side by high hedges, dust-sprinkled. John made his way down it at a
fine pace. A thin flannel suit would be poor enough protection against
the torrent that was at hand.
Nearing the bottom of the hill, he heard the sharp ting of a bicycle
bell behind him. The next instant the bicycle and its rider flashed
past.
“Crass idiot to ride at that pace,” ejaculated John against the hedge.
The machine had been within a couple of inches of his arm.
And then came the first drops of rain, splashing down, splotching dark
spots on the dusty road. White a moment agone, in a second it was
brown. The rain hissed down upon the earth. Truly there was the sound
of its abundance.
John took to his heels and ran. As he turned at the bottom of the hill,
he came to a sudden halt. By the roadside, half sitting, half lying,
was a man; a bicycle, wheels in the air, reposed disconsolately in a
ditch.
“Hurt?” demanded John as he came abreast of him.
“Twisted my ankle,” was the laconic response.
John glanced along the road. A hundred yards or so ahead, through the
downpour, he could see the White Cottage.
“I can give you an arm to shelter if you can manage to hobble,” he
announced, indicating the house.
The man scrambled to his feet with a grimace of pain. Together, in
halting fashion, they made their way towards the cottage. Conversation
there was none. John expressed a consolatory remark or two at
intervals, to which his companion replied, “All right. Not much. Brake
broke,” as the case might be.
Even in these few words there was something in the inflexion of his
voice which perplexed John. Undercurrently he found himself demanding
what it was, but the exigencies of the moment disallowed of the query
coming uppermost. Also, at the moment, John happened to be suffering
from one of those lapses into obtuseness to which even the most
intelligent of us are liable on occasions.
It was with a sigh of relief that he pushed open the door of his
sitting-room.
CHAPTER XV
JOHN PLAYS THE SAMARITAN
THERE is no question but that Mrs. Trimwell could rise to an emergency
when it presented itself before her. In fifteen, perhaps no more than
ten, minutes from their entry, she had the drenched couple into dry
garments; the injured ankle was bound in soft bandages, tea was in
preparation.
But why, marvelled John, should her beneficent services have been
dispensed with a face as sour as a crab-apple? Why should her whole
mien have been as stiff, unbending, and unyielding as the proverbial
poker? The disapproval of her attitude was so marked as to be
impossible to ignore. John, in the position of host, felt some sort of
an apology necessary. Mrs. Trimwell departed, he stumbled one forth,
wondering, as he endeavoured at lightness, whether he were not, after
all, a bit of a fool for his pains; whether, by remarking on her
taciturn grimness, he were not emphasizing it more crudely.
“She doesn’t mean to be abrupt,” he concluded, holding his cigarette
case towards the stranger.
The man took a cigarette, and glanced at John.
“Oh, yes, I guess she does,” he remarked drily.
John looked at him. Obtuseness still had him in her clutch.
“She knows who I am,” said the man coolly, “and--well, I fancy most
folk round here are not predisposed in my favour. My name, by the way,
is David Delancey.”
John gasped, frankly gasped. He was amazed, dumbfounded. Running
through the amazement was, I fancy, something like annoyance; though
superseding it was a sense of the ludicrous, a realization of the
absurdity of the situation. And this brought him to something
perilously near a titter.
The man looked at him.
“Look here,” he said deliberately, though with a gleam of amusement in
his own eyes, “if you feel the same way about things, I’ll move on now.
I’ll make shift to hobble to the inn if you’ll lend me a couple of
sticks.”
John experienced a sudden sensation of shame. Perhaps it was by reason
of the quick interpretation of his unspoken thoughts, perhaps it was
something in the other’s steady grey eyes.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” he said quickly. And then he laughed.
“What’s funny?” demanded David.
“Oh, the whole blessed kaboodle,” returned John, still laughing softly.
“Here was I half an hour agone inveighing against you for all I was
worth, and now--well, the rôle of good Samaritan strikes me as a bit
humorous, that’s all.”
He held a lighted match towards his guest. David took it. After a
moment he spoke.
“Then you know them up at the Castle?”
“I do,” said John.
David glanced at him, then turned to a contemplation of his cigarette.
“I had a note from the old lady today,” he said ruminatively. “She has
asked me to dine on Thursday. Now, I call that sporting of her. I guess
I’d be more like sticking a knife into me than asking me to share her
salt. It’s the way she’s worded the note, too, that I’m stuck on. I’d
give a good many dollars to get my tongue and pen around words in that
fashion. I reckon I shall shake hands with her cordially.”
John eyed him curiously. His preconceived notions of hostility were
undergoing an extraordinary change, a change at once rapid, and, to
him, amazing, incomprehensible. I fancy he tried to rein them back,
to bring them to a standstill, while he took a calmer survey of the
situation, but, for all his endeavours, he found they had suddenly got
beyond his control.
“I wonder,” hazarded he, “if you’d mind my asking you something. What
gave you the first clue--the idea of starting out on this quest of
yours?”
“The clue?” David laughed. “It’s a bit of a yarn, I can tell you. You
want it? Sure?”
John nodded.
“Well,” quoth David, “you can call it luck, chance if you like. We’ve
always known we hailed as a family originally from England. That
knowledge has been handed down to us as a bit of tradition. I was born
in Philadelphia, and riz there, as they say in the States, till I was
going ten. Then my father made for Africa. There’s no need to enter
into the details of that move; they’re beside the mark. He took a small
farm in the Hex River Valley. He had a few old things that belonged
to his father and grandfather before him. They were stored away in a
chest. I used to look inside it when I was a youngster, and see coats,
and waistcoats, and neck stocks, and a fusty old book or two lying in
it. I never smell camphor without thinking of that chest.
“As I grew older, I left it alone, didn’t think about it. I guess my
father hadn’t bothered about it much more than I did. He died when I
was fifteen, and my mother ran the farm. She was a capable woman. I
helped her all I could, and there were men to do the work. But she
was boss till I was one and twenty. Then she turned it over to me to
run,--root, stock, and barrel. She was cute, though, the way she’d talk
things over with me, telling me all the time what was best to do, and
making me think that I had figured out the plans. Later on she left it
really to me, not just in the name of it. That was when I’d got the
right hang of things.
“Then she dropped suddenly out of all the man way of thinking, and just
sat knitting and smiling in the chimney corner, or letting me drive her
around in the buggy, with never a talk of business unless I began the
subject. It’s seven years ago that she died.” He stopped.
John was silent.
“I missed her,” went on David presently, “I missed her badly. The
place wasn’t the same. I went roving around trying to think she wasn’t
gone--but I’ll get maudlin if I go on with that. It wasn’t the bit I
set out to tell you, anyway. One afternoon I was in the lumber room
feeling lonesomer than ever. I don’t know what took me there if it
wasn’t just fate. Then I looked at that chest again. I opened it, and
the smell of camphor rushed out at me, making me think more than ever
of my mother. She was mad after camphor, putting it among everything to
keep away the moth.
“To get away from my thoughts I began pulling out the things in the
box, stuffy books, coats, waistcoats, and all. There was one coat,
a snuff-coloured one, that might have been worn in the time of the
Georges, I calculated. I sat looking at it, and wondering which of my
grandparents had worn it, and what kind of a man he was, and all the
things a fellow does think when he’s got his grandsire’s stuff before
him. After a bit I began going through the pockets. I found a tiny horn
snuff-box in one, and that set me off searching closer. I’d come to the
last pocket, when I found what gave me that clue you were asking about.
I found a letter.”
John looked up quickly.
“It was torn, and not over-easy to read,” went on David. “I’ve got it
here. You can read it if you like.”
He felt in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out his pocket-book. From it
he took a letter.
John took the yellow paper with its faded ink lines. As he touched it
he thought of the queer twists fate gives to the wheel of our life.
Less than a fortnight ago he had set eyes but momentarily upon one of
the Delancey family, and now here he was, thrown into their midst, made
participator even in their extraordinary history. It was, so mused
John, a bit of a marvel.
Here is the letter he read.
“MY DEAR SON RICHARD:
“I am about to set forth on the journey of which you know the purpose.
If I am successful you will claim your birthright. Though I sold mine,
after the manner of Esau, for a mess of red pottage, being forced
thereto by harshness, yet I forfeited it for myself alone.
“Your mother and brother do not know of the purpose of my journey to
England. I think it well that it should remain known to us two alone
till my return.
“Your affectionate father,
“HENRY DELANCEY.”
John slowly deciphered the faint lines. Silently he tendered the letter
again.
“It set me thinking,” said David reminiscently. “I was in that lumber
room for more than two hours reading that letter again and again. It
was clear that there was something belonging to us that we hadn’t got;
something that, as far as I could see, we had the right to have, though
I didn’t just know what it was. It struck me as queer that the Richard
who had had the letter hadn’t had a try for it. I know now that he died
of some kind of fever after his father had been gone six weeks. His
father didn’t return.” David’s voice was grim.
“I know,” said John.
“You’ve heard the story?” demanded David.
“That part of it. But go on.”
“Well,” continued David, “whether no one else knew of the letter, or
whether they thought that trying for their rights was a fool game, I
don’t know. There were times when I was after it that I thought it a
fool game myself. But I’d set out on it, and somehow I never find it
easy to turn back on any job I’ve set out on. If the others didn’t
think our birthright worth a bit of a fight I did. It took me five
years to trace up the family, but I got on the track, back to the
certificate of Henry Delancey’s marriage to Marie Courtoise, daughter
of a Brussels lace merchant. It was their grandson who first settled in
the States. With that I came to England, and followed up the clue here.
Then I understood exactly what I was after. They can’t deny that Henry
was the eldest son, and though they say he signed away the property
from himself and his heirs they haven’t got that document. This letter,
too,” he tapped it gently, “shows that though he may have signed it
away from himself, he did not touch the birthright of his heirs. See?”
“Yes, I see,” returned John a trifle drily.
Oh, he saw fast enough. Also, he saw pretty plainly that Henry Delancey
had been no fool in the game of swindling.
David looked at him.
“You’re on the side of the occupants of the Castle,” he said. It was
statement rather than query.
“I am,” said John coolly. His eyes held something of a challenge.
“Hum,” remarked David.
And then Mrs. Trimwell entered with the tea, and an aspect of rigid
disapproval.
CHAPTER XVI
CORIN DISCOURSES ON KARMA
“I LIKE that man,” announced Corin succinctly.
John grunted.
“I like him,” announced Corin again, stirring his coffee.
“I’ve heard you make that remark at least ten times since his
departure,” quoth John, and somewhat sarcastically, be it stated.
“It is possible,” returned Corin coolly, “that you will hear me make
it at least ten times more. Of course I’ll allow that he isn’t in
the picture. In fact he’s entirely out of the picture; he strikes an
incongruous note. It requires a readjustment of all one’s preconceived
notions to see him in that old-world setting up yonder.”
John groaned inwardly.
“Yet you cannot deny,” pursued Corin, “that there is a pleasing
strength and virility about him. I had allowed myself to imagine him as
a small hustling man, a cross between the brisk commercial traveller
and the hard-headed mechanic, with perhaps a touch of the oily waiter
thrown in. And now,” went on Corin musingly, “I perceive that he is a
big man----”
“Your eyesight would be strangely deficient if you didn’t perceive it,”
broke in John.
“A silent man----”
“He hadn’t a chance of getting a word in edgeways when you appeared
upon the scene,” interpolated John.
“A thoughtful man----”
“It is to be hoped he was able to assimilate a few of the thoughts you
thrust down his throat,” quoth John grimly.
“Hang the stupid little complications of life,” he was thinking. There
was a tiny note of trouble in his eyes.
“If you mean that I thrust my ideas upon him unwanted,” said Corin
with dignity, “allow me to remark that you are mistaken. I observed
interest, intelligent interest, in his face.”
“And you pretend to being short-sighted,” interposed John.
“The idea,” continued Corin, “of his having worked out his debt of
karma for sins committed in former lives, and being, therefore, now
able to enter upon his birthright, appealed to him. It distinctly
appealed to him. He said, ‘I guess that’s a new handle to take hold
of,’ more than once.”
“That doesn’t say it was an inviting one,” retorted John.
“I’m a fool to be worried about such a trifling absurdity,” he thought.
“There is much,” said Corin didactically, “that is uninviting at the
outset, but which, on further acquaintance, proves of extraordinary
interest. Also, for my part, rather let me grasp Truth however
uninviting she may appear, than dally with the most pleasing of lies.”
John laughed.
“I wonder,” went on Corin, “what precise debt of karma the family at
the Castle owes this man, that he is to be the instrument for their
unseating.”
“According to you,” returned John, “since he has paid off his own debt,
and gained reward, he is obliged to unseat someone.”
Corin sighed.
“I fear,” he said, “that I shall never be able to make you perceive
the law and order, the strict justice in the universe. If reward is
gained at the expense of another, it is merely because that other
deserves that the reward should be so gained.”
John laughed a second time. Argument in this quarter was futile, and
he knew it. His friendship with Corin was always a matter of some
slight amusement and puzzlement to him, when he chanced to consider
the subject. It is certainly somewhat difficult to conceive wherein
precisely the attraction between them existed, having in view their
diametrically opposite opinions.
“Confound the man,” thought John, and it was not on Corin those
thoughts were centred, “why couldn’t he have been all that I had
pictured him?”
“You can laugh,” said Corin severely, “but it is very certain that you
can bring no arguments to refute mine.”
“My dear man,” responded John, “I could bring twenty million, but it’s
like pouring water into a sieve to propound them to you. I believe I
have heard a tale of a monk being once sent by a saint to fetch water
in a sieve; and when, at the end of several journeys, he ventured to
remonstrate at the futility of the journey, it was pointed out to him
that at all events the sieve had been cleansed by the process. I don’t
know whether my arguments would have a like effect on your mind, but I
confess I am too lazy to try.”
“Your simile savours of an insult,” retorted Corin. “But I’ll leave you
to your own mode of thought. I know it to be hide-bound, iron-cast.
Now, in this man I see plastic material; he needs but careful moulding.
I shall pursue my acquaintance with him with interest.”
John laughed a third time. But behind the laughter in his eyes was
still that little indefinable note of trouble.
CHAPTER XVII
A RARE ABSURDITY
NOW, to your calm, collected, and reasonable individual, John’s little
trouble may appear nothing but rank absurdity. It probably will appear
nothing but rank absurdity, seeing that it had existence merely in the
fact that he had felt a certain attraction towards the man, whom fate
had that evening thrown in his path.
And why on earth shouldn’t he feel attraction!--so your reasonable
individual may exclaim.
But John was not reasonable. He was one of your ultra-sensitive
characters, to whom the merest dust speck may prove, at moments,
a source of perpetual annoyance. He desired to feel nothing but a
whole-hearted detestation of this interloper.
I am not defending John’s desires,--they certainly cannot be termed
precisely Christian,--I merely state them as existing. Their fulfilment
would have left him entirely free to draw a line between himself and
the one who had arisen to harass the inhabitants of Delancey Castle.
He would have felt utterly and entirely established beside them. He
was established beside them, yet this tiny attraction sent forth an
irritating little lay across the barrier. He felt it, in a measure,
disloyal. He disliked it; and yet, for the life of him, he could not
prevent its existence.
I am well aware of the absurdity of his annoyance; but it merely
characterizes John. It shows him to be what he was,--ultra-quixotic
in his friendships, sensitive to a degree of fastidiousness where he
fancied his loyalty to be in the smallest measure at fault.
Not that John was blind to the imperfections of his friends (and here I
use the word in its full meaning),--those few--they were few--whom he
had admitted, or who had somehow found entrance, to the inner shrine of
his heart. But I could fancy him shielding those imperfections from the
eyes of the world with his own body; standing between them and the gaze
of a curious multitude; suffering death, if need be, in the shielding.
Call him absurd, if you will; but, for my part, I like this rare
absurdity.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN FATHER MALONEY’S GARDEN
FATHER MALONEY was pottering in his garden. I use the word pottering
advisedly, since assuredly the cutting off of a dead rose here and
there can hardly be termed work.
It was a minute place, this garden of his, a mere pocket handkerchief
of a garden, yet every conceivable flower possible to bloom in a garden
bloomed in it according to the season. At the moment it was ablaze
with African marigolds, escoltia, asters, salvias, stocks, summer
chrysanthemums, and all the rest of the August flowers, fragrant with
the scent of roses, heliotrope, carnations, and mignonette.
In the centre of the garden was a tiny square of grass, smooth and
trim. A gravel path surrounded it; beyond it were the many-coloured
flower borders backgrounded by a close-clipped yew hedge. You could
see over the hedge to the lane on the one side, and the field on
the other. The field sloped upwards to a sparse wood, carpeted with
primroses and bluebells in the springtime. Later there was a lordly
array of foxgloves on its margin, stately purple fellows, standing
straight against the trees.
Beyond the lane and the wild-rose hedge, which bordered it on the
further side, you had a glimpse of the sea. Its voice was never absent
from the garden. In its softly sighing moods it lay as an under-note
to the fragrant scents, and the humming of the insects. In its sterner
moods it dominated the little place, filled it with a note of sadness.
And always there was that strange bitter-sweetness in its sound.
Father Maloney was conscious of it now. He looked up from the rosebush
towards the distant shimmering strip of blue.
“’Tis like the far-off voice of a multitude longing for peace yet
unknowing of their desire,” he said, “it is that.” And there was pain
in his old eyes.
Then he looked round the garden.
“Sure, ’tis happy I’ve been here; and now--” he sighed. “The fella is
no Catholic at all, they say. But if he were it would not be the same
thing, it would not.”
He cut off a couple more roses, and pocketed them. Later Anastasia
would empty his pockets of the dead leaves. Also she would
suggest--more as a command than a suggestion--that there were plenty
of baskets in the house if he wanted to be cutting off withered roses
and suchlike. To which Father Maloney would make his usual shame-faced
reply:
“Sure, and a basket slipped my mind entirely, it did.”
Whereupon Anastasia would sniff. By force of habit she had gained a
certain air of command, which most assuredly he did not permit to many.
“She’s an example to all of us, is Lady Mary,” said Father Maloney,
pursuing his reflections. “It’s more than I would do to invite the
fella to the house. It’s not uncharitable towards him, I am, but he’d
not put his foot across my threshold till I’d cleared out. No; it’s not
uncharitable I am, but I’ll have a job to be civil to him I’m thinking.”
He stuffed a handful of dead roses into his pocket, and sat down on a
rustic-seat.
It was three of the afternoon. It was still; it was very hot. If I
have often mentioned heat in the course of this chronicle, I must
crave for indulgence. An almost unprecedented summer was reigning over
this England of ours. Morning after morning you woke to blue skies and
golden sunshine; night after night you slept beneath clear heavens
star-sprinkled. Day and night the earth sang the Benedicite; and men,
I fancy, echoed the blessings. In spite of the inclusive terms of
the hymn, it is infinitely easier to respond to it in sunshine and
starlight, than in fog and darkness.
Father Maloney sat facing the lane and the distant strip of sea. Two
poplars in the field across the lane rose spirelike against the blue
sky. Bees droned around him among the flowers; butterflies flitted from
blossom to blossom. Every now and again a bird twittered and then was
silent. Their song was over for the year. Only the robin would ring
later its sweet sad lament.
Through the open kitchen window he heard the clink of plates, telling
of Anastasia busy within. At intervals she hummed in a thin cracked
voice:
“_Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiæ, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra
salve,..._”
You could have recorded each of the Church’s seasons by Anastasia’s
humming of the antiphons of Our Lady. At first Father Maloney had
suffered the humming with what patience he might. It now affected him
no more than the droning of the bees in his garden.
For twenty minutes, half an hour, perhaps, he sat motionless, his
thoughts very far away. Suddenly he came back to the present. He was
conscious, in some subtle fashion, that he was not alone. It was a
moment or so before the consciousness found articulation in his brain.
He looked up. The garden was as empty of any human presence but his own
as it had been hitherto.
He turned.
In the field, on the other side of the yew hedge, a tall man was
standing. He was big, he was loose-limbed, he was red-headed. His face,
squarish and short-chinned, had a somewhat doggy expression. He was
looking at the flowers, seemingly unconscious, for the moment at all
events, of the presence of the owner of the garden.
Father Maloney coughed. The stranger’s eyes left the flowers, and
turned towards Father Maloney.
“I was looking at the flowers,” quoth he, and a trifle shame-facedly,
after the manner of a schoolboy caught in some venial offence.
“You’re welcome,” said Father Maloney genially. “Looking is free
to all.” And then a sudden idea struck him, and he stiffened
imperceptibly, or perhaps he fancied it was imperceptibly, for the
stranger spoke.
“I’ll be off,” said he. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
A little odd shadow had passed over his face, the expression of a child
who has been snubbed. It sat oddly, and a trifle pathetically on him.
He turned, limping slightly.
“It’s not disturbing me at all you are,” said Father Maloney quickly.
The honour of his hospitality had been pricked. The merest touch will
suffice for an Irishman.
And then he looked at the stranger again. There was an odd commotion
stirring in his heart, something that baffled him in its interpretation.
“Glory be to God, what’s come over me,” he muttered inwardly. Aloud
he said, and the words surprised himself, “Will you be coming in, and
having a look around. There’s a wicket gate in yonder corner.”
CHAPTER XIX
A BEWITCHING
IF this--his own voluntary invitation--had surprised Father Maloney,
twenty minutes later he was more surprised still. His mind was in one
chaotic state of surprise. It had entirely lost its bearings; it had
drifted into an extraordinary geniality with, apparently, no volition
on his own part. As surely as he contracted it momentarily into a state
of astonished frigidity, so surely it expanded, thawed again, into an
altogether untoward hospitality.
“Sure, it’s entirely bewitched I am,” he muttered sternly, bewildered
at one moment, and the next expatiating on the individual beauties
of some rose, as a mother expatiates on the virtues of her child,
provided, of course, that her audience be sufficiently sympathetic.
“’Tis in June you should have been seeing them,” he said at length,
tenderly fingering a Madame Abel Chatenay, salmon pink, pale, and
graceful, “’tis in June you should have been seeing them. For every one
rose on the bushes now, there were ten then. Sure, I never know which
of them I’m for loving best. At times I think ’tis this fair lady,
then I’m for thinking ’tis yonder creamy Devonionsis, or that drooping
white Niphetos, or Caroline Testout smiling away over there. But for
the most I’m always coming back to General Jacqueminot. ’Tis the
old-fashionedness of him, and his sturdy ways, and, more than all, the
sweet scent of him. If you’re down on your luck, and take a good sniff
at him, why, the world’s a different place that very minute. There’s
all the sunshine of the summer, and the humming of the bees, and the
laughter of children, and your mother’s voice, and all the memories of
your boyhood in the scent, there is that. And you’d laugh yourself, the
while there’s a queer tenderness is catching at your heart for happy
tears.”
“I know,” nodded David. (I have not insulted your intelligence by
giving him a former and formal introduction.) “I know. There are
scents like that. They are alive. They are worth a million words, or
a million pictures. I could be taken blindfold across the world, and
if I were set down on the veldt I would know the scent in an instant.
It’s hot, pungent, aromatic. I’d see the scrubby bushes, the scarlet
everlastings, the flame-coloured heaths, and the straggling blue
lobelia. I’d see the mountains, blue against the sun, and golden facing
it. I’d feel the great spaces, and the vast distances. I’d--” he broke
off with a laugh. “There I am trying to give you in words what only the
scent of the place can really give you.”
“Words are poor things,” said Father Maloney smiling, “when you come to
wanting to express what lies closest to your heart. I’m thinking ’tis
like the Tower of Babel over again, after a fashion. We can talk fast
enough when our thoughts are down near the earth, but the moment they
get up a bit, for the most of us our tongue is halting and stammering,
and there’s confusion. I’m thinking it’s as well, or we might get a
bit above ourselves with glibness of speech, and be fancying ourselves
embryo prophets and visionaries, and getting others to fancy it along
with us.”
David flicked an insect off a rose.
“There’s not much need for speech if you happen to be with the right
person, is there?” said he thoughtfully.
Father Maloney’s eyes twinkled.
“There is not,” quoth he. “Or, at all events, your stammering will
stand you in good stead.”
And then Anastasia rang the tea-bell.
Father Maloney started almost guiltily. Time had stolen a march on him,
it would appear. He looked uneasily towards the house.
“That’s your tea-bell,” said David calmly, voicing the obvious.
“It is that,” said Father Maloney. “I--will you be having a cup,” he
blurted out.
For one instant, for just one brief instant, David hesitated, then,
“Thanks,” he said.
“’Tis altogether bewitched I am,” groaned Father Maloney inwardly, as
he accompanied his guest towards the house.
CHAPTER XX
A VITAL QUESTION
A WHALEBONE Anastasia brought a second cup for “this gentleman.” She
heard well enough the trace of guilt in Father Maloney’s voice, knew
also well enough who the gentleman was, of that you may be very sure.
You cannot, believe me, pass two days, or even one day, in Malford
without the majority of the population becoming fully and miraculously
acquainted with your whole previous history and antecedents. I’ll
not vouch for the entire accuracy of the information; to do so would
be mere rashness on my part, but certain it is that the information
collected by Anastasia was more than sufficient to account for her
whalebone rigidity of bearing, and also for an unpleasant little sniff
on receiving Father Maloney’s order.
If she imagined that this obvious disapproval of manner would affect
Father Maloney, she was vastly mistaken, at all events as to the manner
of effect produced. You might have imagined that twelve years in his
service might have gained her some experience. But not a bit of it. Her
own preconceived notions of what should be were infinitely too deeply
engraven to be eradicated by what was. If I desired to be trite, I
might discourse for a chapter and more on this common state of affairs.
* * * * *
Father Maloney’s sitting-room was a small, shabby place. There was
nothing artistic about it; there was nothing even particularly
comfortable, with the exception of two large armchairs, which, having
been much sat in, had become remarkably adapted to the human form.
Anastasia having had a field day therein that morning, it smelt both
clean and bare. It had that peculiar, tidy, empty smell of a newly
cleaned room.
After such a day, Father Maloney uttered inward prayers for patience.
Long experience had shown him that it was useless to inform her that a
desk was specially constructed to hold scattered papers; that chairs
were an infinitely preferable receptacle for books than the top shelf
of a lofty bookcase; that a tobacco jar was intended to stand on
the piano, rather than in a cupboard behind a waste-paper basket, a
coal-scuttle, a broken chair, and a screen; that the bottom drawer of
a bureau, which opened only by sheer physical force, was not the place
he would ordinarily choose for his pipes. Such information fell on ears
as deaf as the ears of the proverbial adder, despite the wise charm
of its utterance. Therefore, having in view Anastasia’s other, and
excellent, qualities, Father Maloney merely prayed for patience, as I
have indicated.
David looked round the room. In a manner of speaking, he weighed,
judged and appraised the mental atmosphere from that which he noted.
Firstly, he observed the shabbiness, which I have mentioned; secondly,
he smelt the almost aggressive cleanliness, which I have also
mentioned; thirdly, he noted a curiously combined homeliness and
discomfort; fourthly, he took in various details,--a _prie-dieu_ in one
corner, with a cheap Crucifix above it; a large framed photogravure of
Pope Pius X over the mantelpiece; a small, badly coloured statue of
the Sacred Heart on one wooden bracket, and an equally badly coloured
statue of Our Lady on another; gilt-framed oleographs of saints
scattered about the walls, the gilt poor and rubbed, the oleographs
horribly crude; a thumbed office-book lying on a crimson plush-covered
sofa, the broken corner of a lace-edged card protruding from it.
It was all amazingly artificial, and yet--well, it was real. There was
the extraordinary paradox. On one side the artificiality was utterly
apparent; on the other it stood for something, and that something
was neither artificial, imaginary, nor even commonplacely real, but
vividly, vitally real. It was like recognizing a soul in a wax-work, or
finding life in a daguerreotype.
David sniffed the mental atmosphere, so to speak, vainly endeavouring
to arrive at an understanding thereof, gave it up as a bad job, and
then suddenly received a flash of illumination.
“It’s because it’s all real to him,” he concluded. But felt,
nevertheless, that somehow the conclusion did not absolutely reach the
mark.
Arriving at his second cup of tea, David spoke. The conversation so far
had been more or less trivial. Here, it would appear, was a weightier
matter.
“I’ve been asked to dine at the Castle on Thursday.”
“Yes?” From Father Maloney’s voice one might have judged the
information as not altogether a surprise.
“I’ve accepted,” said David.
“Yes?” said Father Maloney again. He perceived that there was something
further to come.
David reddened slightly beneath his tan.
“The fact is,” he blurted out, “I’d forgotten all about dress clothes.
I know people do wear the things. I haven’t got such a suit to my name.”
Father Maloney cut a slice of cake.
“Sure, such things are not obligatory in the country at all, they are
not,” quoth he calmly. “In the town now--but the country, ’tis quite
another matter.” He looked straight at David’s anxious eyes.
“Sure?” demanded David.
“It’s dead certain I am,” returned Father Maloney.
David fetched a big sigh.
“I’m awfully glad I mentioned it to you,” he responded. “The matter was
sitting on my chest a bit.”
“Glory be to God!” laughed Father Maloney.
CHAPTER XXI
A REQUEST
HALF an hour later Father Maloney was wending his way towards Delancey
Castle.
“I’m thinking she’ll not altogether understand,” mused he ruefully,
“but ’twas the child’s eyes of him, ’twas just that. Though if he
hasn’t a will at the back of them, my name’s not Dan Maloney.”
An hour later he was bearing a note in the direction of the White
Cottage. It was addressed to John Mortimer, Esq. It contained a
sentence which may be of interest to you.
“Please will you both wear morning dress at dinner on Thursday.”
Father Maloney tramped along the road looking at the hedges and the
trees. Finally he raised his eyes to the sky.
“She’s a wonderful woman is Lady Mary!” he ejaculated, “A wonderful
woman!”
CHAPTER XXII
THE WONDERFUL WOMAN
BUT underneath the wonderfulness there was a heartache. You can hardly
expect it to have been otherwise; and, for my part, I would not have
had it otherwise. She wouldn’t have been one quarter the adorable old
lady she was, if there hadn’t been that heartache.
If, from some lofty and ascetic perch, she could have calmly
contemplated her approaching departure from Delancey Castle with never
a tremor, with never a soul-stabbing, then, very assuredly, she would
have been one of a genus of human beings that I would find it in vain
to attempt to comprehend. It is through the very humanity of the saints
that one feels their lovableness. They felt intensely; they had their
loves and their hates, their likes and their dislikes, their joys and
their sorrows; they were living, sensitive, human creatures, not masses
of granite, nor insensible lumps of putty. And it wasn’t one atom
because they didn’t care for happiness and pleasure, and possibly even
for luxury, that they became saints, but just because they did care,
and caring gave all these things as a free and generous gift to God.
Of course you know this every bit as well as I do, but I like to remind
myself of it every now and then. And sometimes God may have given them
back their own actual gifts to Him, even while they were still on
earth,--gifts refined, transmuted by some wonderful purifying process
in His hands. But most often it would seem that He gave them another
gift in exchange,--that wonderful gift, Sorrow, of which only a saint
can see the true beauty. Yet always He gave them back in full and
overflowing measure one gift that must of necessity have been offered
with the other gifts,--the gift of love towards Him.
I don’t mean to infer from this that Lady Mary was a saint. That would
be a matter on which I naturally should not venture to express an
opinion. One leaves such decisions to God and the Holy Fathers. But she
was very assuredly a wonderful woman, as Father Maloney had remarked.
If her heart was old in years, it was young in immortal youth. She
revelled in the sunshine, she revelled in happiness; I am not sure that
she didn’t bask in it. I fancy there would be little real gratitude if
we accepted these gifts timorously, fearing lest their removal should
follow quickly. To my thinking, the truest gratitude, the fullest
trust, is to accept them with whole-hearted enjoyment, to say a real
“thank You” for the loan, when the time comes that God asks us to give
it back again. Naturally our manners would be as disagreeable as those
of a badly brought-up child if we clung to the gift lent us till it had
to be taken from us by force. The first hint is sufficient for a nicely
brought-up child. But never be grudging or timorous of enjoyment during
such time as the happiness is lent.
Truly I believe this was Lady Mary’s attitude. Now, of course, there
was a big sense of loss, a pretty heavy heartache, and even the tiniest
question, Why? At the first, I don’t think that she had realized that
the happiness had been merely a loan. She had looked upon it as hers
by right. There’s the danger with prolonged loans. You begin to forget
that they aren’t actually yours. But, if she had forgotten, it was
only for a moment; and now, in spite of the heartache, her “thank You”
was genuinely spoken.
* * * * *
Lady Mary was sitting by a window facing towards the sea. It shone
pearly iridescent, in the evening light. The sky beyond reflected the
glory of the sunset; grey near the water, it merged upwards into soft
rose-colour, and thence to blue-green. The earth was bathed in soft,
glowing light.
Only the faintest whisper of air came through the open window,--a
faint, cool sigh of relief after the heat of the day. Below, in
the garden, were golden splotches of colour--beds of great African
marigolds, a vivid contrast to the cool green of the close-dipped
grass. Through the silence came the musical dripping of a fountain.
Overhead a door opened. She heard a child’s voice, and then a little
burst of laughter. Again there was silence. And slowly the rose-colour
faded in the sky, till only a pale lavender-grey haze covered land and
water.
The gold of the marigolds became softly blurred; the green of the grass
lost its colour.
A little haunting melody came suddenly into her mind,--one she had
often played in childhood. It was a melody by Heller. There is a
footnote at the bottom of the page on which it is written, which
designates it “Twilight,” or “Le crépuscule.” The latter word came into
her mind at the moment. It held greater significance to her than the
English word. It represented more clearly the onward stealing of the
grey shadows, the soft sweet evening sadness, the slow passing of the
day’s glory.
And then, once more, overhead a door opened. There was a pattering of
footsteps along the corridor, a child’s voice, clear, demanding:
“Granny, prayers!”
Lady Mary got up from her chair. If there was something of the evening
shadows in her eyes, I fancy there was also the aftermath of the
sunset’s glory.
“Tomorrow I must tell Antony,” she said.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CACHE
JOHN was walking over the moorland. He had been walking for the last
hour and more. It was nearing five o’clock. He had made a great circle,
and was now somewhere near the place where he had first had sight of a
fair lady and her two attendant knights.
At the moment there was no human being in sight. He had the earth, it
would appear, entirely to himself. Only furze-chats and yellow-hammers
twittered in the gorse around him; little blue butterflies and brown
underwings flitted over the heather. To the right it lay one great
purple sheet, broken only by the gorse bushes. Their golden glory of
April had long since passed away, but yellow flowers still lingered
among their prickly shields. You know the old adage:
“When the gorse is out of bloom.
Kissing is out of fashion.”
To the left lay a stretch of long brown grass, dry and coarse. The
wind, rustling softly through it, whispered of summer secrets. It came
blowing softly, faintly, from the distant blue sea. Truly it was a day
for whole-hearted enjoyment, for content, for reposefulness, for each
thing and everything that goes to sum up entire happiness.
But if you imagine John to be in this restful mood, you are vastly
mistaken. Three thoughts repeated themselves with about equal
recurrence in his mind. The first was merely a name--Rosamund.
The birds twittered it, the wind whispered it, the faint understirrings
in the heather took it up and repeated it with tantalizing insistence.
Rosamund, Rosamund, Rosamund.
A fair name truly; a poetical name. John, at the moment, might have
emulated Orlando, who hung a very similar name on every tree. Only here
there were no trees at hand, merely gorse bushes, and purple heather.
The second thought was a quotation. It ran through his head again and
again.
“Never the time, and the place, and the loved one altogether.”
“He knew what he was talking about,” sighed John. “Unquestionably, at
the moment, it would seem the veritable time and place,--the sunniest
most desirable time, the sweetest-scented most gorgeous place. But she
isn’t here. And, if she were, I’d bet anything the time and place would
seem all wrong. The time would jump to about a million of years ahead,
and as far the place----”
To tell the truth he hadn’t much idea as to what would happen to
the place. His thoughts were hardly what might be termed precisely
coherent, but perhaps you can arrive at some kind of a guess at them.
The third thought was neither fair, nor poetical. It was summed up in
the one short, pithy phrase,
“Drat the man!”
By which token it will be seen that John had not yet recovered from his
Monday’s mood.
Now, I don’t intend to attempt any detailed explanation as to why both
John and Father Maloney had found themselves in this curious state of
unwilling perturbation after one meeting with David Delancey, but it is
very certain that the perturbation had not only arrived, but remained.
Of course you will say sagely that it was the man’s personality,
and equally of course you will be right. But what was there in
his personality to cause this perturbation in two such entirely
dissimilar minds? There’s the question! And I, for my part, can find
no satisfactory verbal explanation of it. It is one thing to have the
explanation in one’s mind, knowing the man; it is quite another to set
it forth coherently in words. Therefore I will content myself with your
sage remark that it was his personality.
“Drat him!” said John again.
And then he stopped short, looking towards the heather to his right
His attention had been attracted by a curious little mound of stones.
Now it is not in the least unusual to see stones lying on a moorland
among the heather. But to John’s eye there _was_ something unusual
about these stones. They had unquestionably been placed there by human
agency; they were not the haphazard arrangement of mere chance.
John went across the heather towards them. They were built up in a
small rough circle; a large flat stone formed a kind of roof or lid to
them. John bent towards the mound.
A sound, a very slight sound, made him raise his head. There was no one
in sight. He had the earth, as I have told you, to himself. Only the
wind whispered among the heather and grass, and rustled softly through
the gorse bushes.
John went down on his knees and raised the flat stone. Sheer idle
curiosity prompted the action. He hadn’t the faintest expectation of
seeing anything beneath. He peered within; and then gave vent to a
tiny chuckle of amazed surprise. He put his hand within the circle
of stones, and drew forth three objects,--firstly, a piece of green
ribbon; secondly, a small, a very small, thimble; and thirdly, a rosary
of red beads.
“Oh, ho!” quoth he to himself, “if fairies have been at work here, they
are Catholic fairies, it would seem.”
He fitted the thimble on the top of his little finger, where it sat in
an insecure and ludicrous position.
“A _cache_,” said John, “but whose?”
He looked before him down the sloping moorland. And now, far off, he
descried a small black speck. The black speck was a figure. It was
coming towards him.
“There’s just the faintest conceivable chance,” said John.
He removed the thimble from its ridiculous position. He put it, the
ribbon, and the rosary once more within their hiding-place, replaced
the flat stone, and withdrew himself to a post of vantage, couched
behind a gorse bush. Therefrom he awaited possible developments.
As the black speck drew nearer, it defined itself as a girl child, some
eleven years old or thereabouts. A gypsy-looking elf she was. Coming
nearer still, he saw that she was dark-haired, smutty-eyed. Her head
was uncovered; she was clad in a faded green frock; her brown legs were
bare, her feet cased in old shoes. She was walking quickly; eagerness,
expectation, were in her bearing. To John’s mind the possibility
already resolved itself into something akin to certainty. The next
moment he saw that his surmise had been correct.
She came straight across the heather to the small circle of stones, and
went down on her knees beside it. The flat stone was pushed aside; the
small brown hand dived within the circle.
“Ah!”
John heard the little gasp of pleasure.
She came to a sitting posture, the treasures gathered on to her lap.
John saw her face plainly. The ribbon and thimble were examined with
sheer and palpable delight. The rosary was handled gravely; there was
the tiniest hint of question in the handling. Then suddenly she lifted
it to her lips. The next moment she was on her knees again, telling the
beads devoutly.
“If,” quoth John to himself, “I am not much mistaken, ’tis that young
limb of mischief, Molly Biddulph.”
And there she knelt in the sunshine, among the heather, looking, for
all the world, a young, rapt devotee of prayer, the scarlet beads
falling through her small brown fingers. Her eyes were closed; her
lips moved rapidly. Here was matter for a poet’s pen; a subject for an
artist’s brush. The soft wind stirred the dark hair on her forehead,
the sun kissed her bronzed cheeks. A butterfly flitted to her shoulder,
lighted a moment, circled round her head, and flew away.
Coming to an end of her orisons, she made a great Sign of the Cross,
got to her feet, and sped away down the hill, clutching her treasures
tightly.
John came from behind the gorse bush.
“Well!” said he aloud.
“It might be called a pretty little scene,” said a voice behind him.
Turning, amazed, he met a pair of laughing eyes, saw a white-robed
figure, and two attendant knights.
“You!” quoth John.
She laughed.
“We were afraid, so dreadfully afraid, lest you should decamp with the
treasures,” said she. “I had the greatest difficulty in restraining
these two from rushing to the rescue.”
“I _thought_ I heard a sound!” ejaculated John.
“It was me,” said Michael. “I squeaked, but Aunt Rosamund held my mouf.”
“Then,” said John, “_you_ are the fairies?”
“It is our _cache_,” quoth Antony magnificently.
“So I am beginning to perceive,” responded John. “But why, if I may
ask without undue curiosity, is Molly in the matter? I imagined it
was Molly. And, if all accounts be correct, she would appear hardly a
subject for especial favours.”
Rosamund’s eyes danced. John had a mental image of sunlight suddenly
sparkling on still waters.
“It is just,” she explained, “that she appears, as you say, hardly a
subject for favours, that she gets them.”
“Oh!” John was frankly a trifle bewildered by the explanation.
“It was Tony’s idea,” smiled Rosamund.
She had seated herself on the heather, and John had followed her
example. The boys were some paces ahead of them, examining the _cache_.
“Tony,” pursued Rosamund, “discovered that pleasant anticipation is
conducive to good behaviour. He solemnly assured me of the fact one
day. Therefore we--or, at least, I--conceived the idea of putting the
theory to the test.”
“Therefore,” said John, “you established a _cache_ for Molly.”
“We established a _cache_ for Molly,” echoed she. “We lured her to it
in the most innocent way imaginable. Of course she hasn’t the remotest
notion as to who has established it. That would be to spoil the joy of
it. It is the hint of secret magic about it that is half its delight.
The contents are dependent on conduct, you understand. At least a
fortnight’s exemplary behaviour brings the kind of reward you perceived
today. Often there may be merely a flower found. If the fairies are
dissatisfied, I have known them to put a couple of snails within the
_cache_.” Again her eyes danced.
“Brown pools that have caught and held a sunbeam,” thought John.
Aloud he said ruminatively, “I wonder what becomes of the snails.”
Rosamund gave a little shiver.
“I fear me,” said she, “that once at least, they were--squashed!”
“Hum!” quoth John. “I have an idea that if I were seeking--say a rose,
and found a snail instead, that the snail might possibly be subjected
to a like fate.”
“But it wasn’t the poor snails’ fault,” she objected.
“We have frequently,” said John sententiously, “to suffer for the sins
of others. If I might offer a suggestion, I would point out that the
fairies’ displeasure might be equally well marked by coal, stones, or
even a copybook maxim. How does ‘Be good and you’ll be happy,’ or
‘Gifts are the reward of virtue,’ strike you?”
She shook her head.
“Fairies,” she assured him, “never indulge in moral reflections. They
merely act.”
“‘Deeds, not words,’ being their motto,” laughed John. “But coal, now!”
“Yes,” she conceded, “I think coal might answer our purpose.”
There was a little pause.
“To a mere casual observer,” remarked John reflectively, “the young
person in question might have appeared an embryo saint. From which we
perceive the truth of the adage that appearances are deceitful.”
“Not in every case,” she retorted. “How do you know that she isn’t an
embryo saint? Very much in embryo, I’ll allow. Oh, but there’s stuff in
Molly. But do you suppose she’s understood among the village folk? Not
a bit of it! It’s respectability they admire, wooden respectability.”
“Hum,” said John.
“And Molly isn’t wooden.”
“No,” acquiesced John fervently.
Rosamund laughed.
“And therefore,” she continued, “they see downright sin in her--well,
her unwooden escapades. And they haven’t a notion, the faintest notion
of her possibilities.”
“As either sinner or saint,” suggested John.
“Well, there’s the stuff for either there,” she agreed.
“I own,” said John somewhat irrelevantly, “that there’s a certain
attraction in sinners.”
“Of course there is,” she retorted, “if it’s brilliant enough sinning.
It’s the personality that attracts, though the material has run off
the rails. Only people so often make the mistake of contrasting
brilliant sinning with commonplace goodness. If you want your
contrasts, you should place commonplace goodness alongside commonplace
sinning--pettiness, meanness, drunkenness, hateful little detractions,
and all the rest of the sordid category. And then put brilliant sinning
alongside the impetuous ardour of St. Peter, or the mystic sweetness of
St. John.”
“You speak sagely,” quoth John. “It is, I fear, a matter of contrasts
which one is extremely apt to overlook.”
Again there fell a little silence. And the birds twittered, and the sun
shone, and the butterflies flitted over the heather, and a thousand
words rose to John’s lips, only to remain unspoken, because the time
had somehow leaped to about a million of years ahead. It was not the
moment, he knew it was not the moment, and yet--and yet-- Well, at any
rate she was there beside him on the heather. The faintest scent of
perfume--violets, perhaps? came to him from her garments. For all his
outward calm, for all his level, easy, careless voice, his heart was in
a tumult.
“You and Mr. Elmore are dining with us tonight,” she reminded him on a
sudden.
“I had not forgotten.” John’s voice was full of assurance.
“You know,” quoth she tentatively, “that you are to meet--Sir David
Delancey.” There had been the fraction of a pause before the name.
“I know,” said John, his eyes clouding.
“My grandmother felt it might ease the situation,” she explained. There
was a sudden little note of confidence in the words. “A dinner _en
famille_ might be, indeed must be, a trifle difficult.”
“I quite understand.”
She pulled at a sprig of heather.
“Father Maloney has seen him,” she said abruptly. “He--he seems
favourably impressed.”
“I, too, have seen him,” owned John. It was not altogether easy to make
the statement.
“You!” She was frankly surprised.
He gave her a brief account of the meeting.
“And--and he was passable?”
“Oh,” said John grudgingly, honesty forcing the truth from him, “he is
really quite a decent fellow.”
She glanced up quickly, understanding his tone.
“You would rather,” said she, “dislike him quite frankly.”
“You have stated the case,” said John.
“I quite understand,” she nodded.
And then Antony and Michael came towards them from the _cache_. The two
on the heather bestirred themselves.
CHAPTER XXIV
DAVID DINES AT THE CASTLE
WHEN John, with Corin in his wake, entered the drawing-room of Delancey
Castle that evening, he glanced anxiously around. He had no real
cause for anxiety. He was a good ten minutes in advance of the hour
mentioned, having led a protesting Corin up the hill at a fine pace.
Mrs. Trimwell had seen them depart, her face an amazed and horrified
note of interrogation.
“You’re dining with her ladyship!” she had gasped.
“We are,” John had assured her.
“You aren’t never going up to dine at the Castle in them clothes!” she
had ejaculated.
“We dine,” John had said smiling, “in these very clothes that you now
perceive upon us.”
“Land sakes!” Mrs. Trimwell had gasped. And words failing her, either
from horror, or lack of imagination, she had mutely watched them
depart.
They had started betimes; they had also, as I have stated, walked at
a fine pace; and now, somewhat heated, they found themselves shaking
hands with Lady Mary, while the clock yet wanted some ten minutes of
seven-thirty.
But, so argued John, surveying the said clock, half an hour, even an
hour too soon, was infinitely preferable to one minute too late. It was
the first moment of meeting that would set the keynote to the whole
evening. It was at that first psychological moment that the easement of
his presence was necessary. Corin, he considered as quite beside the
mark, you perceive.
Father Maloney was already present. He was seated in the window-seat
with Antony and Michael, who had been granted half an hour’s furlough
from bed.
And now came the moments of suspense,--an anxious waiting. Corin and
the two boys alone were absolutely at their ease. Corin, having engaged
Rosamund in conversation, was expatiating on his day’s work. John, his
eyes on the clock, his ear alert for the opening of a door, talked
to Lady Mary. It is fairly certain that her eyes and her ears were
likewise occupied.
“I hear from the boys that you were present at the _cache_ this
afternoon,” said she smiling.
John laughed.
“It was a fairy-tale scene,” quoth he. “I wouldn’t have missed it for
worlds. It isn’t often an imaginative conception works so successfully.”
“In this instance,” she reminded him, “there was the Celtic temperament
to deal with. Nothing is beyond the imagination of a Celt, I fancy.”
“No,” said John musingly. And then, “Not as criticism, but merely as
query, I wonder how far it is justifiable to play upon it?”
“You mean that Molly’s imagination was played upon?”
“Yes.”
“I fancy,” said Lady Mary, “that the human element comes into most
of our material rewards. It is the agency by which they are worked.
In this case the human agency merely hid itself beneath a fantastic
garb, thereby adding a subtle pleasure to the reward. I don’t know
whether Molly believes in her heart of hearts that the fairies had
been at work, any more than I’ll vouch for Tony’s and Michael’s belief
in Santa Claus filling their stockings. I fancy there are many things
the pleasure of which is enhanced by their being shrouded in the soft
light of imagination, rather than by their being dragged forth to the
somewhat garish light of fact. There’s no lack of truth in keeping them
shrouded. There is, after all, no necessity to be merely blatant.”
“No,” laughed John.
“Most children,” went on Lady Mary, “have a subtle power of
imagination. If you were to bring them to hard bed-rock fact, they’d
own to the imagination, though probably reluctantly.”
“I know,” said John, “a willow wand is not a spear, neither is a
broomstick a horse, nor a twisted tree-trunk a dragon, and you know it.
But when you ride forth on the horse, armed with the spear, to kill the
dragon, you suffer some terrible and indefinable loss when the actual
facts of the case are set before you in faultless English by an all
too-truthful aunt.”
“You see,” smiled Lady Mary.
“I see,” said John, “and I withdraw my query, or, rather, you have
answered it.”
There was a silence, and again they both waited. They made no attempt
to break the silence. It could only have been broken now by some
entirely futile remark, and neither John nor Lady Mary was in the mood
for such remarks.
John looked in the direction of Rosamund and Corin. He saw that the
former glanced towards the door every now and again, and back from it
to the clock. The minutes seemed interminably slow in their passing.
And then, suddenly, footsteps were heard in the hall without. John’s
heart leaped; Lady Mary’s face was pale; Rosamund was smiling; Father
Maloney looked up from the little tin soldier he was examining.
The door opened and the butler appeared on the threshold. He muttered
something. Certainly his speech was not his usual clear enunciation.
John, seeing his solemnly injured expression, felt a sudden desire to
laugh. Lady Mary certainly smiled. And then David Delancey entered the
room.
Of course the actuality wasn’t half, or a quarter, as bad as the
anticipation. In two minutes the introductions were over. John had
shaken hands; everyone had shaken hands; Antony, in a clear treble, had
informed the guest that it was on his account alone that he and Michael
had been granted half an hour’s furlough from bed. The announcement
broke the ice, so to speak; if, indeed, there had been any to break.
Probably there wasn’t any. There had been a sudden thaw the moment the
solemnly injured butler had appeared upon the threshold.
And David himself was so utterly simple. To his direct mind the
invitation alone had conveyed sufficient assurance of his welcome. Why
on earth should it have been issued else? There you have your child all
over. He may hesitate to intrude for fear of a snub; but, once let an
invitation be given, snubbing does not enter into the category at all.
Such conventionalities as enforced politeness do not enter his mind. Of
course Lady Mary was as pleased to welcome him as David was to make her
acquaintance. It was _sine qua non_ to the present situation.
I don’t say it hadn’t surprised him. He had been extremely surprised.
It wasn’t in the least the way he saw himself acting had he been in
Lady Mary’s place. Nevertheless he saw entire genuineness in her
action.
CHAPTER XXV
JOHN MAKES A DISCOVERY
YET, in spite of what might be called a good beginning, the dinner
party was not a success. John was certain it hadn’t been a success. He
reviewed it, walking home with Corin in the starlight; he continued to
review it sitting in an armchair with a pipe, since he was in little
mood for sleep.
And yet, wherein precisely did its failure lie?
It did not lie with Lady Mary; nor with Rosamund; nor with Father
Maloney; nor, he was certain, with himself. (Corin, as already
mentioned, he left outside the category.) They had each and all of
them been courteous, friendly, charming. They had kept the ball of
conversation tossing lightly from one to the other; they had given
David his full share of the game. Certainly the fault did not lie with
any of the four. He could not, also, have said precisely that there
was any fault at all. Outwardly, at least, there was none. Yet there
had been a subtle atmosphere, an indefinable hint of something lacking.
They had discussed books--standard authors--with which David was well
acquainted. They had mentioned classical composers, with whom he was
certainly less familiar. They had talked of flowers, birds, animals,
sunsets, storms, and ships, and here he was in his element.
He had talked well. John had received a vivid impression of a land hot
beneath the noonday sun, of wine-red sunsets, the atmosphere aglow
with palpitating colour, the on-stealing of the darkly purple night,
the stars big and luminous looking down with ever-watchful eyes upon
the lonely veldt. He saw the vivid reds of the flame-coloured heaths
and everlasting flowers, the brilliant blue of the lobelias, the waxen
whiteness of the arum lilies. He heard the countless voices of the
grasshoppers, the low booming note of the frogs, the muffled beating
of the buzzards’ wings. And above all he felt the vast illimitable
spaces, the great loneliness of the veldt. David had talked of
Muizenberg, and the white sands stretching for forty miles towards
the mountains,--mountains gold and orange in the sunshine, blue in
the evening twilight, the green sea bordering the sands, emerald set
against pearl.
He had talked of Cape Town,--of the Malay men with their great baskets
of flowers, of Table Mountain with its silver-leaved trees, with
the rolling cloth of white cloud covering it. But here he touched
civilization; his speech was less fluent than when he held them in the
vast solemnity of the lonely veldt.
And here John made a discovery. He perceived all at once, not merely
the loneliness of the veldt, but the lonely spirit of the man who had
dwelt on it. It was that which had caused the subtle incongruity in the
atmosphere. He no more belonged to his surroundings than did a hermit
to a London Club; and, so thought John, carrying his discovery further,
he--David--was, in a measure, aware of that fact himself. He had been a
fish out of water, and however kindly, however charmingly, landsmen may
treat it, a fish on land is certainly in an element in which it cannot
by any possibility be at ease. It is true that this particular fish
had entered the element of its own free will; but, so surmised John,
it is equally true that he was not at home in it. And yet, so John
perceived with a fine subtlety of perception, it was not the material
surroundings alone which were at the root of the mischief. It lay
deeper; it was in the mental atmosphere that the uneasiness lay.
Now, he also perceived, or thought he perceived, that while David was
aware of the incongruity of the situation, he had not fully recognized
it to lie, as John saw it to lie, in this same mental atmosphere. This
fact in itself increased the man’s loneliness. He was not only isolated
in mind from those with whom he found himself, but he was isolated
from himself, because he did not understand himself. It is the most
bewildering kind of loneliness. It is almost useless to attempt to
describe it in terms of speech. There are no precise words for it. I,
at least, can find none, and John could not, though it is certain that
he recognized it in a measure.
And then by one of those sudden flashes of inspiration which come
to all men at times, or which come, at all events, to those given
to a certain quality of mental analysis, John saw that the more
material drama, of which he was at present an audience, sank into
insignificance before the mental drama he had perceived. The man had
come, so he believed, into his material birthright, but, regarding his
mental birthright, he was utterly ignorant. How, in what fashion would
he find it? if, indeed, he ever found it at all.
I do not say that John said all this to himself in words, even in
the somewhat clumsy manner in which I have tried to express it. He
perceived it vaguely that night. The actual articulation of his
thoughts did not, I fancy, come till later.
CHAPTER XXVI
A FUNNY WORLD
“IT’S never a bit of good losing your temper,” remarked Mrs. Trimwell
sagely. “You can say much more telling things if you don’t.”
She was clearing the luncheon table. John, from the depths of an
armchair, made a sound slightly indicative of doubt.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Trimwell firmly, in reply to the sound, “you can.
Losing your temper you never know what you are going to say, and as
like as not you’ll say something as’ll hit back on yourself, and
you be sorry you said later. Keeping it you can have an eye to your
neighbour’s weaknesses, and pull them out to show, so to speak.”
John seemed to recognize some truth in this statement.
“Whose weaknesses,” he demanded, “have you been exposing?”
“He’s a captious man, is Vicar,” said Mrs. Trimwell, and John
perceived that her remark was not irrelevant. “He’s never been what
you’d call pleased like in his mind that the biggest house to the place
is a papist house, and yet now when they’re leaving he’s for railing
against the new occupant that is to be, and him no papist at all, they
say.”
“Oh!” said John. He had fancied, be it stated, that Mrs. Trimwell
herself was not what might have been termed cordial towards the
interloper.
“I don’t say I’m wanting him at the Castle myself,” pursued Mrs.
Trimwell, in reply, it would seem, to John’s unspoken thought, “but
Lor’ bless you, ’tisn’t exactly his fault if he is the rightful heir,
and it’s little more’n a child he is for all he’s a man grown. He come
in here yesterday when I was stoning raisins for a cake. I don’t say at
first I was pleased for to see him. But, ‘Mrs. Trimwell,’ says he, ‘I
want to thank you for seeing to my foot. It’s a real doctor you are,
for I’d never but a limp the next day.’ And he sat down, and watched
me stoning of them raisins, eating one now and again for all the world
like a great boy. And his eyes--have you seen his eyes, sir? You
couldn’t no more say a harsh word to him than you could to my baby. He
stayed chatting an hour and more, and I declare I thought ’twas only
ten minutes.”
John laughed,--a curious little laugh.
“Then this morning,” went on Mrs. Trimwell, “Vicar come in. He’d seen
him yesterday afternoon at the front door. Wanted to know what he’d
come for. As if a visitor can’t come to the house without me answering
a penny catechism from Vicar. I up and as good as told him that. And
he began talking about loyalty to the family at the Castle, and it’s
never a word of loyalty he’s had for them, and I can tell you. We got
to words a bit, and Vicar’s temper isn’t never sweetened with the best
sugar, but I kept mine. I called to mind a thing or two as he’d said of
the family, and I let fall a hint now and again that I hadn’t forgotten
it neither. It’s wonderful the way it riles a person if you’ve a good
memory and let them know it.”
John grinned.
“I’ll not be repeating all he said,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell with
dignity, “but I will say there were some things I didn’t expect to hear
a parson say. But they’ll come back to himself. You can’t ever be real
spiteful but they does. Did I ever tell you about Mrs. Ashby and Lydia
Ponsland?”
John intimated that she had not
“Them two always had their knife into me, seeing that I gave them short
shrift when they come here with gossiping lies of my husband drinking
at the Blue Dragon over to Whortley. Lord love you, sir, he’s never
touched a drop more’n was good for him since the day we married. I’ll
not swear to before that, seeing as young men will be young men all the
world over. Anyhow I wasn’t going to listen to no lies from Mrs. Ashby
and Lydia Ponsland, and told them they was liars to their face, which
wasn’t perhaps the pleasantest hearing for them, though the truth. My
words stuck, I’m thinking, and turned a trifle sour, and they planned
a bit of revenge. ’Twas the silliest thing they did, though cruel at
that, and you’d never believe folks could have been that childish, if
I didn’t tell you ’twas the gospel truth. ’Twas Christmas Eve, and I
was over to Whortley for a bit of shopping. My husband was at home with
the children, when five o’clock or thereabouts there come a ring at the
front door. Robert he goes to see what ’tis. There’s a man there, and
a cart outside. ‘’Tis the coffin for your wife,’ says he. Robert, he
fails all of a tremble, and never thinking, like a man, I couldn’t ha’
ordered my coffin anyhows if I’d been dead. He don’t understand it,
and stays arguefying, and mortal frightened. In the middle of their
speechifying I comes home, and I tell you it took me ten minutes and
more to make him believe I hadn’t no call for a coffin yet awhile.
’Twas them two as had ordered it, as I knew well enough, though
couldn’t never bring it clear home to them. But they was paid for their
evilness. Mrs. Ashby, she’s lost her money, and is in a two shilling
attic at Whortley this very day, and Lydia’s down with rheumatic fever
what the doctor says she’ll not be getting over this side of next
Christmas. When God pays He don’t pay in halfpence.”
The vigour with which Mrs. Trimwell brushed the crumbs from the cloth
served to emphasize her statement.
“It was,” said John, “an astonishingly idiotic thing for them to do.”
“Idiotic!” ejaculated Mrs. Trimwell, “I should think it was idiotic.
But there, they’d lost their tempers and kept them lost for weeks;
and if you mislay your temper like that it turns that sour you’d be
surprised. I’m for thinking Vicar hasn’t found his yet, nor will be
finding it for a bit. But as I says to him, if a man finds his chance
like this one has, you can’t be surprised if he takes it. If he don’t
he’s a fool, and no more and no less. If you get a chance, take it,
says I, if you don’t it goes off in a huff to somebody else.”
“Then,” remarked John ruminatively, “it would be your advice that a
chance should be taken at all hazards, even at the expense of someone
else?”
Mrs. Trimwell looked dubious. It would appear that this aspect of
affairs had not previously struck her.
“Well, sir,” quoth she reflective, “I’ll own you have me there. I
couldn’t give you no clear answer to that. It seems to me that the
world’s all a bit of shoving and pushing, and slipping through gaps to
the front when you see them. And if you don’t do the slipping, someone
else will. I reckon it’s right enough if you’re not pushing your own
folk and friends aside. When it comes to them, well, matters do get a
bit awkward, I’ll allow. What do you think, sir?”
John shook his head.
“Frankly, Mrs. Trimwell, I don’t know.”
“Well, to tell you the honest truth, sir, no more don’t I. It’s one
thing to talk o’ the common-sense point of view, but when you come
straight up to it, well, you sometimes wonders if it isn’t a bit more
edgey and cornery than you cares about. ’Tis a funny world.”
“It is,” said John fervently.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE OLD OAK
OH, it was a funny world, fast enough, John knew that. He’d known it
in fits and starts all his life, but somehow the last ten days had
emphasized the fact more fully.
Ten days! To John it seemed a lifetime since he, in company with Corin,
had stepped upon Whortley platform, had taken his seat in the rickety
bus that had conveyed him at its own shaky pace to the White Cottage.
A lifetime! And yet reason, that firm indicator of common-sense,
emphasized to the contrary. Anyhow, a lifetime or ten days, the time
had been long enough for him to know his mind. He had known it for
weeks past. But for her? There was the question. And it was one which
common-sense, modesty, and every other thought but his own wish,
answered firmly in the negative. He had seen her precisely seven times,
and two out of the number obviously went for nothing, seeing that the
first time she had been totally unaware of his presence, and the third
time, if she had seen him, it would have been merely as one of a small
congregation of worshippers, his individuality entirely unnoticed.
Therefore, argued John, if what he so ardently desired was, by any
possible manner of means, to be brought about by an increased number of
meetings, the sooner he set about increasing them the better. Obviously
the proper, the correct thing to do, after lunching at a house, was to
pay a respectful call upon one’s hostess. He had no need to consult an
etiquette book to remind himself of that fact.
True, he had lunched on Thursday, and this was only Saturday, therefore
the call might be considered somewhat precipitate. But, argued John,
endeavouring to find some plausible excuse for the precipitancy of the
call, with the practical certainty in view of meeting the family in the
cloisters after Mass the following day, the most desirable course, the
only correct and proper course, was to call that very afternoon.
No sooner thought than decided on. John left the White Cottage,
betaking himself in the direction of the church, from which he
intended to drag a possibly reluctant Corin, and insist on his mounting
the hill in his company.
But his intentions and his insistence came to nought.
A dusty, untidy, and wholly absorbed Corin utterly refused to accompany
him. Objection number one, it was too soon to pay a call; objection
number two, it was Saturday afternoon, the one afternoon in the week on
which he enjoyed solitude; objection number three, would John kindly
look at the discovery he had just made, and then see if he--Corin--was
likely to leave it for the purpose of paying a merely conventional
visit.
John looked. Corin was, at the moment, on _terra firma_, be it stated.
On either side of where the altar would have stood, had there been
one, and some five feet or so from the ground, the wall was partially
uncovered. A border in brilliant blue, red, black, and yellow was
disclosed,--a bold, simple pattern. Below it, in the upper loops of
a painted curtain, were animals,--dragons, twisted of tail, forked
of tongue; a leveret, a deer, and a fox, each of these last courant,
to use the parlance of heraldry. For the most part the animals were
washed in boldly in red; two of the dragons were a gorgeous yellow.
“I am certain,” said Corin enthusiastically, “that they are after
Geraldius Cambrensis. It’s the best find of the lot. I’m not coming
with you. Nothing, no power on earth, can drag me from this till dark.
If you must go today, make my excuses.”
Therefore John departed.
The excuse was valid. It also gave a _raison d’être_ for his somewhat
precipitate call. Miss Delancey was interested in the discoveries in
the church. It would be merely friendly to let her know of this new
discovery as soon as possible. Therefore, I say, John departed. Of
course he grumbled a moment or so before departing. Equally of course
the grumbling was of a merely perfunctory nature.
And then he turned into the sunshine.
* * * * *
His heart beat high as he walked up the hill. Of course he was doing
the right and obvious thing. It would be absurd to wait till next week
to pay the visit. The day after tomorrow! How could such a delay be
contemplated? It would have been impossible, unthinkable.
The eighth meeting! And surely there must follow the ninth and the
tenth, and heaven alone knew how many more. And which, _which_, WHICH
would be The Meeting? Of course it was absolutely absurd to surmise
on this point. It was impossible to fix the moment beforehand. To
come, as John would have it to come, it must be almost inspirational,
heaven-sent. It couldn’t be arranged, planned. It couldn’t be
calculated over, preconceived. But--and here John’s spirits went down
to zero with a sudden run--would it ever come? Wasn’t he a presumptuous
ass even to dream of such a moment as possible? or--granting the
moment--to dream of its fruition? Wouldn’t it be nipped in the bud
instantly? frozen to a mere shrivelled atom of a miserable moment? John
shivered at the thought. Then consolation took him kindly by the hand.
At all events here was the eighth meeting, with the moment not yet even
in bud. Who could tell as to that budding?
And so he turned into the avenue.
He passed under the oaks and copper beeches, the roadway now dappled
with gold among shadows, as the sunlight penetrated the branches
overhead. To the right, in the distance, were undulating stretches of
moorland. He fancied he could descry the silver-stemmed birch he had
seen on his first morning’s walk. Before him he had a view of smooth
green lawns, of brilliant flowerbeds, backgrounded by the old grey
Castle itself. To the left the parkland sloped gently upwards to a wood
of beeches,--a serene, cool, silent place, a veritable haunt of dryads.
Between the avenue and the wood was a great oak tree, stretching wide
branches above the rough grass. Rumour had it that here was the scene
of that old-time tragedy. Though unknowing of this rumour, John yet
felt something almost sinister about the twisted, gnarled branches,
and massive trunk of the great tree. There was a hint of secrecy about
it, the dumb knowledge of some tragedy. Almost involuntarily he turned
across the grass towards it.
There was no question as to its great age. For generations it must have
stood there, weathering storm and sunshine. Some seven feet or so from
the ground there was a hole in the trunk, large enough to admit of the
passage of a man’s head. Scanning the hole, John noticed a rusty nail
at one side. He wondered, idly enough, why it had been placed there.
From the hole, he glanced up at the branches. Truly there was something
almost sinister in the great limbs. They were distorted, twisted, as if
in agony. Again he had the unreasoning sensation of secrecy. It was an
extraordinary sensation, an absurd sensation.
He could fancy the spirit of the tree striving to find expression in
speech. There was a curious feeling that somewhere, just beyond, in
the spirit world, perhaps, there was the key to some riddle. It was an
almost impalpable feeling; he barely realized it; only somewhere, in
his deepest inner consciousness, it stirred slightly.
Below the tree was a small mound. Rumour also had it that here Gelert,
the wolf-hound, faithful as his ancient namesake, was buried. Again,
John had had no hint of this rumour. But he looked at the mound with
curiosity. Then, suddenly, he threw off the slight oppression that was
upon him, retraced his steps to the avenue.
Arrived at the big door, John pulled the bell, a twisted iron thing
whose voice sounded faintly in some remote region. The door was opened,
and John saw into the hall, dark and shadowed. He had a glimpse of
bowls of roses, of a big straw hat lying on a table, green chiffon
around the crown. A pair of long crinkled gloves lay near it. So, for
an instant, John stood, his foot ready to cross the threshold.
“Her ladyship is not at home.” The butler’s bland voice fell like a
douche of cold water on John’s heart.
Now, I don’t know whether John’s face fell in proportion to his
heart, and the butler, more human than the majority of butlers, saw
the falling, or whether his next statement came in the mere ordinary
routine of matters. Anyhow,
“But Miss Delancey is at home, and her ladyship will return shortly,”
followed closely on the former speech.
John’s heart leaped to at least ten degrees above the point from which
it had fallen. The speech had not even come as a query regarding his
desire to enter, it had come as simple statement of fact.
John stepped across the threshold.
CHAPTER XXVIII
ON THE TERRACE
SHE came to him in the hall.
Underneath her cordial ease of manner was the tiniest hint of shyness,
a sort of half-forgotten breath of extreme youngness, I might almost
say of childishness. Yet, very assuredly, there was nothing _gauche_
about the reception. The hint merely served to emphasize her youth.
If John thought about her age at all, he probably placed her at about
twenty-two or thereabouts, which, I take it, was pretty near the mark.
But I don’t fancy the thought entered his mind. It was enough for him
that there she was, sitting opposite to him in the dusky hall. A ray of
sunlight, falling through an open window, caught the burnished copper
of her hair, turning it to vivid flame. It looked a thing alive and
palpitating, a burning aureole around her face.
And now that the eighth meeting was accomplished, John found
himself suddenly tongue-tied, at a loss for any of those suitable
little phrases fitting to the occasion. Nothing is so infectious as
embarrassment, however slight, more particularly if there be any degree
of sympathy between the two. Certainly it proved infectious in this
case. Words halted, phrases came disjointedly, disconnectedly.
John cursed himself inwardly for a fool, a procedure which, you may
rightly guess, did not vastly aid matters. And then, suddenly, Rosamund
got up from her chair.
“Won’t you come and see the garden,” she suggested.
It was an inspiration. John followed her with alacrity.
They came out on to a wide terrace. A stone balustrade ran its full
length, a balustrade covered with climbing roses,--crimson, pink,
white, yellow, and a pale purple-lavender. A queer rose this last,
reminding one of the print gowns worn by one’s grandmothers. Beyond the
balustrade was a sunk lawn, and beyond that again the parkland, while
further still was the shimmering blue of the distant sea.
“How you must love it!”
The words escaped almost involuntarily from John’s lips. The next
moment he would have recalled them. To remind her of the beauty of what
she was about to lose, must surely be to emphasize the sense of that
loss.
“Love it!” She turned towards him with a little laugh. “It--it just
belongs.”
John was silent. Rosamund leaned upon the balustrade, half-sitting,
half-standing.
“You needn’t mind saying what is in your thoughts,” said she. And there
was a little whimsical smile in her eyes. “Of course you can’t help
thinking about the fact that we are going to lose it all, any more
than I can help thinking about it. It makes freedom of speech just a
trifle difficult, if all the time you are feeling it is a subject to be
carefully avoided. Granny and I speak of it quite naturally now.”
“I’d like to tell you how sorry I am,” said John.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
There was a little pause. She gazed out towards the sea. To the right,
a headland jutted out into its blueness. Sea-gulls circled in the quiet
air, tiny specks in the distance. Boats, white and red sailed, made
lazy way with the tide.
Suddenly she turned impulsively towards him.
“I fancy,” said she, “that I’m going to tell you something.”
“Do!” said he, his eyes upon her.
“You’ll laugh.”
“Not a smile even.”
“Hmm!” she debated. “An over-dose of seriousness _might_ be even worse
to face than laughter.”
“This is not fair,” protested John. “I can’t measure a smile to the
hundredth part of an inch. I can, at least, promise not to mock at you.
Won’t that do?”
She laughed.
“Yes; I believe it will. Well, it’s this.” Her voice dropped to
seriousness. “I have a quite unreasoning feeling that we shan’t leave
here after all. I can’t explain the feeling, and I am fully aware of
the almost absurdity of it. I haven’t spoken of it to any one else. I
can’t tell my grandmother, or Father Maloney. It might raise a faint
hope which reason tells me will be doomed to disappointment. And
yet--well, it seems almost that if one could only stretch out one’s
hand a little way, through a kind of fog, one would find the key to the
whole riddle. It must sound absurd to you, of course.”
John’s mind swung instantly to his own sensation of less than twenty
minutes ago.
“No,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t sound at all absurd.”
She looked at him quickly.
“You speak almost as if you thought--” She broke off. After all it was
an absurd imagination.
“I have thought the same,” said John smiling.
“You!” She was amazed.
“Yes; as I came across the park just now.”
“Oh!”
Again there was a little silence.
“I wonder--” she said musingly. “Do you think there’s the faintest
possible chance?”
“There’s always the faintest possible chance,” John assured her. “Oh,
I’ll grant it’s the faintest possible, and heaven alone knows where it
will spring from. But it’s there, I know it’s there. And we’ve both
felt it.”
She nodded.
“I’m glad you’ve felt it too. It adds a little bit more hope, even
while I’m almost laughing at myself. Only--what is it we’ve both felt?”
“I don’t know,” said John. “I don’t know an atom. I think I get nearest
the mark when I say that it seems as if, somewhere, there’s a dumb
voice striving for expression. At least that is the only way I can
describe the sensation to myself.”
“And all the time,” she added, “there’s a feeling of quietness in
the atmosphere, the quietness that precedes something very important
happening.”
“I know,” said John.
“Ah, it’s tantalizing,” she sighed, “the inward knowledge of that, and
yet the knowledge of one’s own impotence.”
Her brow was wrinkled in a little frown, half of annoyance, half of
something like regretful amusement. It was an adorable little frown,
and John longed, ardently longed, to smooth it away. His heart beat and
thumped, the while it cried warningly that the time was not yet. And
from somewhere near at hand came the liquid note of a pigeon.
“Go slow slowly, go slow slowly,” it seemed to remind him.
“Oh, yes, we’re impotent enough,” assented John, and a trifle gloomily.
“Isn’t it all melodramatic?” she laughed.
“Horribly,” agreed John.
“It’s an extraordinary conglomeration,” she pursued. “Setting,
old-world; drama, early Victorian; period, twentieth century. Do you
suppose that any one who didn’t _know_ about it, would believe it?”
“Not an atom,” John assured her promptly. “If any one, I for instance,
were to write a novel dealing with it, I’ll be bound I’d be considered
to have strained the long arm of coincidence to breaking point. That’s
the queer thing about truth. It’s always a thousand times, a million
times, queerer than fiction.”
“It’s from precisely that--the very queerness of it,--that I can
derive some small modicum of consolation,” she assured him gravely.
“I feel, on occasions, that I am not myself at all, but merely a
heroine in a book. Only, if I were, I might be tolerably certain of a
happy-ever-after ending. I might say indisputably certain, considering
the style of the plot. Here it is nothing but a toss-up.”
“Oh, no.” John shook his head. “I wouldn’t give mere chance quite such
a free hand.”
“You mean that there’s a real plan behind it all?” she demanded point
blank.
“Oh, well!” said John. There was a slightly quizzical smile in his eyes.
“Of course I know there is truly,” responded she, smiling in her turn.
“But----”
“But me no buts,” retorted John. “Chance isn’t a free agent, and you
know it; though I’ll allow he has an extraordinary appearance of acting
on his own account now and again. But that’s merely his guise. If he
didn’t appear clad in that fashion, we’d misname him; and I’ve an
idea he’s curiously tenacious of his personality. People, you know,”
continued John slyly, “are apt to believe in his omnipotence.”
She laughed.
“I’ve believed in him myself before now,” owned John, having a
sudden memory of a black and white goat. “Only subsequent reflection
invariably shows one that he isn’t acting on his own account, as he
would have us believe.”
“I fancy you’re right,” said she reflectively. “If one really considers
the seemingly haphazard happenings, one does see that there is always
a connecting link backwards and forwards. Nothing--no happening--is
entirely isolated.”
“It is not,” said John. “Only sometimes the connecting link is so fine
as to be almost imperceptible.”
John had in mind a tiny faint link, so faint that it was only in the
light of subsequent events that it had become visible. If, on a certain
March afternoon, he had not yielded to a sudden inspiration to enter
the Brompton Oratory, would he now have been standing in this garden?
Was not that the tiny, almost imperceptible link with all the events of
the last ten days? Oh, he had reason enough for his assured statement,
he had proved it to the hilt.
He wanted, he badly wanted, to tell her, to speak of that tiny
connecting link. But reason again assuring him that to do so would be
to drag the moment too abruptly forward, he thrust the desire aside.
And then, from the distance, came the sound of a silver gong.
Rosamund got up from the balustrade.
“Tea,” said she. “Granny must have returned.”
CHAPTER XXIX
AN UNEXPECTED LETTER
JOHN sat down to breakfast at about nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the
following Wednesday morning. It was the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption;
he had been to Mass at Delancey Chapel.
A letter was lying in his place. He took it up, and opened it. Here are
its contents.
“DEAR JOHN,--Unexpected business has brought me over to London. It
seems a thousand pities to go back to Ireland without seeing you.
Could you get rooms for me at your sequestered spot for ten days or
so? Send me an early wire if possible, and I’ll come down by the train
arriving tomorrow evening.
“Your affectionate sister,
ELIZABETH DARCY.”
Now, it is very certain that, from the time of our Mother Eve, women
have played an important part in the affairs of mankind, either for
good or ill. But it is equally certain that John had not the faintest
conception of the part Elizabeth would play in the life of at least one
person by this her proposed visit.
“Elizabeth suggests coming down for a few days,” said John tentatively,
and helping himself to bacon.
“Elizabeth?” echoed Corin, gazing enquiringly at John.
“My sister, Mrs. Darcy. I forgot you didn’t know her.”
“By all means advocate her coming,” quoth Corin. “I shall be delighted
to make her acquaintance.”
“I wonder--” began John, and stopped.
“Well?” queried Corin.
“I wonder whether Mrs. Trimwell has another room. Elizabeth suggests
that I should take rooms for her. She wants an early reply.”
“Then my suggestion,” remarked Corin calmly, “is that you ask Mrs.
Trimwell. On the whole it would be simpler and more practical than
merely wondering.”
“Brilliant man!” responded John genially. And he rang the bell.
Mrs. Trimwell, it appeared, had not. She was profuse in her apologies
for the lack of accommodation. You would have imagined that she was
entirely to blame for the fact that the White Cottage possessed merely
three bedrooms and a cupboard, so to speak. Tilda and Benny--aged
four--slept in the cupboard.
“But there’s the Green Man what isn’t seven minutes’ walk from here,
and though I’ll not vouch for the cooking myself, a bit of bacon and a
cup of coffee for breakfast is what any idiot might rise to, it being
pleasanter for the lady not to be afoot too early, and the beds I
believe is clean, while for other meals she’ll natural take them along
of you.”
Of course Chance--so-called--had a hand in the arrangement. If
Elizabeth had both slept and breakfasted at the White Cottage, I’ll
vouch for it that matters would not have happened precisely as they
did; indeed, they would probably have been totally different.
John finished his breakfast, and then took a telegram to the
post-office.
He was genuinely, undeniably pleased that Elizabeth was coming. He had
a sensation of something like exultation in the thought. She was so
extraordinarily reliable. Never under any circumstances did Elizabeth
“let you down,” to use a slang phrase. There was never the smallest
occasion to remind Elizabeth that the intimate remarks you made to her
were confidences. It was a foregone conclusion in her eyes. She would
no more dream of repeating them than she would dream of tampering with
another person’s letters. Also, so reflected John, she never reminded
you that you had made them, unless it was entirely obvious that you
desired to be so reminded. She never glossed over any difficulty, but
faced it squarely with you. The only people who were ever disappointed
in Elizabeth were those who looked for a maudlin sympathy from her, who
desired her to fight their battles, when she was fully aware that they
alone could fight them. Yet Elizabeth was entirely feminine, from the
top of her glossy brown hair, to the tip of her dainty shoes. John,
perhaps more than any one else in the world, understood and appreciated
both her strength and her femininity. It was therefore with a feeling
of intense satisfaction that he dispatched his telegram.
“Things move when Elizabeth’s around,” reflected John.
And then he walked on to the Green Man.
* * * * *
John, on the platform of Whortley station, surveyed the people there
collected with idle interest.
It was market day in Whortley. Stout market women, clutching empty,
or partially empty, baskets, sat on benches, their feet squarely
planted on the ground. Leather-gaitered men, whose clothes gave forth
a powerful aroma of horses and cattle, strolled up and down, and
talked in groups. Children, hot and tired, and consequently slightly
irritable, bickered with each other, or poked sticks at bewildered
and exhausted hens in crates. Somewhere in the back regions of the
station a couple of refractory oxen were being driven into trucks.
An atmosphere of almost aggressive patience pervaded the much-tried
porters.
“’Eat may be mighty good for the ’arvest,” remarked one motherly
looking woman, wiping her face with a large white handkerchief, “but I
do say as ’ow it’s a bit trying to the spirit, and likewise the body.”
“It’s the tempers of most people it gets at,” replied her neighbour
succinctly.
To which remark John responded with an inward and fervent acquiescence.
There was no denying the heat; there was no denying the sultriness of
the dusty platform.
John strolled down to its further end.
Behind the town the sky was crimsoning to sunset. The roofs of the
dingy houses were being painted red-gold in its light. The smoke from
a factory hung like a veil in the still air, lending mystery to the
atmosphere. The buildings lay in a web of colour,--blue, grey, purple,
and gold. A cynic might have likened the sunset glory to the glamour
with which some foolish people endow a merely sordid existence. In a
measure, too, his simile might have been justifiable; but, whereas he
would have scoffed, John, with something of the same simile in mind,
thanked God for the gift of imagination.
And then, far to the right, he caught a glimpse of white smoke above a
dark serpent of an oncoming train.
CHAPTER XXX
ELIZABETH ARRIVES ON THE SCENE
“RURALIZING,” quoth Elizabeth, “agrees with you.”
They were driving in a vehicle politely termed a Victoria. It was not
unlike a good-sized bath-chair. It was driven by a one-armed boy.
Seeing the driver, Elizabeth had had a moment’s qualm of heart. Then
she had seen the horse.
“Oh, it’s a pleasant enough spot,” responded John, “and--and restful.”
He coloured the merest trifle beneath his tan.
“Restfulness,” said Elizabeth gravely, “is delightful.”
But she wasn’t deceived, not a bit of it. Neither the pleasantness
of Malford, nor its restfulness was accountable for that particular
exuberance in John. It was a subtle, indefinable exuberance, which no
amount of mere bodily health could cause. It emanated from his mind,
his spirit; it surrounded him; he was bathed in it. He might pretend
to its non-existence; he might pretend--allowing it--that it was the
mere outcome of a country life, but Elizabeth was not deceived.
“Have you met the Delanceys?” she demanded.
“Oh, yes,” he responded airily enough. “They’re--you’ll like them.
That rumour you got hold of was correct enough, by the way. There is a
claimant. He’s proved his claim. It’s a mere matter of courtesy on his
part that he is not already in possession. He will be by the end of the
autumn.”
Elizabeth sat up.
“An American?” she said.
“An American,” said John. “At least he hailed originally from the
States. He has been living in Africa since his boyhood.”
“I suppose he’s quite impossible?” said Elizabeth frowning.
“On the contrary,” owned John reluctantly, “he isn’t at all impossible,
at any rate not in one way. Of course he’ll be entirely unsuited to his
surroundings, but he is quite a decent fellow in himself.”
“Brr!” breathed Elizabeth, and there was a hint of impatience in the
sound. “A kangaroo is a decent animal in itself, but you don’t want it
in your drawing-room. What do the Delanceys think about it?”
“Oh,” quoth John, “they accept the inevitable. There’s a strong hint
of the French aristocrats’ attitude towards the guillotine, in their
manner; lacking, however, the scorn.”
“I see.” Elizabeth fell into meditation.
“I don’t think even you can reconstruct matters,” said John smiling.
“You see, the whole thing turns on that missing document.”
“The whole thing,” said Elizabeth, “is so blatantly melodramatic as to
be barely respectable.”
John laughed.
“Wait till you see Lady Mary,” he said. “She saves the situation
completely.”
Elizabeth was silent. Then:
“Where is the man now?” she asked.
“Staying at the Green Man,” said John. “I’ve had to take a room there
for you. You’ll breakfast at the inn, and have the rest of your meals
with us. I am sorry there isn’t another room at the White Cottage.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Elizabeth gaily. “I came down to picnic. It’s I
who should apologize for thrusting myself upon you.”
“That,” said John decidedly, “is pure nonsense.”
They were ascending a hill by now. Twilight was falling rapidly. Bats
flew through the dusk, their shrill queer note breaking the silence. A
great white owl flew noiselessly, like a huge moth, across a field. The
road was a white line between dark hedges.
Coming to the top of the hill, wide stretches of moorland lay around
them. Far off on the horizon was a strip of silver-grey sea. In the
middle distance was a hill, wood-covered, dark towers rising among the
trees.
“Delancey Castle,” said John.
CHAPTER XXXI
IN THE EARLY MORNING
IF, as I remarked at the beginning of a preceding chapter, John thought
it a funny world, it is very certain that David would have fully
endorsed his opinion; and, further, he would have considered himself
the queerest person in it.
Now, this was purely owing to the fact that he had suddenly found
himself a stranger to himself. It was, in a manner, as if he had lived
in blindness with a man for years, having, perhaps, without fully
recognizing the fact, some mental conception of him. Then, on being
miraculously restored to sight, he had discovered that the reality was
totally at variance with that same mental conception.
The recovery of sight had come gradually. It had not been an
instantaneous miracle. At the first he thought, doubtless, if he
considered the fact at all, and he was probably only partially aware
of it, that the variance between the reality and what his partially
restored sight beheld, was due to his own faulty vision. Now, with
clear sight restored, he beheld a complete stranger, and it left him
bewildered. He didn’t know the man at all. He didn’t even recognize his
speech. It is small wonder that he was bewildered; it is small wonder
that he spent solitary hours in a futile attempt to reconstruct his
preconceived notions of the man.
I believe that the moment when David got a first blurred glimpse of
this stranger, was in Father Maloney’s odd little parlour. He had had
another glimpse of him at the Castle; and since then, little by little,
the glimpses had resolved themselves into full vision. And through it
all, with it all, was a queer sense of vibratory forces at work.
It was in the parlour, also, that the first vibration had struck upon
him--a quite definite vibration, though inexplicable. It had rung
clearly for a brief space, gradually growing fainter, till he wondered
if it had indeed rung, or was merely imagination on his part. It had
been repeated at the Castle, and had left no doubt in his mind. Since
then it had been renewed at intervals, ringing each time longer and
louder. I can best describe it as some kind of mental telephone call,
though he was, at present, at a complete loss as to the message waiting
to be delivered.
“The fact is, David P. Delancey,” he remarked more than once, “that
somehow your moorings have been cut, and the Lord only knows where you
are drifting.”
* * * * *
Very early in the morning, the sun not far above the horizon, and the
trees casting long shadows on the grass, David set out for a walk.
It was by no means the first time that he had risen thus betimes.
The clean, fresh spirit of the morning appealed to him, also its
detachment. It seemed, at that hour, so extraordinarily aloof from the
affairs of men, wrapped, in a sense, in its own quiet meditations.
Later the sun, the little breezes, the sweet earth scents seemed to
give forth warmth, freshness, and fragrant odours for the benefit
of mankind. At this hour it was wrapped in meditation, a meditation
approaching ecstasy.
He went softly, fearing almost to disturb the stillness, yet he did
not altogether feel himself an intruder. There was, in a strange sense,
something of communion between his spirit and the spirit of the silent
morning, in spite of its detachment.
The route he had chosen led first across the moorland,--wide stretches
of purple heather. He walked without indulging in any special train of
thought. His eyes were open to the details of nature around him, his
brain alert to absorb them in pure pleasure.
Gorse bushes, scattered among the heather, showed golden blossoms
backgrounded by a blue sky. Their sweet scent came faintly to him.
Later in the stronger warmth of the sun, the scent would gain in power
and fulness. In the distance, scattered copses lay misty blue patches
on sun-gold hillsides. Both far and near was an all-absorbing peace.
He hadn’t a notion how far he walked, nor for how long. Unconsciously
he circled, coming at length to a gate, leading into a larch wood.
David turned through it. Here the sun filtered through the branches,
flung spots of gold on the red-brown earth of the pathway, on the
emerald of the moss lying in great patches among bracken, fern, and
bramble. Twigs and branches, at one time wind-torn from the trees, lay
in the path, silver-grey, lichen-covered. It was all intensely silent,
intensely still. David, stepping by chance on a dried twig, heard it
snap with the report of a small pistol in the silence. The loneliness
appealed to him; the enchantment of the quiet wood led him on.
Gradually, imperceptibly, his thoughts left externals, turned inwards.
Still aware of all that lay around him, they were no longer merely
idly diffused upon it; they drew together, focussed. Accustomed to
think, though vaguely, in terms of simile rather than in words, he saw
in the quiet of the wood something of the quiet which at present held
his own life and being. In a sense he suddenly felt himself sleeping,
his eyes closed on all that lay behind him. Yet while sleeping, he
knew, too, that presently must come awakening. It was in his power, he
now felt, to awake at the moment to the old life, as he knew it, to
reconstruct his mental conception of that stranger, as it was in his
power to retrace his steps. Yet it was almost as if something external
to himself waited with him, to withdraw gently should he turn back, to
remain with him should he go forward. So for a space of time--a space
not measured by the ticking of a clock--David waited. Then suddenly he
moved onward down the glade.
And now he knew that his heart was beating fast, pulsing with some
curious excitement, though he had not realized it before. His breath,
too, was coming rather quickly, like that of a man who has been
running. Gradually breathing and heart-beating became normal; yet still
the dream sense lingered with him, and he did not want to dispel it.
The path led him into a cuplike hollow among the trees, a moss-grown
place, full of deep shadows and a pleasant coolness. On the other
side of the hollow the path ascended, through a beech-wood here,
silver-green trunks in strong contrast to the deep red of the pathway.
Though quiet, this wood was vivid, full of stronger colour than was
that on the other side of the hollow.
Coming out at last from among the trees, David found himself on an
expanse of grass, on one side skirted by the wood, on the other
bordered by a hedge of yew, close and thick and dark. Turning to the
left, he walked over the grass, till presently the hedge gave place to
a low wicket gate. Here he paused, looking over.
Beyond the hedge was a grey stone building, and beyond the building
were grey towers. He knew now where he was. It was the chapel of
Delancey Castle facing him. He stood for a moment or so, his hand
resting on the gate.
Suddenly the chapel bell broke the silence.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE NOTE OF A BELL
THE bell rang three strokes, with a pause between each. There was a
longer pause. Then once more came its threefold note.
The sound struck strangely on David’s ear, and more strangely still on
his heart. With the sound he became extraordinarily aware of some vital
Presence near at hand. Something that suffused the whole atmosphere
with Its Personality.
Somehow the quiet of the morning, its meditation, its silent ecstasy,
seemed to have been leading up to that moment. It seemed to him now
that here was the moment for which the morning had been waiting, and he
with the morning. Neither did the moment pass; it remained, prolonged,
expanded. Time again vanished; there was no time, there was nothing but
himself and that extraordinary mystical sense which was suffusing the
atmosphere.
He made no attempt to explain it; he couldn’t have explained it had he
tried. It was something beyond words, beyond reason, beyond feeling,
even, in the ordinary sense of the term. It was not actually in his
mind that he was aware of it at all, but in something far deeper.
In one way it was as if the notes of that bell had struck on some
deep recess of his soul, setting free some tiny spring of hidden
knowledge and sweetness; and yet he knew that it was not by virtue of
that knowledge and sweetness that the mystical sense suffusing the
atmosphere had been translated into terms of fact. It was external to
them; it was actual, real, palpitating. He knew that it would have been
there had the well of his inner consciousness remained untouched. Only
somehow, in some extraordinary manner, it had sprung up to meet it; and
the tiny freed spring had been caught into great waters, submerging him
in a sweetness he could not understand.
I don’t know how long David stood by the wicket gate; but, at last,
barely conscious of his surroundings, he turned from it along the grass
sward.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE GREEN MAN
THE parlour at the Green Man is the parlour pure and simple. It calls
itself by no grand-sounding title. You eat there, you sit there to
smoke and talk--if you do not sit in the garden, and you write there.
It has five round tables, deal, and covered with strong white cloths.
It has rush-bottomed chairs; it has casement windows; it has a great
fireplace with oak settles on either side of it. For the rest, the
walls are buff-washed, and hung with coloured prints, mainly of a
sporting nature. The floor is red stone, with three mats on it. The
mats are made of small loose strips of coloured stuff. The window
curtains are of highly coloured chintz.
The front door of the Green Man stands flush with the cobbled pavement.
Above the door swings the square sign with the name painted thereon.
It is a question, in Malford, from whence that name has originated. The
oldest inhabitants of the place, in particular Mrs. Joan Selby, who has
passed her ninetieth birthday, will tell you that it is in honour of
the Little People, who, long years since, footed it in the moonlight on
the grassy hill behind the house. She will declare that she had it from
the present owner’s great-grandfather himself, that the first visitor
to the house, when it was yet unnamed, was a little man, clad in green,
red-capped, who promised luck in his own name and that of his Tribe.
This, you may believe, is looked upon as sheer superstition by the
younger and more enlightened of the inhabitants of Malford. There is
one ribald wag, who declares that the name originated through the
verdant propensities of a former owner.
But for my part I lean to the first theory. And if you had ever sat in
the moonlight on the grassy hill behind the house, had seen the dark
green of the fairy rings among the brighter green of the field, had
heard the rippling of the stream at the foot of the hill, had seen the
pale gold of the massed primroses, had smelled their sweet fragrant
scent, had seen the misty shimmer of countless bluebells, then, I
fancy, you also would have been of my way of thinking.
* * * * *
Elizabeth sat at one of the round tables by an open casement window.
It looked on to a grass terrace bordered by brilliant galadias. Beyond
the galadias was a tiny stream, rippling, amber-coloured, over rounded
stones. Beyond the stream was a grassy hill, sloping upwards to a
beech-wood. Beyond that again was the blue sky.
“It really is extraordinarily pleasant,” said Elizabeth.
And then she turned to her coffee pot. The coffee poured into a blue
and white cup, she was stirring it thoughtfully, when the door opened.
A man paused for the merest fraction of a second on the threshold. It
evidently came as a bit of a surprise to him to find the room already
occupied.
Elizabeth looked at the man. The man looked at Elizabeth.
She saw a big man in loose tweeds, shabby tweeds, which had seen much
service. She saw a square-faced man, with a mat of darkish red hair.
He saw a glossy-haired, brown-haired woman, a woman with a palely
bronzed skin, beneath which there was an underglow of red, a woman
with red lips finely moulded, with a square chin, with a delicately
chiselled nose, with steady grey eyes in which there was an under-note
of something akin to laughter. She wore a cream-coloured cotton dress.
A pink la France rose was tucked into the front of her gown.
David, used to the rapid assimilation of details, saw all this at a
glance. Then he crossed to the table in the other window. It had been
laid so that it faced hers, and fearing lest he should appear guilty of
an obtrusive staring, he gazed out of the window.
The arrival of his breakfast providing occupation for hands and eyes,
David turned to the table. A moment later he found that the sugar had
been forgotten.
Now, the Green Man is devoid of bells. In some ways it is distinctly
primitive. A brass knocker on the front door announces the arrival of
visitors. For the rest your own vocal cords are employed.
Ordinarily David would have gone to the door and shouted, but the
presence of Elizabeth causing some absurd little diffidence in his
mind, he sipped his coffee unsweetened. To a sweet-toothed man
non-sugared coffee is peculiarly unpalatable. He set down his cup with
a half-grimace, and glanced round the room. By good luck there might be
a sugar bowl on an unoccupied table. There was not.
Elizabeth had noticed the former hesitation; she had likewise noticed
the slight grimace, and the present unavailing glance around the room.
Two and two were put rapidly together in her mind. She gave her own
sugar bowl a slight push.
“Here is some sugar,” said she in her pleasant voice.
It was a most trifling incident. At the moment David merely said “Thank
you,” and availed himself of the proffered bowl. Twenty minutes later,
meeting in the garden by the stream, it gave a slight excuse for
speech. It gave Elizabeth the excuse for speech. You may be sure David
would never have ventured on it.
“What a dreamy spot!” said she, turning with a smile.
If you knew Elizabeth well, you would know that this was one of her
favourite adjectives. It summed up at once beauty, picturesqueness,
colour, and entire enjoyment of anything.
“It is good,” said David briefly.
Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled. She liked the speech. It was in this
fashion, so we are told, that God regarded His Creation,--that is
before Mother Eve, beguiled by the old Serpent, had upset matters. Yet
after all, in spite of his upsettings, there are times and places which
yet fill us with some faint sense of that pristine perfection.
Of course Elizabeth knew perfectly well who he was. That may well go
without saying. But, in spite of John having said that he was a decent
fellow, he wasn’t in the remotest degree like her mental conception of
him.
She had pictured him a big man--which he truly was, also a bluff man,
a jovial man, a talker, a bit loud-voiced, perhaps a trifle assertive,
at all events very confident of himself, and all these things he was
not. It had not taxed Elizabeth’s intuition very vastly to perceive
that, contrary to all her expectations, there was an extraordinary
diffidence about him. He wasn’t the least certain of himself, he wasn’t
the least jovial nor loud-voiced, while something in his eyes,--well,
I have mentioned his eyes before. Somehow Elizabeth’s mind swung to
her little dusty-haired, grey-eyed Patrick in Ireland. She saw him in
the throes of grappling with one of those world problems to which the
cleverest of us can find but a poor answer, heard a small voice say
wearily:
“Mummy, there is some things what is very difficult to understand.”
Of course it was an absurd comparison. What had this big man in common
with the perplexities of a childish mind? Nevertheless for a brief
space she _had_ thought of Patrick.
“You can almost,” said Elizabeth, “see the Good Folk come trooping down
that hill.
“Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushing glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk
Trooping altogether;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!”
she quoted.
“I like that,” Said David, “what is it? Is there any more?”
Patrick had once said nearly these very words.
“It’s called,” said Elizabeth below her breath, “‘The Fairies,’ and it
is by William Allingham. Of course he ought never to have called it
that. The Little People hate that name. It’s a marvel, understanding as
much as he did, that he didn’t know. And there are five more verses.”
“Tell me,” said David.
“Oh!” laughed Elizabeth. But she went on.
“Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch dogs
All night awake.
“High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and grey
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.
“They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow,
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within a lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves
Watching till she wake.
“By the craggy hillside
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring
As dig them up for spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.
“Up the airy mountain
Down the rushing glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk.
Trooping altogether;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather.”
“They don’t sound altogether friendly,” said David as she stopped.
“Oh,” she assured him, “they are only unfriendly towards those who
dislike and fear them. Those who fear them have to be constantly
propitiating them. There’s nothing they hate like fear, and therefore
they demand toll from cowards. For those who love the Little
People--you should hear my small son Patrick talk about them,” she
ended.
David looked a trifle bewildered.
“Do you truly believe--” he began.
She looked at him, half-laughing, half-serious.
“Honestly I don’t know,” she said. “I’m living in the depths of
Ireland, and all that kind of thing is infectious. Sometimes I laugh at
myself for giving it a moment’s thought, and the next I’m saying, there
must be _something_ in it. As for Patrick, you’d as easily shake his
belief in me as his belief in the Good People. After all, who knows? He
says _he_ does. But then children may have the key to a door of which
we know nothing, or, at the best, but fancy we have caught a glimpse.”
There was a little silence, broken only by the sound of running water.
“And now,” said Elizabeth, “I must unpack. I was too lazy last night.
My evening frock will be crushed out of all recognition.”
David pricked up his ears.
“I didn’t know people wore evening dress in the country,” said he.
Elizabeth laughed.
“John--my brother, Mr. Mortimer--does,” she replied. “I believe he’d
sooner go without his dinner than omit dressing for it.”
“Mr. Mortimer!” ejaculated David. “Do you mean that?” The gravity of
his tone seemed unwarranted by the triviality of the question.
“Mean it? Of course I do,” replied Elizabeth.
And then she saw his face.
“What on earth does it mean?” thought Elizabeth to herself.
“Glory be to God, you’ve done it now!” Father Maloney would have
exclaimed.
Already her presence was making itself felt.
CHAPTER XXXIV
ELIZABETH GIVES ADVICE
“I’VE seen the interloper,” said Elizabeth.
She was walking with John by the river. He had called for her at the
Green Man, and had proposed a walk.
“Yes?” said John. There was enquiry in his tone.
“He isn’t,” said Elizabeth, “in the remotest degree what I imagined
him, except for his size. He--well, it is extraordinarily difficult to
describe him.”
“You feel that?”
“There’s something so childlike about him,” pursued Elizabeth. “If I
were to attempt to put into words what I mean, he seems to me like a
child, who had started out to get something, entirely sure that he
wanted it; and then, when he found it in his grasp, he discovered it to
be totally different from what he imagined it. He expected a sort of
toy, and he has found an enormous responsibility. He doesn’t know what
to make of it. He is utterly perplexed, and it hasn’t occurred to him
that the simplest plan would be to renounce it.”
John opened eyes of wonder.
“I always knew you were shrewd, my dear Elizabeth,” he remarked, “but
how you have arrived at these conclusions in so brief a space of time,
beats me altogether.”
“Then you think I’m right?” she demanded.
“I am pretty sure of it. But the thing is, that he sees the
responsibility without exactly recognizing it, and, as you say, the
simple way out of the difficulty hasn’t occurred to him in consequence.”
Elizabeth mused, looking at the running water.
“But that’s not all,” she went on. “There’s more I can’t fathom. These
are merely material difficulties to grapple with. He is faced with
something deeper. You can call me absurd if you like. I daresay I am
being a little _exalté_, but he has a look in his eyes as if he had
caught a glimpse of the Vision Beautiful, and he is a bit bewildered.”
“Oh, no,” said John quietly, “I’ll not call you absurd.”
Elizabeth cast a quick look at him and lapsed into silence. The second
problem was already absorbing her vastly more than the first. It was
infinitely greater, the issue infinitely more important. To the first
problem, when David had once grasped it fairly, there was so simple a
solution, did he but choose to take it. In any case, however, it was,
to her mind, on another plane. It didn’t belong to the same category
as this second problem. Of course you may say that the mental problem
existed solely in Elizabeth’s imagination. But then she did not think
it did; nor, you will realize, did John.
Suddenly she spoke again, and quite irrelevantly to her former remarks.
“What particular interest has--Sir David, I suppose I must call him, in
dress clothes?”
“Dress clothes?” queried John bewildered.
“Dress clothes,” reiterated Elizabeth. “I happened to say--quite idly,
you understand,--that you’d sooner go without your dinner than not
dress for it. He asked me if I meant that, and when I replied that I
did, I saw at once that, far from being the little trivial matter I had
believed it, it was, to him, of the most vital and grave importance.”
“Oh, my dear Elizabeth!” John’s eyebrows went up. He gazed at his
sister in comical dismay.
“Well?” demanded Elizabeth. “You would.”
“Oh, I daresay,” said John ruefully. “But--well, the man hasn’t a dress
suit. Apparently he doesn’t possess such a thing, and Father Maloney
swore that it was an entirely unnecessary article in the country.
Corin and I dined at Delancey Castle in morning dress to keep him in
countenance. And now you--” he broke off.
Contrition, profound and utter contrition, wrote itself on Elizabeth’s
face.
“I ought to have guessed there was something momentous in the
question,” she said remorsefully, “and yet how could I! How small I
must have made him feel!”
“And what a cheat he must think Father Maloney!” said John grimly.
“He’ll believe we were all laughing at him in our sleeves.”
“You needn’t rub it in,” groaned Elizabeth. “These kind of horrid
little _contretemps_ make one feel guiltier and more remorseful than
quite a good-sized venial sin. You needn’t tell me I’ve no business to
feel like that. Of course I haven’t. But kindly remember it’s only in
my feelings and not in my reason, I’m experiencing the sensation. What
can I do? Tell him I was only joking?”
“He’ll not believe you,” John assured her, “though certainly your
remark was, I trust, not intended to be taken in deadly earnest.
Perhaps,” continued John hopefully, “it may open his eyes a little more
to his unsuitability for the position of head of Delancey Castle.”
“It may,” said Elizabeth succinctly, “but all the same I wish I hadn’t
lent a hand to the operation. It’s nearly as bad as forcing open the
eyes of a two-days-old kitten. I’d far sooner have left the business to
time.”
“Time,” remarked John gloomily, “is an old cheat. You never know what
he will be up to. He has a way of contracting hours into briefest
seconds when you want their full value, and of expanding them into an
eternity when you’ve no use for them. Oh! he’s a wily beggar is Time.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“What is it?” she asked. “Hadn’t you better make a clean breast of it?”
“Of what?” demanded John evasively.
“The exact manner of Time’s trickery,” responded Elizabeth. “Or
anything else you please. Of course I know there’s something on your
mind.”
“You profess to be a reader of minds?”
“Not a bit of it,” smiled Elizabeth. “Only, having eyes in my head,
I use them. Also, having been endowed with a certain amount of
intelligence I use that also. And adding the two together----”
“You have guessed?” queried John.
“A dim guess,” said Elizabeth, “and one which will find no outlet in
speech without further proof.”
She sat down on a tree trunk.
“Let us rest,” said she.
John stretched himself on the grass at her feet.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps your guess is right.”
“There is someone?” she demanded, promptly forgetting her former
announcement.
John nodded.
“Ah!” Elizabeth’s eyes gleamed. “And of course it can only be the one
someone. I am glad.”
“So would I be,” returned John, “if it weren’t such a one-sided affair.”
“You mean that she doesn’t--” Elizabeth broke off, dismay in voice and
eyes.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said John gloomily. “How can I tell? She’s
friendly, she’s--she’s adorable, but--” He flung out his hand, as who
should say, “And there’s the whole of it.”
“You haven’t asked her?”
“Asked her!” John’s tone was almost scornful. “Where’s your intuition,
my dear sister? Wouldn’t you see me in permanent radiant joy, or black
despair, if I had? As it is, I am swinging from the one to the other,
and the swing of the pendulum stays down infinitely longer than it
stays up. There’s old Time at his games.” He pulled at the rushes by
the river bank.
“But,” quoth Elizabeth calmly, “why don’t you ask her?”
“Ask her! I have not known her a fortnight yet. I have only seen her
eight times.”
“It has been enough for you,” said Elizabeth, still calmly.
“For me, yes,” allowed John. “But for her! There’s the crux of the
matter. What have I got to offer her?” His tone was despairing.
Elizabeth looked at him. There was the gleam of a tender smile in her
eyes.
“Just the one thing,” she said softly, “that is of the smallest value.
Yourself.”
“But--” began John.
Elizabeth interrupted him.
“Listen,” she said, and there was a curious earnestness in her voice,
“if she doesn’t care for you yourself, nothing else you could offer
would have the smallest value in her eyes. At least, not if she’s the
woman I take her to be. And she must be that woman, or I don’t for a
moment believe you would love her. Oh, John, dear, don’t you understand
that women, the right kind of women, don’t want the external things a
man can give? They want him himself, and the things that are part of
him, the things without which he wouldn’t be himself at all. I mean
love, loyalty, friendship. I don’t believe the majority of people have
a notion how important the last is. That is why there are so few ideal
marriages.”
“Hum!” mused John.
“It’s true,” said Elizabeth.
“Then what is your advice?” demanded John.
“Ask her, of course.” Elizabeth’s tone was refreshingly certain.
“You can’t expect her to propose, can you? How do you know that Time
isn’t playing exactly the same tricks with her? Ask her,” reiterated
Elizabeth, “at the very first opportune moment.”
“That,” said John laughing ruefully, “is precisely what I have been
waiting for.”
CHAPTER XXXV
THE BURDEN OF CONVENTIONALITY
OF course you will have realized that Elizabeth’s surmise regarding
David was entirely correct.
When he made his material embarkation at Cape Town he hadn’t the
faintest conception of the mental voyage on which he was embarking,
or I am pretty sure he would never have set foot on the ship’s deck,
or, at all events would have done so with misgiving. And he had had
none. Gay as a schoolboy in quest of adventure, and determined as that
youngster, he had watched the African coast recede from his sight, had
seen Table Mountain dwindle to a mere speck, had turned his face in the
direction of his new enterprise.
First had come the tracing up of his family in America, a tedious
enough job, leading him eventually to Brussels.
His arrival in London had brought further business in its train,
interviewing solicitors; producing the proofs collected through months
of research; answering endless, and what appeared to him totally
irrelevant, questions. Next there had been waiting,--waiting in shabby
little rooms in Chelsea, when he beguiled the weary hours by walks on
the Embankment, in Battersea Park, or on Hampstead Heath, anywhere away
from the interminable hum of traffic, from the ceaseless stream of
people.
More than once he had asked himself what on earth he had done it for?
Why he had left the quiet, the sunshine, the colour, the wide spaces
of the veldt, for the noise, the fog, the greyness, the confinement
of London. More than once he had called himself a fool for his pains,
cursed the day idleness had taken him to rummage in the old chest in
the storeroom.
Then, the swing of the pendulum lifting him towards the anticipation
of fulfilled hope, his gloom would be dispelled. After all, he would
assure himself, it was his birthright for which he was enduring
hardship. Only a fool or a weakling would have refused to take up
the clue he had inadvertently discovered. Then, gloom once more
overwhelming him, he would demand of himself: Was it his birthright?
After all didn’t this same birthright lie in the wide untrammelled
spaces of the veldt, the unconventional surroundings, the life of
freedom? Wasn’t he attempting to exchange it for a mess of red pottage?
But, with the arrival of the long-looked-for document, legal phrases
and all, doubts again dispersed. He had laboured, he had toiled, he had
achieved. There was no question now about that birthright. It was his.
He held it as surely in his grasp as he held that piece of foolscap
paper.
Naturally the first thing to do was to go and have a look at it. He
had refrained from so doing till his rights thereto had been assured.
He bade a far from reluctant farewell to his shabby rooms, and a not
overclean landlady, took the train forthwith to Whortley, arrived at
Malford, and the Green Man.
And then gradually, imperceptibly, all his doubts had returned,
returned, too, in so subtle a manner, that he hardly recognized them
for doubts. He was merely bewildered, non-understanding of himself.
It seemed to him totally absurd that he should not be entirely
delighted at the thought of his inheritance, yet, if the truth be
known, it was beginning to hang like a somewhat weighty millstone round
his neck. And the exceeding simple solution of cutting the string that
held it there, never dawned upon him.
Perhaps, unconsciously, he felt that to do so would be to shirk
responsibility; but it is very certain that he was already devoutly
wishing that he had never sought responsibility. Elizabeth’s careless
little remark had added quite an appreciable weight to it. It is
astonishing how the merest fragment added to an already heavy load will
make it almost insupportable. It was, too, the absurdest fragment,
the most ridiculous fragment, but there it was, flung carelessly upon
him. Mentally, though vaguely, he saw a million other like fragments,
which he told himself shudderingly would be added. He saw at least
another ton load waiting for him. To those used to these burdens of
conventionality they would be a mere featherweight. But to him!
He began to enumerate the list, to drag forth to clearer vision what he
was vaguely perceiving. To this end he recalled his dinner at Delancey
Castle.
Dress clothes headed the list. True, they had not been present, but
then they should have been. His own ignorance would evidently be a
very formidable fragment. Well then, number one, dress clothes, stiff
collars and shirt fronts, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. Number
two, servants standing in the room while you eat. An abomination!
Number three, servants handing you food in silver dishes. An idiotic
custom! Why couldn’t they put the things on the table? Number four,
accept everything offered you as indifferently as possible. Avoid
thanking a servant. Well, with a bit of practice he might manage that.
Number five, water placed before you in glass dishes, which water you
were evidently not intended to drink,--he had grasped that much. A
purely silly convention. Number six, coffee in minute cups that slid
about on the saucers, and nowhere to put the elusive fragile things.
David went hot and cold at the remembrance. Number seven, no pipes in
the drawing-room. He groaned. This much his own experience had taught
him, and taught him within the space of a couple of hours. And Heaven
alone knew how many more fragments there might not be.
Of course you might argue, and justly, why think of these conventions
at all? Brush them aside. Treat them as non-existent. He was his own
master. That is logical and sound reasoning.
But no. To David’s mind it behooved him, in accepting the
responsibility, to accept with it all that appertained thereto. Herein
lay that touch of simplicity, that touch of childlikeness, which,
perhaps you may have perceived in him. Therefore it is small wonder
that civilization was bearing heavily upon him.
Truly a sorry state for a man.
CHAPTER XXXVI
CONSPIRATORS
ELIZABETH was talking to Mrs. Trimwell.
She was sitting in a low chair by the open back door. The baby lay in
her lap, peacefully sucking a small pink thumb, round eyes gazing at
Elizabeth’s face the while. The baby was as at home with Elizabeth, as
Elizabeth was at home with the baby.
Before them lay the garden,--cabbages, potatoes, and onions neatly
surrounded by flower borders. On a clothes-line, white pinafores and
little blue and pink cotton frocks swung gently in the breeze.
Mrs. Trimwell was at the ironing-table, but it is very certain that the
work of her hands in no way impeded the action of her tongue. Every now
and then she turned from the table to the stove, exchanging a cooling
iron for one which she would momentarily hold in what appeared to
be dangerous proximity to her cheek. Then down it would go on to the
crumpled linen, which smoothed to snowy whiteness beneath the magic of
her touch.
“I wouldn’t have said it to no one but you, ma’am,” remarked Mrs.
Trimwell, in conclusion, it would appear, to some foregoing speech,
“but I do say as how a helping hand at the moment would be a godsend to
the poor young gentleman.”
Elizabeth looked entire agreement.
“Yes,” quoth she. “But then, what right have _I_ to interfere.”
“Lor’ bless you, ma’am,” ejaculated Mrs. Trimwell, “if we was all to
wait for our rights to make a move, I reckon there’d be precious little
moving. When you think you’ve got a right there’s a dozen folk will
tell you you haven’t got none. And when you’re for letting a job be,
they’ll all be giving you a shift towards it. And spending the time
arguing about it is mostly like talking over who’s got the best right
to throw a rope to a drowning man. It’s the handiest has got to do it,
I’m thinking, and let rights take their chance.”
“But,” said Elizabeth, and her eyes were smiling, though her voice was
sufficiently grave, “supposing he doesn’t want any interference.”
“There’s a deal of folk as don’t know what’s good for them,” remarked
Mrs. Trimwell dryly, “and maybe he’s one of the number, though I’m not
for that way of thinking myself. To my mind he has got hisself into a
bit of a boggle, and don’t know the way out, though ’tis as plain as
the nose on my face.”
She folded a table-cloth with rapid dexterity.
“But,” argued Elizabeth, and she patted the baby gently, “if I broach
the subject when he doesn’t want it broached, what will he think of me?”
“Same as most men,” returned Mrs. Trimwell calmly, whisking a
handkerchief from a basket, “that women’s for ever busy over what ain’t
no concern of theirs. But Lor’ bless you, what does that matter! If
we’re so everlasting prudent as to wait for chances to be certainties,
we’ll miss giving a sight of help. There’s fifty chances in a month to
one certainty, and the chances want a friend’s hand to them a precious
sight more than the certainties.”
Elizabeth looked down the garden. Slowly she patted the tranquil baby;
slowly she pondered on this last statement. She was disposed to see
quite a fair amount of truth in it. But then----
“What exactly do you advise?” Her eyes held a gleam of amusement.
“Talk to him straight,” said Mrs. Trimwell briefly. “I’ll own I wasn’t
for having him miss his chances myself at first, but now--Lor’ bless
you! I see ’tis no chance but a trap he’s laid hold on, and he’ll be
caught sure enough before he’s done, if someone doesn’t speak.”
“Y-yes,” demurred Elizabeth, the little gleam lighting to laughter,
“but how? What, for instance, would you say under the circumstances?”
Mrs. Trimwell put her iron on the stove. She turned deliberately to
Elizabeth. Brows frowning she sought for inspiration.
“Well, I can’t rightly say as I’m a good hand at fashioning speeches.
Leastways not the kind as’ll take with gentle-folk. But I reckon it’s
something after this way I’d speak.”
One hand on hip, the other shaking an admonitory finger at an imaginary
young man, Mrs. Trimwell proceeded.
“Young sir, seeing as how you ain’t got no friends handy to tell you
the truth, which may be unpalatable, but which I’m thinking you needs
the taste of, I’m speaking in the friend’s place. It don’t require no
mighty sharp sight to see that you’re as uneasy as a cat on hot bricks
in contemplating the situation before you, the situation being one
which you ain’t been brought up to, and as different from the life
you’ve led as chalk is from cheese. It ain’t no use trying to bend a
tree to new shapes when it’s full-growed, leastways if you do, you run
a pretty fair risk of breaking it, and that’s what’s going to happen to
you. ’Tisn’t as though you’d been took in childhood, when the bending
to new ways can be done without over much harm. Lor’ bless you, can’t
you see what you’re trying to do with yourself? ’Twill be like putting
a sea fish in one of them little glass bowls you see in shops for you
to try and get used to the ways of folks like them at the Castle.
They’s born to it, and don’t feel all the finiky little things that
comes as easy to them as breathing. It’s bigger things you’re wanting,
and by that I’m not meaning the size of the rooms, for you’ll find them
big enough at the Castle. It’s your mind you’ll be shutting up, and
your body too, for all the size of the place. You’ve found a cage,
that’s what you’ve found, and partly because it’s a glittery thing, and
partly because it’s yours, you’re feeling bound to live in it. Turn
your back on it, I says; leave it to them as doesn’t know the caging.
’Tis God’s earth is your heritage, and not the castles men folk have
built on it.”
Mrs. Trimwell paused.
“That’s the manner of talk I’d be giving him,” she announced. “It’ll
put things clear to him, and he’s not got them over clear in his mind
yet. ’Tis what he’s seeing though, half-blind like, and it’s a friend
he needs to open his eyes before ’tis too late.”
Elizabeth gazed at her. There was admiration, frank and genuine
admiration, in her eyes. Of course Mrs. Trimwell had merely voiced her
own entire opinion, but quite probably it was on this very account that
the admiration was thus unstinted. There is the same curious pleasure
in finding another at one with you on a matter even slightly near your
heart, as there is in finding your own unexpressed and half-articulate
thoughts in the pages of some book. Also there was admiration for
the fact that Mrs. Trimwell had arrived at so rapid a conclusion.
Elizabeth totally forgot that her own conclusion had been even more
rapid.
“I shall never,” said Elizabeth, “be able to speak with half your
verve.”
Though totally ignorant of the last word, Mrs. Trimwell was aware that
same compliment was intended.
“You’ll put it a sight more polished than I can,” she remarked bluntly.
“He’d prefer the original speech,” smiled Elizabeth.
“But he’ll not get it,” Mrs. Trimwell’s voice was grim. “I knows my
place.”
Elizabeth raised amused eyebrows.
“And all the time you’ve been assuring me that it isn’t a question of
rights,” she protested.
“There’s rights and rights,” announced Mrs. Trimwell, “and ’tis you’ve
the bigger right than me. You’re gentle-folk, same as he, and he’ll
take it better from you. I’d speak fast enough, Lor’ bless you, if
there wasn’t you to do it.”
She turned again to her ironing.
Elizabeth again took to patting the small bundle of warmth in her lap.
Over the low hedge of the garden, she could see the churchyard, and the
white and grey headstones of the graves. From the old church came the
intermittent sound of hammering, and the occasional clinking of metal.
Pigeons wheeled against the blue sky, alighting now and again on the
church tower. Beyond the church stretched meadows, and the silver line
of a river twisting among them past rushes and pollard willows.
A heat haze covered the landscape; it shimmered, elusively golden,
above the red-flagged path of the garden. A cat dozed on a bit of
sun-baked earth; it appeared the embodiment of feline contentment.
Elizabeth felt something of the same contentment. There was still that
little gleam of amusement in her eyes.
Unquestionably she was a conspirator.
CHAPTER XXXVII
CORIN TAKES A WALK
IT is, however, one thing to be a conspirator in intention, and quite
another to put your conspiracy into action. The opportunity perversely
refused to present itself, or, at any rate, to Elizabeth’s eyes it
refused to present itself, and that, after all, came to the same thing.
A dozen times at least she went over her prepared formula in her mind,
intending at each meeting to put it into words.
And there were meetings enough. You might have imagined that David
sought them; that he knew, by some uncanny instinct, the exact moments
when Elizabeth would approach the Green Man. Of course, too, there
were the meetings at breakfast, but to Elizabeth’s mind these barely
counted. It was not a subject to be served up with coffee and eggs and
bacon; the hour, also, was unpropitious. She was never glib of speech
in the early morning. But then every hour seemed unpropitious.
The whole difficulty of the matter lay in the fact that she was on the
outlook for an opportunity, that her formula was prepared. I defy any
one--at all events any one of Elizabeth’s truthful nature--to introduce
a pre-arranged subject casually and naturally. If you have ever tried
to do so yourself, you will hear the instant ring of falsity in your
words.
“Oh, by the way----”
And if you don’t begin in this fashion, how on earth are you going to
begin, I ask?
Every meeting which passed without the subject being broached, lent
further difficulty to its broaching. And the moment the opportunity
had gone by, Elizabeth would upbraid herself for cowardice, would
speak confidently to her heart of next time. And when next time came,
the little dumb devil would sit maliciously on guard before her lips
allowing every word to pass them but those she desired to speak.
The matter became almost farcical; it would have been farcical, but
that the days were slipping by.
“It’s positively absurd,” Elizabeth told herself, half-laughing,
half-angry.
But absurd or not, the little dumb devil was keeping close watch.
And here it was that Fate or Providence stepped in in a purely
unexpected manner. Doubtless you, according to your views, will give
the credit to whichever pleases you.
The intervention can hardly be termed direct. But then, that is
frequently the case. It is the side issues, which in themselves appear
of little or no importance, which have a momentous influence on the
graver and deeper questions of life.
And here I am minded to quote the words reflected upon by the
sunny-hearted Pippa.
“Say not ‘a small event!’ Why ‘small’?
Costs it more pain than this, ye call
A ‘great event,’ should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!”
Yet, if you should reply boldly in refutation of these words, Here,
in my life, is one deed, one action at least, which stands paramount
above all others, I would answer, True; but what of the so-called
tiny influences, the so-called minute events which led to it? Can you
eliminate any one of them, and then say with certainty that, without
it, the result would have been the same? And if you can not, how can
you declare that the apparently tiny event was of less importance than
the one you call great?
However, let’s on to the matter in hand.
* * * * *
Corin found the joys of scraping plaster off walls beginning to pall.
Apparently he had come to an end of discovery.
It is one thing to delve for new treasures, it is another to scrape for
hours on end to find a mere repetition of design. However delightful
masonry and herb Robert may be when it dawns freshly on the sight,
its continued contemplation waxes somewhat stale. To his judging, and
no doubt he judged rightly, there were still yards and yards of it to
be uncovered. Monotony, therefore, crept upon his soul. With a view,
then, to relaxing the monotony, and taking into consideration that the
sunshine without the church appeared infinitely preferable to the gloom
within, he laid down his tools this particular afternoon a full hour
before his customary time, and came out into the open.
And here, for a moment, he paused.
Before him, eight miles distant, lay Whortley, to be reached by road or
field, according to inclination. He ruled out that notion promptly. To
the right lay the river, the silver ribbon bordered by pollard willows;
to the left lay wood and moorland; behind him and the church lay the
sea. It was distant a mile or thereabouts, and the sun was distinctly
hot. But what of that! Wouldn’t the music of its voice on the shore,
the colour of its sparkling waters, the coolness of the little breeze
that would sweep across its surface, be well worth the tramp?
“The sea for me!” cried Corin to his heart. “And that’s rhyme, and I’m
not sure that it isn’t poetry if you take into consideration the vision
it conjures up. In fact, taking that into consideration, I am sure that
it _is_ poetry.”
Whereupon he wheeled around.
First the route lay uphill towards Delancey Castle. It was a stiffish
climb. The sun, beating upon the white roadway, flung waves of heat up
from it. They shimmered before his spectacled, short-sighted eyes in
an irritating glaring dance. His round, cherubic face was glowing to a
deep crimson before he was half-way up the ascent. The vision he had
conjured up of the seashore might truly be poetical, but I question
the poetry in the appearance of the little man trudging towards that
vision. Yet this is unkind. Who are we to judge from appearances? Truly
may poetic aspirations be hidden beneath the most unlikely exteriors.
At the top of the hill, Corin paused, looking reflectively down the
long avenue. Exhaustion rather than reflection prompted the pause,
nevertheless he gave vent to a sage one.
“_Omne ignotum pro magnifico_,” he remarked, “by which token, I fancy,
our young American friend down yonder had a very different conception
of what he was going to find up here. He has found less magnificence
than irksomeness, I take it. Now, I wonder why karma----”
But I refuse to follow Corin in his meditative flights in this
direction. It is sufficient to note that we see him, from the remark
I have given you, in like mind with three at least of our other
characters herein mentioned.
His meditation on the mysteries of karma completed, and his exhaustion
being in part, at least, lessened, Corin pursued his way. His route
was level now, leading presently to a footpath across an expanse of
short grass. Here he came upon full view of the sea--blue, sparkling,
radiant, dotted with white- and red-winged sailing boats.
Coming at length to a rough, descending track, he made his way down it.
It brought him into a cove, a place of white sand, smooth and gleaming.
Truly here was all that his vision had expected. The grass-crowned
cliffs sloped down to the cove in rugged grey walls, samphire-covered.
Nor did the grey rocks stop abruptly on reaching the white sand, but
ran out into it, as if eager to gain to the sun-kissed water. Little
pools lay among them, mirrors reflecting the blue of the sky. In the
pools waved feathery fronds of sea-weed--pink, crimson, and brown; tiny
silver fish darted hither and thither; sea anemones stretched forth
dainty flower-like tentacles.
“This,” remarked Corin to his soul, “was worth the tramp.”
And he sat down on the warm white sand.
There wasn’t a soul in sight; nothing but those white- and red-winged
boats, making a lazy headway with the tide, to remind him of his fellow
mortals, and they but added to the beauty of the picture. The water
broke in baby waves on the shore, with the faintest musical ripple.
Sea-gulls dipped to the shining surface, or floated smoothly in the
blueness above. Now and again a cormorant flew, black and long-necked
across the water.
Some half-hour or so Corin sat there, basking and dreaming in the sun,
thinking, you may be pretty certain, of nothing, or at all events with
thoughts too diffused to be worthy of the name.
And then, all at once, the antics of two birds roused him to sudden
interest. Gulls, he would have called them, yet assuredly their
manners were perplexing. Winging rapidly for a moment or so, they
dropped suddenly like stones to the water. Up again, they repeated the
manœuvre, and again, and yet again.
“Now what,” remarked Corin aloud, addressing the apparent solitude, “do
those things call themselves?”
“They,” said a voice behind him, “are gannets.”
Corin turned.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CONCERNING AN ARGUMENT
SEATED on a rock, some half-dozen yards or so in his rear, was David
Delancey, calmly gazing out to sea.
“How long have you been there?” demanded an astonished Corin.
“Oh, twenty minutes or thereabouts,” returned David. He got up from the
rock and came to seat himself nearer Corin. “I thought you were dozing.”
“I was wide awake,” returned Corin with some dignity.
It is not certain whether the imputation of sleepiness had hurt his
susceptible feelings, or whether it was merely irritation at finding
himself observed when he thought himself alone, at all events there was
the faintest trace of asperity in his manner.
David regarded him perplexed. The slight asperity was obvious. But what
on earth had caused it?
And then, whatever the cause, Corin felt a trifle ashamed.
“But what,” he demanded, waving his hand seawards, “are the mad things
up to? What possible pleasure or profit can they find in tumbling head
first into the water? If it weren’t,” concluded Corin solemnly, “that
I conceive them to be brainless, I should imagine that they would be
suffering by now from violent headaches.”
“Oh,” responded David laughing, “they are just diving.”
“Just diving?” echoed Corin. “But why from such a height? Why don’t
they get lower to the water, first, if they want to dive?”
“Ask me another,” said David, smiling lazily. “I suppose it’s habit,
nature, whatever you like to call it.”
Corin shook his head, as who should say, given a free hand he’d instil
vastly better habits. Aloud he said:
“This is an extraordinarily pleasant spot.”
“It’s so jolly lonely,” said David musingly.
“Therein,” remarked Corin, “lies one of its greatest attractions.”
And he quoted softly, “Il y a toujours dans le monde quelque chose de
trop--l’homme.”
“What’s that?” demanded David bluntly.
Corin obligingly translated.
“Humph!” Obviously David demurred at this statement. “I don’t
altogether see what would be the good of the world being pleasant if
there weren’t someone to enjoy it.”
“There would be,” said Corin, still softly, “always oneself.”
David’s eyes twinkled.
“I guess a world run for one individual alone would prove a bit over
isolated,” he remarked dryly. “Also, the question of which individual
might crop up.”
Corin sighed. The man was really a little too literal. He shifted his
ground.
“If,” he said didactically, “men lived together in harmony, the soul
would not crave for isolation.”
Had John been present, it is probable that ribald laughter had greeted
this remark. He knew these moods. David did not.
“That’s true enough,” he responded gravely, “but who is to set the
keynote? where’s your conductor of the band?”
“If,” said Corin, addressing himself to the sparkling water, “each
man lived to the highest within him, there would be no need for any
conductor.”
David frowned. He granted the high-soundingness of the statement, you
may be sure, but somehow it did not strike him as altogether practical.
He fell back on his band simile.
“A fellow,” he remarked, “may fancy he’s got a jolly good tune to play,
and go at it for all he’s worth, but if it doesn’t fit in with the
rest, it stands to reason a jumble will follow. If you could get hold
of the right conductor, I fancy you’d do a precious deal better by
playing second fiddle, or even by striking a note on a triangle every
now and then, than by rattling off the best tune ever invented on your
own.”
“My dear man,” cried Corin eagerly, “your theory is sound enough in
a way; but if a man really lives to the highest in him, he’ll merely
strike notes on a triangle if that’s his job.”
David shook his head.
“Maybe,” he said deliberately, “but there’s always human nature
to reckon with, and there’s a good bit of difference between a man
thinking a thing the highest, and it being the highest. You set out to
do a thing thinking it’s the right thing to do, and when you get a good
clinch on it, I’m blamed if you don’t begin to wonder if it was your
job after all.”
Again Corin sighed, and with an almost aggressive patience.
“If you have honestly believed it to be the right thing to do,” he
remarked carefully, “it is the right thing to do. Shakespeare never
made a truer statement than when he said, ‘There’s nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ There’s the sum of all religion.”
“Then,” said David dryly, “religion is a mighty elusive thing to
tackle. There are some Indians--I forget which brand their religion
is--think it right to treat the poor little widows as scum on the
face of the earth, but I don’t fancy any amount of thinking can make
it right to treat any woman that way. There’s injustice somewhere if
that’s the way to deal with them.”
“It’s karma,” said Corin succinctly.
David pitched a pebble seawards.
“I’ve heard you use that word before,” he remarked, “but for the life
of me I don’t know what you’re driving at.”
Here was Corin’s chance. You may be sure he jumped at it. I’ve vowed
I’ll not follow his meditative flights in this direction, but I fear me
I’ll be bound to transcribe his speeches.
“Karma,” quoth he, “shows us clearly the justice of the whole of the
so-called injustice of the world.”
David grinned.
“It’s not what you might call a little subject,” he remarked.
“Yet,” retorted Corin, “it is simplicity itself. No evil suffered by
man, woman, or child is undeserved. It is suffered as punishment for
sin committed.”
David looked down towards the sea.
“A baby can’t sin,” he said quietly, “yet I’ve seen some poor little
beggars mishandled in a way that would make your blood boil.”
Corin shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll allow that there are brutes in the world,” he admitted, “but
there’s no undeserved suffering. What such a child suffered, it
suffered for sins committed in a past life.”
David turned an amazed face upon him.
“Past life!” he ejaculated.
“Of course,” said Corin calmly. “How do you interpret such suffering if
it isn’t inflicted for sins committed in a past life? Wouldn’t it be
horrible injustice otherwise? You don’t, I suppose, imagine the Powers
above to be unjust?”
“No,” said David simply. “I’ve never gone as far as that.”
“Then how on earth are you going to explain the apparent injustice of
the world?” cried Corin. “Can’t you see that it apparently reeks with
injustice?”
“Oh, Lord, yes! I see that fast enough,” said David grimly.
“Then how do you explain it?” demanded Corin.
“I’ve never tried to,” said David quietly.
“But, good heavens, man, what’s your intellect given you for if you
don’t use it?” almost shouted Corin. “Why, if I couldn’t see some plan
in what the Powers above had arranged, I’d have chucked up the sponge
long ago.”
David looked silently towards the far-off horizon. There was a queer
little smile on his lips.
“Well?” demanded Corin.
David turned.
“I guess,” he said slowly, “you’d think a soldier a mighty poor sort of
fellow who chucked up fighting because he didn’t understand the plans
of his general. I guess God isn’t going to give each of us a special
interview, and explain His plan of campaign, any more than a general is
going to call each private to his tent and explain his before he sends
him into battle. Of course if you figure out a plan in your own mind,
and fight thinking it’s the right one, it’s a precious deal better
than chucking up the sponge, but all the same, if you’re stuck on your
own plan, you may go beyond your job by a long chalk, and it’s best
to leave plans to your general. The only thing that matters is to get
your orders clear, and with the muddle around you that’s not over easy.
Anyhow, I don’t find it over easy.”
“But,” remarked Corin coolly, “if, as you maintain, no private is
supposed to understand his general’s plan, and he is not to follow his
own judgment, from whom is he to receive orders?”
“Officers,” returned David promptly.
Corin snorted. It was not exactly an ill-bred snort, you understand;
nevertheless it was one.
“And will you kindly tell me where those officers are to be found?” he
questioned loftily. “Look here, man, let’s drop simile for the moment.
If you maintain that we human beings are incapable of understanding the
plans of the Powers that be, how are we going to shape the course of
our actions? We’ve got to work on some scheme, if we don’t drift. Who’s
going to interpret that scheme to us, if we don’t interpret it for
ourselves?”
“That,” returned David, “is exactly what I’m trying to figure out.”
Corin looked at him commiseratingly.
“My dear man,” he said gently, “you’ll find that your figuring will
bring you to but one conclusion. You’ve got to interpret for yourself.
If you go off to ask other people, what will you find? Every man will
tell you that his way is the right way. A Calvinist will talk of
predestination, a Congregationalist will talk of conversion, a Catholic
will tell you to go and confess your sins to a priest, and a member
of the established Church of England--well, the Lord only knows what
he’ll tell you. It’ll be a toss-up on the special species you light on.”
“But,” said David firmly, “there must be truth somewhere.”
“Of course there is,” returned Corin magnificently. “There’s a modicum
of truth in every religion. Divest them of their forms and you’ll get
vastly nearer the whole truth. I tell you, there’s the Divine in every
man. The various churches have set up God as a kind of bogey wherewith
to frighten naughty children. God exists, but not separate from us, as
the churches teach, a judge to allot punishment or reward to a feeble
humanity; He exists in each one of us. Each one of us is an actual part
of the Divine, and thereby is his own arbitrator, ruler, and judge.
And, that being so, it is absurd to imagine that we are incapable of
understanding the Divine plan. Of course we understand it. To believe,
to know, that, is merely common-sense.”
David was silent.
“Isn’t it?” urged Corin.
David turned towards him.
“Well, if you really want my opinion,” he said slowly, “I’m blamed if I
don’t call it merely pride.”
Corin stared.
“Well, of all the--” he began.
He got no further. Where was the use of arguing with a man who
voluntarily padlocked his intellect within an iron box, so to speak. It
would be mere waste of breath, a futile expenditure of his energies.
Yet, so reflected Corin, he had thought so much better of him. Ah,
well, the advance guard of a movement cannot expect to have the ruck
too closely in his wake. It is only when the path through superstition
has been laid fair and open, that one can expect the common herd to
follow.
“You’re a very young soul,” he said indulgently.
David gazed imperturbably out to sea.
CHAPTER XXXIX
A DUMB DOG--
OF course there had been nothing out of the way about the meeting,
nothing particularly extraordinary about the conversation, for all that
Corin, in spite of terming the matter simple, was convinced of its
depth. Yet, in some inexplicable way, it was a momentous meeting to
David. And the kernel of the whole thing lay, neither in what Corin had
said, nor in what he had said, but somehow in his own unspoken thoughts
during the conversation.
I don’t believe he could have put the actual thoughts into words. He
could not even formulate them very distinctly in his own mind, but all
the same there had been a curious crystallizing process going on within
him. Little half-formed thoughts, tiny almost insignificant incidents
of the past ten days, had drawn together with a strange magnetic
attraction into a concrete whole, though he was not, even now, fully
aware what that concrete whole represented to him.
But there it was, a tangible, definite something awaiting explanation.
He could handle it now, so to speak, without knowing to what purpose it
was to be put; it was massed together, where formerly it had been mere
particles, each too minute and separate to be caught and fingered. Yet,
lying where it did, in the inmost recesses of his soul, the question
was whether he could ever bring it sufficiently to the surface to show
it to another, and he believed that, without some external aid, he
would never arrive at its full significance.
Those who possess the gift of words are truly to be envied. With a few
brief sentences they are able to elicit sympathy, criticism, judgment,
understanding, whatever their need may be. The dumb dog is helpless. At
the best, he has but a few stammering phrases to his tongue, perhaps
but an inarticulate word or two, often no word at all.
You can’t blame his fellow mortals if they fail to understand his need:
it is given to few to interpret the language of the mute.
CHAPTER XL
SPEAKS--
ELIZABETH came into the garden of the Green Man the morning following
the aforementioned conversation, with determination in her heart, and
her formula on her lips.
She saw David sitting on a wooden bench near the stream. He had left
the parlour some ten minutes previously.
He was looking at the running water. Even at the distance he was from
her, Elizabeth was aware of a certain tenseness, a certain keyedness in
his attitude. He seemed waiting, expectant.
She went across the grass towards him, her step making no sound on the
soft turf. She was within a couple of yards from him before he saw her.
He got up from the bench.
“Mrs. Darcy,” he said in a queer hesitating voice, “if I can, I want to
talk to you.”
Elizabeth noticed that he did not say, “If I may.”
CHAPTER XLI
AT SOME LENGTH
ELIZABETH sat down on the bench beside him. Her whole demeanour said as
plainly as speech:
“Take your own time. I have nothing on earth to do but listen to
you. Nothing will give me greater pleasure. This is what I have been
wanting.”
It is astonishing what confidence such an attitude will give.
Confidences--hesitating confidences, at all events--will take flight
before the least trace of urgency. If you think you’ve got to be in a
hurry to show them, they hide like shy children in the inmost recesses
of your soul, and no amount of coaxing will bring them forth to the
light of day. You may, by dint of violent effort, force them forth, so
to speak; but, coming unwillingly, they show no trace of their true
personality. You barely recognize them yourself; a stranger will not
recognize them at all, unless he be the one in a million endowed with
an almost uncanny gift of insight. And such a one, to my thinking, will
never hurry confidences.
“Do you mind my smoking?” asked David.
“Not a bit,” returned Elizabeth cheerily.
David pulled pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. Busy with them, he
spoke.
“I am a bad hand at talking,” said he. “Words are slippery kind of
things, and slide out of my mind as soon as I think I’ve got them fixed
there; so, if I talk in a muddle, perhaps you’ll forgive me. I can’t
even get what I want to say very clearly to myself.”
He paused to light his pipe. Then went on:
“I fancy I’ll have to talk a bit in kind of symbols. I see things
that way myself better than in actual descriptive words. You know, of
course, my reason for being here?”
“I do,” responded Elizabeth.
David was silent for a moment.
“Well,” he said presently, pulling at his pipe, “when I set out on this
job, I didn’t think much about the right or wrong of it. It was simply
there. It got up and stood before me suddenly, and I said to myself,
That’s what I’m going for. I went for it. There’s no need to go into
details. It wasn’t an easy undertaking, but I brought it through. What
I set out to get is mine. It’s there. I’ve only got to put out my hand
and take it.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, as he stopped.
“Well,” said David frowning, “now comes the difficult part to put
into words. What I’m going to say may sound rubbish; but, for the
life of me, I don’t think it is. I’m going to get to symbols now. Can
you figure to yourself a man finding a mighty powerful telescope;
and, looking through it, he sees a sack of gold lying in a place some
thousands of miles away, and he knows that the sack is his for the
seeking. Well, he doesn’t think much about the wisdom of the search,
or its difficulties, or what he’s going to do with the gold when he
gets it. He just knows it’s there, and it’s his if he can get to it. It
isn’t easy to find, and there are other people who think they’ve got
the right to it. But anyhow he gets there, and establishes his claim.
He’s got nothing to do now, but put in his hand and take everything
that is in the sack. It seems simple enough, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” said Elizabeth smiling. The naïveté of his words amused her.
“But,” went on David, “just as he’s waiting to take possession of
the whole thing, he suddenly gets a glimpse of something else, a bit
further on. Now, he doesn’t for the life of him know exactly what it
is, or what use he’s going to make of it, only there’s some kind of
voice telling him all the time that it’s worth going for. That’s pretty
nearly all he knows about it. Common-sense seems to say to him, ‘Empty
your sack first, and then go on and have a look.’ But way back in his
mind he has three thoughts,--one is that he hasn’t any darned use for
the gold in the sack, he doesn’t know what to make of it--you remember
I’m speaking in symbols; the second is that somehow it will be a bother
carrying it along with him on this other quest; and the third is a
queer sort of idea as to whether the gold is really his after all. Of
course everybody tells him it is. Even the folk, who originally had the
handling of it, are bound to say it must be, and yet he doesn’t feel
dead sure. Do you see what I’m driving at?”
“Perfectly,” said Elizabeth.
“Well,” he demanded, “what does it all mean?”
For a moment Elizabeth was silent.
“Can’t you tell me a little more?” she suggested. “Haven’t you the
smallest idea what this other quest is?”
David hesitated.
“Not an atom clearly,” he said slowly, “at least--” he stopped.
Again there was a silence. There was no sound but the rippling of the
water, and the humming of insects. Occasionally a dragon-fly darted
across the surface of the stream with a flash of silver wings. Beyond
the grassy slope of the fields opposite them stood the trees of the
wood, dark green, deep shadows lying beneath them.
And in the silence Elizabeth waited.
Presently David began to speak, shyly, difficultly.
“When I was a very little chap, I used to read Tennyson. Do you know
the bit,
“‘... I heard a sound
As of a silver horn from o’er the hills...’?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“‘... O never harp nor horn,
Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand.
Was like that music as it came; and then
Stream’d through my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,
Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed
With rosy colours leaping on the wall...’”
Her words fell softly into the silence.
“That’s it,” said David, his cheeks flushing. “I used to care for that
a lot,” he went on slowly. “I used to play I was one of those knights
going in search. But it’s years since I’ve thought of the poem, or had
any of those fancies. Perhaps working around knocks them out of one’s
head. Now, what I am going to say will sound pure nonsense. One day,
here, in a wood, the whole thing came back to me.”
“Yes?” said Elizabeth gently.
“I came up through the wood to the edge of the park,” said David, “and
I found myself by the Castle Chapel. A bell rang. I can’t in the least
explain what happened then, but I might have been a little chap again,
fancying myself near the end of my quest, only it was about a thousand
times more real. Well, it’s just that. What I played at as a little
fellow has got hold of me again.” He stopped.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth again, and very softly.
“I’ve tried to tell myself it’s nonsense,” went on David, “but it’s no
good. And it doesn’t seem like play now. I can’t explain. Of course
reason tells me I’m being a bit mad, but the thought has got hold of
me and won’t let me go. Mr. Elmore talked to me yesterday, down on the
beach. He talked what seemed to me a good deal of rubbish, though I’ll
grant it sounded all right in one way. I told him what I thought about
it. But what we both said is beside the matter. It’s just that all the
time this idea was gripping me tighter and tighter. It was as if the
quest was real. Everything--the sea, the rocks, the birds, the sun, the
wind--was telling me so. I wanted to speak to someone about it. Somehow
I felt I could tell you. It seems so real, and yet-- What do you make
of a fantastic idea like that?” There was almost a wistful note in his
voice.
Elizabeth’s eyes were shining. Perhaps there was the faintest hint of
tears in them.
“I don’t think it is fantastic,” she said quietly. “I--I know it isn’t.”
“You know it is real?” asked David wonderingly.
“I know it is real,” she said. “There are others who could tell you
probably a great deal better than I can; yet you’ve asked me, so I will
do my best. The story of King Arthur and his knights seeking the Holy
Grail, is a beautiful story, a wonderful story. It was a marvellous
quest. It was the quest far the holiest purely material thing that
ever existed. And yet there is Something more wonderful even than it,
Something always present upon the earth which may be found by all who
seek It. I think you have been given a glimpse of that Quest.”
David looked at her silently.
Elizabeth drew in her breath.
“Christ in the Blessed Sacrament,” she said.
A silence fell on the words. Elizabeth’s heart was beating quickly.
David was looking at the water.
“When the bell rang,” went on Elizabeth, speaking simply, almost as
she would have spoken to a child, “it meant that Christ had come to
the altar within the chapel. He was lying there as helpless as when
He was nailed to the Cross. It needs, perhaps, as great faith to see
Him there, under His white disguise, as it did to see God in the
Man nailed to the tree of shame. Yet the one stupendous marvel is as
true as the other. Up there, in the wood, you recognized the miracle,
without realizing what it was that you recognized.”
Once again fell silence. The wonder had been spoken, the miracle, which
day by day, at countless altars, is silently performed, before which
the very angels themselves stand watching in reverent awe.
It was a long time before David spoke again. At last he said:
“Yet what bearing has--has _that_ on the other question,--the question
of my accepting this inheritance? Why do I imagine that my acceptance
might, in a measure, hinder this quest? There are, by the way, quite
a dozen ordinary reasons which have cropped up to make me dislike
the thought of accepting. I’ll grant that they are, no doubt, stupid
reasons, which most people would consider barely worth consideration,
but there they are. By themselves I might face them fairly, weigh them,
and come to a decision; but added to them, all the time, has been this
other thought. Now the point is,” went on David, leaning forward, and
speaking with frowning deliberation, in the effort to make his meaning
clear, “which is really influencing me? Am I making this queer thought
the pretext for wanting to be rid of the whole business, when it’s
really that I shirk the thought of the restrictions this new mode of
life must bring? Or is the thought of these restrictions merely a side
issue, which should be ignored while I figure out the other question?
And, from every reasonable standpoint, it hasn’t the smallest bearing
on the case. It seems absurd to suppose that it has. Then there’s
the third idea that I mentioned, the idea that the whole thing is a
mistake, and that I haven’t any right to the place at all. But that can
really be ruled out; there’s so much proof to the contrary. It’s odd
to me to analyse like this; and yet, for the life of me, I can’t help
doing it.”
Elizabeth listened, turned the matter in her mind, and spoke.
“Let’s get hold of the business from a purely reasonable and sensible
standpoint first,” quoth she. “You’ve made a bid for this inheritance
which you believed to be yours. It is proved, from a legal point of
view, that it is yours. Now tell me what you think of it,--from the
merely sensible standpoint, remember.”
“There isn’t one,” laughed David. “At least, I don’t believe any one
would dream of calling it sensible. But we’ll call it the material
standpoint. The fact is that I’m not in the least dead sure that I want
the thing now. It would mean a mode of life entirely foreign to me. I
should feel cramped and caged.”
“Well?” smiled Elizabeth triumphantly.
His statement so entirely coincided with her own and Mrs. Trimwell’s
views. Also Mrs. Trimwell’s exceeding simple solution of the problem
was before her mind.
“Well,” echoed David, “naturally the simple solution of the difficulty
would be to chuck the whole thing.”
“Exactly,” nodded Elizabeth, delightedly, encouragingly.
“But,” continued David, “there’s another side to the matter. Supposing
I marry-- I don’t feel drawn to marriage I own,--but supposing I do,
supposing I have a son, won’t he possibly turn on me? Won’t he ask
what earthly right I had to renounce what wasn’t mine alone, but which
belonged to him as well? Won’t he ask why on earth I raked up the
whole business if I was going to funk it in the end? Won’t he say, ‘You
made a fight for a thing which was yours and mine. You got it. If it
had been yours alone you would have had every right to chuck it up. But
it wasn’t. You had no right to throw away what belonged to me.’”
Elizabeth was dumb. Truly had this aspect of affairs not dawned upon
her. For a minute, for two minutes, she was faced with a new problem.
Then suddenly, eagerly, she sprang at its solution.
“Legally,” she announced, “in strict justice, the inheritance may be
yours. In equity I don’t believe it is at all.”
“What do you mean?” asked David.
“The whole thing,” said Elizabeth firmly, “turned on that missing
document. Those old letters--my brother has told me about them--proved
that there had been such a document. From the legal point of view those
letters were worthless, but only from the legal point of view. Taking
them into consideration, you could renounce the property at once with a
clear conscience. Indeed,” pursued Elizabeth judicially, “if you want
to act from the merely conscientious point of view, disregarding the
strict legality of the matter, it would be, to my mind, the only thing
to do.”
David gazed at her.
“I never thought of those letters,” he said slowly.
“Never thought of them!” cried Elizabeth. “Why they were the crux of
the whole business, the only standpoint the present owners had to work
from.”
“Oh, I see that now you’ve said it,” replied David. “But, honest injun,
I’ve only just seen it clearly. Perhaps you will hardly believe me, but
it’s true. I left the details of the affair to the solicitors. I began
to get a bit sick of the job after I’d got hold of the clues. I gave
them all I’d collected, and told them to bring the matter through. I
knew of the letters, of course, but somehow never thought of the point
of view you’ve put forward. It seems incredible, but I didn’t.”
“I can quite believe that,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully.
Oh, she understood fast enough. She could understand the nature that
went hot-foot to the vital issue, disregarding side lights on it, not
from callousness, but merely because they sank into insignificance
before the one big thought.
“Well?” demanded David.
“Oh,” smiled Elizabeth, “are you asking me to be judge? Well, at all
events, you must be jury. If I sum up, you’ve got to weigh the case and
give the casting vote, remember.”
She stopped, collecting her thoughts.
“Well,” she said after a minute, “you’ll allow that now you are seeing
matters from a different standpoint. You could--at least you think you
could--say to this imaginary son of yours: ‘My dear boy, legally I had
the possession in my hands. Morally there was sufficient ground for
me to give it up if I chose.’ You see I am not driving home the moral
necessity of renouncement. I am leaving a choice.”
“I see,” smiled David.
“Well,” pursued Elizabeth, “given the freedom in that choice, we find
the matter a trifle less complicated. Let’s deal first with the purely
sensible side. Could you get used to the restrictions you fancy the
possession would entail? Is the possession worth it?”
“In a measure it is,” said David, answering the last question first.
“It isn’t the title, or the place for the grandeur of the thing. It’s
the linking up with the past. _That_ holds me,--the oldness of it. I
suppose, too, I _could_ get used to the restrictions in time.”
“Well,” said Elizabeth slowly, “now we come to the more subtle aspect
of affairs. You’ve an idea that the possession may hinder you in your
quest. You must grant the quest real. I _know_ it is. Now, I can’t see
the smallest reason why it should prevent you actually finding what you
seek. It couldn’t. But I fancy,” went on Elizabeth thoughtfully, “that
there may be two reasons for that idea of yours. The first, and most
obvious, seems that there is probably a bigger moral obligation to give
up the possession than appears on the surface of things, in fact that
the possession _isn’t_ yours, and that this queer idea is a sort of
inner voice telling you so. The other reason--well, that’s only an idea
of mine. You can leave it at the first reason.”
“Why don’t you tell me the second reason?” demanded David.
“Because it isn’t a reason,” said Elizabeth. “At least it isn’t
properly one. It’s an idea. And--well, anyhow I couldn’t exactly
explain it to you.”
“All right,” laughed David. “Well then, it comes to this,--legally
the thing is mine. Morally even, I’m not _bound_ to give it up--we’ve
allowed that, remember,--but weighing against it is a quite absurd
feeling that I’d better give it up. I’m putting aside mere material
inclinations. That sums up the case, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” said Elizabeth.
David knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“What would you do?” he asked.
“No,” protested Elizabeth, “that isn’t fair. You’re trying to shift the
rôles. Your summing up is merely a repetition of mine. I refuse to act
as jury, and pronounce the verdict.”
“The jury always talk the matter over,” said David aggrievedly.
“There’s never a jury of one man.”
Elizabeth sighed.
“Oh, well,” she said resignedly.
“Doesn’t it seem an absurd thing to do--to give it up?” queried David.
“Y-yes,” she hesitated.
“Wouldn’t any one say I was pretty mad to do it?” he demanded.
“The world would,” said Elizabeth loftily.
“Well, we live in it,” announced David calmly. “Doesn’t the reason for
giving it up appear far-fetched?”
“To those who don’t understand,” allowed Elizabeth. She was feeling
rather disappointed at his arguments.
“Then the common-sense point of view would be to hang on to it?” argued
David.
“I suppose so,” agreed Elizabeth depressed.
“I am glad you agree with me,” reflected David.
“But I don’t,” protested Elizabeth.
“Oh!” David raised amazed eyebrows. “You’ve agreed to everything I’ve
said.”
“I know,” said Elizabeth. “I can’t help it. It’s true. It is
common-sense. And yet----”
“Well?” queried David.
“Oh,” sighed Elizabeth, “where’s the use of arguing the matter if you
feel like that about it.”
“Only I don’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t _feel_ like that at all,” announced David calmly. “The points
of view I’ve put forward express the workings of my intellect, not my
feelings.”
“Yes?” queried Elizabeth.
“And on the whole I prefer my feelings.”
“You mean----?”
“That I’m going to give up the whole thing.”
Elizabeth looked at him.
He really was rather an amazing young man.
And then the door in the house behind them opened. Elizabeth turned.
“Why!” said she surprised. “It’s Father Maloney.”
He came quickly across the grass. It was obvious that something was
amiss.
“Forgive me for troubling you,” he began breathlessly. “I have come to
ask your help. Antony is lost.”
“Antony!” exclaimed David and Elizabeth in one breath.
Half a dozen words from Father Maloney sufficed as explanation; half a
dozen more from the two promised all possible aid.
Father Maloney returned to the Castle. David and Elizabeth set off on
the search.
CHAPTER XLII
A QUESTION OF IMPORTANCE
THAT which is frequently termed coincidence is, as everyone knows,
seldom an isolated event; it is the fact that two or more events,
neither of them, perhaps, of any precise and definite importance, occur
simultaneously, each event having some particular bearing on the other.
If the events should chance to be more than two, the coincidence is
termed extraordinary; and if they should chance to be several, and,
also, individually of some importance--well, then I pity the man who
narrates them to an unsympathetic audience. If he isn’t branded a
liar out and out, he will, at least, be thought to be possessed of an
imagination which is first cousin to one. If he isn’t despised, he will
be pitied,--pitied, too, with a patronizing commiseration which will
make his blood boil. Asseveration of the truth of his statement will
be worse than useless. It will merely call forth a smile, a kindly
condescending smile, which says plainer than spoken words:
“Oh, yes, we know you _believe_ it to be true. But these things _don’t_
happen.”
And if, in the face of that exasperating smile he should venture on
protest, he will at once receive the gently amazed reply:
“My dear fellow, I never said I doubted your word.”
A reply which will leave him helpless, though fuming.
Of course it is foolish to care. Truth is truth, and there’s the end
on’t. But he does care. He knows his statement has been marvellous,
incredulous; he knows, too, that he has probably been a fool to mention
it. But having done so, he wants belief. The man who will remark with
inner conviction, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” would be a godsend
to him at the moment. But the man who will say that of another’s
narrative is a _rara avis_. He reserves it as the Amen to his own.
Yet, in spite of knowing all this, it is my lot to narrate certain
extraordinary coincidences in the forthcoming pages. Therefore I can
only trust that my audience will be a trifle less incredulous than the
majority of audiences. Perhaps if it weren’t for one of the events,
which certainly smacks of the miraculous, I might have more hope.
However, to proceed.
You have been given one event in the preceding chapter.
The second concerns Antony.
It was the nursemaid who did the mischief, since, in one sense, it must
certainly be termed mischief. It all arose from an ill-advised remark.
Possibly exasperation caused it. We’ll give her the benefit of the
doubt. It is true that Biddy being, at the moment, a victim to severe
toothache, extra work had been laid on Louisa’s shoulders. Had Biddy
been present, you may be very sure that the remark had not been made.
Antony had taken the loss of his title calmly. This was hardly
surprising. After all, it made extraordinarily little difference. It
was seldom that he heard it, and then only from the lips of comparative
strangers. “The little master,” was infinitely more familiar to him,
and there was still no earthly reason for changing that mode of
address. The prospect of a new home was also taken philosophically;
there was, indeed, a certain amount of excitement about it.
But one Friday morning--to be accurate, it was the very morning of the
somewhat momentous conversation recently referred to--further enquiry
entered his mind.
“If I aren’t Sir Antony, what are I?” he demanded of a busy nursemaid.
“Nobody particular,” replied Louisa, who, hunting for some mislaid
article, had no mind to give to problems.
Antony demurred.
“I must be somebody,” he argued.
“Everybody is somebody,” retorted Louisa, “but it don’t mean they’re
anybody of importance.”
Antony pricked up his ears.
“What’s importance?” he demanded.
“Bless the child!” cried Louisa, “why, you was important when you was
Sir Antony. Now you’re of no more account than a beggar boy.”
Antony flushed. Resentment rose hot within his soul.
“I aren’t a beggar boy,” he announced with dignity.
“Precious like one,” muttered Louisa, rummaging in a drawer.
Antony planted himself squarely in front of her.
“Louisa, I aren’t a beggar boy. Say I aren’t a beggar boy.”
Now at that precise moment Louisa ran a pin into her finger. It must be
confessed that it was a painful prick.
“You are a beggar boy,” she retorted, her finger to her mouth. “Nothing
but a beggar boy.” The tone of the concluding words verged on the
malicious. Then she bounced out of the room to seek elsewhere for what
she had lost.
Antony walked over to the window.
His face was flushed, and his eyes were troubled; indeed there was a
suspicion of moisture about them. He felt a distinct uneasiness at the
statement. The only modicum of comfort lay in the fact that it had
certainly been prompted by ill-temper. Yet even that fact brought but
small assurance with it. Two or three experiences had shown him that
crossness occasionally urged truth to the fore, when kindness would
shield you from its unpleasantness.
Memory, stirring uneasily, awoke.
There was the time when Buffey died. Buffey was the Irish terrier. At
first he had been merely told that Buffey had gone away. Continual, and
perhaps over-persistent questioning, had elicited the fact of Buffey’s
demise. Biddy had been cross when she told him, and she was sorry
afterwards. But, still, it had been the truth. No subsequent regret
could alter that fact. Possibly this was the truth now.
From possibility, the thing became a certainty. He remembered glances
at him, whispers--unnoticed at the time--of “poor little Antony”;
conversations checked at his approach. They came back to him now, not
fully, but vaguely, holding significance. Probably Granny couldn’t
prevent this any more than she could prevent Buffey dying. And she had
told him she couldn’t help that.
He began to experience a strange terror.
There is no dread as terrible as the dread a child suffers at the
hint of some unknown calamity. He feels it must strike, but does not
know at which moment, nor from which quarter the blow will fall. In
most childish sufferings there is always a certain consolation in the
knowledge of protection by some older person. But when there is reason
to suppose that these natural protectors are powerless to aid, terror
indeed presses hard.
It pressed hard on Antony now.
The room seemed too small to hold it. Blindly he turned from the
window, ran stumbling from the nursery, down the stairs, and out into
the garden. He ran past the flower beds, and the sun-dial, and the
close-clipped yew hedges, till he found himself in a small paddock.
There he sat down under the hedge and began to review the situation.
A beggar boy!
He had no precise understanding of what the words meant, nevertheless
he fancied they were closely akin to the description of Hans Anderson’s
little match girl, who warmed her blue fingers at the matches till she
died. The story was at once fascinating and terrifying. Aunt Rosamund
had read it to him only once. After the one reading she had suggested
the Little Tin Soldier, Thumbelina, or the Ugly Duckling. Nevertheless
the story had remained with him.
Rags, cold, and burnt matches, and finally dying! His lips quivered,
and tears came into his eyes.
CHAPTER XLIII
MOLLY ARRANGES AFFAIRS
“HULLO!” said a voice.
Antony turned.
Molly’s dark head appeared above the bushes behind him.
“What are you crying for?” demanded Molly.
“I aren’t crying,” said Antony. And we may hope that the Recording
Angel turned a deaf ear.
“You--” began Molly. But, after all, she was tactful. “I ’spect it’s
just the sun in your eyes,” she remarked airily.
“It’s--it’s very sunny,” said Antony blinking.
Molly continued to look at him over the hedge. He looked at Molly.
And then Antony took a resolve. Perhaps instinct told him that a burden
shared is a burden half-lightened.
“I’m a beggar boy,” he announced succinctly.
“A beggar boy!” shrilled Molly. She was frankly amazed.
Antony nodded. He was experiencing a kind of gloomy joy at her
astonishment.
Molly gazed at him. Then:
“Indeed you’re not at all,” she snorted incredulously.
“I am,” said Antony, gloomily cheerful.
Molly cogitated, puzzled. Then her fertile imagination leaped to the
solution. Of course it was make-believe!
“What fun,” cried she, on a top note of pleasure. “But what are you
sitting there for if you are? Beggars go along the roads and beg.”
Antony looked alarmed.
“Oh, but perhaps I needn’t _begin_ just yet,” he protested.
“Why not!” cried Molly. You may be sure that she saw herself assisting
in the rôle. “It’s a lovely day. Let’s start off at once.”
Antony had qualms of conscience. It was forbidden to go beyond the
grounds.
“P’raps Granny wouldn’t like it,” he demurred. “P’raps I’d better ask
her first. I think I haven’t got to be one this d’rectly minute, you
know.”
Again Molly was frankly puzzled.
Then, once more, her brow cleared. She saw in the matter, though
vaguely, some threat of possible punishment for misdemeanours. But
here, assuredly, was actual opportunity to hand. It was too good to be
let slip.
“Indeed, never mind,” she urged. “If they’ll be making you into a
beggar any time, let’s just be beggars now, to show them we like it. We
do like it,” she concluded, loftily magnificent.
“But,” argued Antony, “it won’t be nice to be a beggar.”
“Nice!” echoed Molly ecstatic. “Nice! why ’twill be real beautiful, it
will. We’ll go in bare feet, and we’ll eat blackberries,--there’s a
few ripe already,--and we’ll get apples from the orchards. Sure, it’s
flint-hearted they’d be,” cried she on a note pathetic, “if they’d
begrudge the bite of an apple to two hungry children. And we’ll be
sleeping under a haystack, and we’ll paddle in the river, and--oh,
we’ll have fine times, we will that.”
The river won the day.
Have you, I wonder, the faintest conception of its allurement? Can
you see the water, clear as amber, rippling past mossy stones, feel
its delicious freshness against bare feet, hear the gurgling music
of its voice? Can you see the dragon-flies skimming its surface,
the ragged-robin massed on its banks, the rushes standing proud and
spearlike at its edge?
Anyhow Antony could.
He saw it all at a glance,--an irresistible, alluring prospect. He got
up from the ground. After all, he would not be alone.
“Come down to the gate,” said Molly, her eyes gleaming. And then she
slithered back into the field.
Going across the field two minutes later, she spoke.
“After we’ve paddled, we’ll walk to Stoneway, and beg along the road.”
“All right,” said Antony, but without much enthusiasm.
Anyhow there was the river first.
CHAPTER XLIV
AN ODD SENSATION
IT is, of course, impossible for a small boy to disappear from the face
of the earth without a good deal of uneasiness being felt regarding his
disappearance.
By midday the uneasiness had approached to something like alarm. The
gardens, the paddocks, the park, had been searched unavailingly;
inquiry had been made of every villager. No clue was forthcoming; no
possible reason for the disappearance.
A conscience-stricken Louisa kept a discreet silence on the
matter. There was, to her mind, no occasion to incriminate herself
unnecessarily. The cause could afford no solution of the effect; or, at
any rate she told herself it could not, which, after all, came to the
same thing as far as her silence was concerned.
A distraught Rosamund finally made swift way to the White Cottage,
there to seek aid from John.
Father Maloney went off to the Green Man to find David. He saw the
scouting propensities he conceived men of his type to possess, standing
them in good stead at the moment. Having enlisted his services, and
likewise those of Elizabeth, as already seen, he set off once again for
the Castle.
The day was as hot as the previous days had been. The earth lay panting
and breathless. There was something almost ominous about the brazen
blueness of the sky, the extraordinary stillness that hung over the
earth.
Father Maloney, breasting the hill, wondered vaguely whether the
world would ever again breathe in comfort. Personally he considered
asphyxiation a not remote possibility.
And then, all at once, he became aware of a subtle change in the
atmosphere. It wasn’t that the sky was less blue, or the air less
heavy, or the sun less brilliant. And, having said what it was not,
I find myself at a loss to say what it was. It lay more in a curious
foreboding, a certain indefinable prescience of change.
“I believe,” said Father Maloney, addressing himself to the sky, “that
we are going to have a storm.”
CHAPTER XLV
THE OAK FALLS
AN hour later he was certain of the fact.
Sitting in the hall with Lady Mary he saw the clouds covering the sky.
Black, ominous, they rolled swiftly up, blown, it would appear, before
a strong wind. Down below the air was breathless. There was a curious
feeling of suspense in the atmosphere.
“There’s going to be a heavy storm,” said Lady Mary, following the
direction of his eyes.
“Well, I’m thinking there’ll be a--” he began. And then he stopped. A
heavy rumble had broken the stillness.
“It’s coming,” said Lady Mary. And she got up, crossing to the window.
“Glory be to God!” muttered Father Maloney watching her.
Once more came the growl, like the low roar of some angry beast. There
was a pause. And then in one sudden flash the gloom of the hall was
turned to a blinding white light, a light appalling, terrible. It was
followed by a thunderous crash, a crash that shook the whole place,
echoing and reverberating in the distance.
Lady Mary turned a white face from the window.
Then came a sound of steps in the gallery overhead, the steps descended
the stairs. Biddy appeared, white and shaking.
“My Lady,” she stammered, “’tis the great oak is struck. I saw it fall
from the nursery window. And the child--” She broke off. Her face was
working.
“Tut, tut, tut,” said Father Maloney.
CHAPTER XLVI
TOLD IN THE STORM
“THE storm,” said John, “will be upon us in a moment.”
Rosamund had found him by the gate of the White Cottage. Half a dozen
words had put the happening before him. Two minutes had sufficed to
inform Mrs. Trimwell that his return might be delayed. Three minutes
saw him again beside Rosamund.
With no earthly clue to guide them, with north, south, east, west, to
choose from, it was, so it seemed, a pure toss-up which route they
should pursue.
After a moment’s consultation they set out for the willows and the
river, deciding to take their way down stream. It was no less unlikely
than any other road, though it certainly cannot be termed more likely.
Conversation, you may well believe, was non-existent; eyes and ears
alert, they pursued their way. Hope at first held some sway in their
hearts, but an hour’s fruitless walking brought it to a low ebb.
“I think we had better turn back,” said Rosamund. “He would never have
come further than this.”
It was then that John made the aforementioned remark.
“The storm will be upon us in a moment.”
As he spoke came the first low growl of thunder; a moment later a
louder, deeper growl. A gust of wind swept the river, bending the
rushes, breaking the still surface of the water into a thousand moving
fragments. Then two or three big raindrops fell.
John glanced round quickly. Some three hundred yards lower down
the river was a rough shed, a thing built of logs, and roofed with
corrugated iron. Possibly it was used as a shelter for the men who cut
the willows, which abounded in the sedgey meadows.
“Quick,” he cried indicating it. And they set off at a run.
They weren’t a moment too soon. They had barely reached it, when the
sky, seen through the opening of the shed, became a sea of white light,
through which tore a blinding zig-zag, a veritable river of fire; a
reverberating crash broke above them. And then the rain came down. It
fell like bullets on the iron roof of the shed, deafening, terrifying.
The wind tore with insensate fury at the wooden walls, rushed through
the opening in a swirl of madness, lashing the rain before it.
“Oh, Tony!” cried Rosamund. And she hid her face in her hands.
John saw the gesture, though the words were lost in the deafening noise
around them.
Wisdom, prudence, waiting, fled out into the storm, escaped on the
wings of the gale.
He caught her hands in his.
What he said was as lost as her own cry. But, after all, perhaps there
was no need to hear the words.
CHAPTER XLVII
AFTER THE RAIN
“IT really was a providential storm,” said John.
The clouds had broken; the rain, though still falling, was descending
in a silver shower, sparkling in sunlight. The wind had sunk to a cool
fresh breeze.
“Providential!” Rosamund raised amazed eyebrows.
“Providential,” echoed John firmly. “You are thinking of Antony, who is
by this time, I trust, safely returned to the bosom of his family, or
at all events in some shelter as friendly as ours. I am thinking of the
courage the storm brought in its wake.”
“Oh?” she queried.
“You mustn’t,” said John pathetically, “pretend that you don’t
understand me. Explanations would be painful. I should stand confessed
as a coward of the deepest dye.”
“Nonsense,” she smiled. And then she looked towards the opening of the
shed. “Come,” she laughed; “the rain has nearly stopped.”
They came out into the open.
“The country,” said John, “has had its face washed, and is thankful.”
Then he pointed to the northeast. “Look,” he said, “our benediction!”
A double-arched rainbow stretched across the sky, brilliant, luminous,
backgrounded by the retreating clouds. They paused, to look. Scientists
may find excellent explanations of this wonder; but to some, at least,
it will ever stand for what it has stood through age-old centuries--the
symbol of hope.
John might have remained gazing indefinitely, or, at all events,
until the brilliant arc had faded had not Rosamund brought him to a
remembrance of things present.
“Come,” she said. “Antony.”
John turned.
“The rogue!” he laughed. “But, all the same, I am enormously in his
debt.”
They made their way back along the river bank. Eyes were still alert,
ears open to any sound. But there was no longer the same anxiety,
the same foreboding. Doubtless the storm had been, in a measure,
responsible for both. Physical conditions have a way of intermingling
themselves so closely with mental conceptions, that you are really at a
loss to separate the two. Indeed, you don’t attempt to separate them;
you don’t perceive the physical conditions as existent, you perceive
only the mental conceptions. Hence arises depression, that slate-grey
state of the soul, in which the mind puts on black spectacles, and
through them views the world in general, and its friends in particular.
Now, with the fresh breeze fanning their faces, with the world around
them emerald green, silver, blue, and gold, with, above all, declared
love singing joyously in their hearts, the two viewed the prospect
through the most rose-coloured spectacles imaginable. Tragedy, even the
remotest hint of tragedy, seemed unthinkable, impossible.
Doubtless you, also, will be of their way of thinking.
CHAPTER XLVIII
IN SEARCH
STRICTLY speaking the discovery of the truant was due to Mrs. Trimwell.
David and Elizabeth were merely her agents in the matter.
It came about in this way.
They had set off hot-foot on the search. Passing the White Cottage,
they had seen Mrs. Trimwell at the garden gate. She greeted their
approach with eagerness. It was obvious that she had certain
information to impart, information which she considered of the first
importance. Therefore, with politely restrained impatience, they paused
to hear it.
“Them two,” she announced, with a faint trace of injury in her voice,
and meaning John and Rosamund, “was gone before I could as much as
get a word in edgeways, else I’d have given them a notion on the
matter. You mark my words there ain’t never no mischiefness nor
troublesomeness afoot but what Molly Biddulph ain’t at the bottom of
it. Find Molly and you’ll be finding the little master.”
Elizabeth smiled patiently.
“Exactly,” she remarked, “but, without wishing to be pessimistic, I
really cannot see that it will be in the smallest degree easier to find
Molly than to find Master Antony.”
Mrs. Trimwell looked at her pityingly.
“Bless you, ma’am, I wasn’t going to give you a notion what was that
jumbled there wasn’t no end to take hold of to unwind it by, so to
speak. It’s little use a notion of that sort would be. I see Molly
going by here about half-past seven or thereabouts, with a tin can,
a brown paper parcel, a willow stick with a bit of string to it, and
saying her prayers out of a morsel of a book.”
“Yes?” queried Elizabeth; while David looked his doubts. For the life
of them they could see no connection between Molly passing the cottage
at that hour, and any possible clue to the matter on hand.
Mrs. Trimwell smiled oracularly. She perceived their doubts well enough.
“The little book,” quoth she “meant that Molly was off to Mass. I
ain’t known Molly from babyhood for nothing. The parcel meant as she
was taking her dinner with her, being off on the spree like for the
day. The tin and the willow stick means fishing in the river. Not that
she ever catches anything as I knows on.”
“Oh!” said Elizabeth. She was beginning to see light. David laughed.
“Like as not she’ll have happened on the little master,” announced
Mrs. Trimwell, “and took him along with her. Leastways I for one don’t
believe he’s ever gone off on his own account. You try the river, and
up the river, mind. I see Miss Rosamund and Mr. Mortimer going off down
the river. ’Tis too wide and open there for Molly. She’ll go for the
shallower parts up to Hurst Lea Woods, I’ll be bound.”
Here at least was something to go on, some conceivable possibility.
Nay, to Elizabeth’s mind, and to David’s mind, it began to present
itself in the light of a probability. At all events for present
purposes it might be desirable to regard it as such.
“You go to Hurst Lea Woods,” nodded Mrs. Trimwell emphatically once
more.
“We will,” agreed David briefly.
A moment later they were on their way.
Taking their route first through the village, they presently turned
sharply to the right, past a smith’s forge, where a big cart horse
was being newly shod, and down a lane. Here, again to the right, they
came upon a stile set in a blackberry hedge. Surmounting it, they
found themselves in a meadow, while facing them, blue and hazy in the
distance lay Hurst Lea Woods. So far, at least, their course was clear.
A quarter of an hour’s walking brought them to the river, and the woods
on its opposite bank. To the left lay the moorland which it skirted;
to the right lay meadows through which it flowed; and, some mile or
so distant, the high road between Malford and Whortley. Here the river
passed beneath a stone bridge, again seeking the meadows, through which
it made a great bend southwards. Bending again to the left along its
meadow route, it finally, with another southward bend, emptied itself
into the sea, at a small village some five miles to the east of Malford.
Here, below the woods, it ran amber-coloured and shallow, brown
stones cropping up above its surface. Rushes and ferns bordered it;
ragged-robin grew in great pink patches in the meadows lying along its
southern bank. On its northern bank were the woods stretching upwards,
dark, shadowed, mysterious.
Elizabeth and David came to a simultaneous halt, and looked around.
“Apparently,” remarked Elizabeth, “they are not here.”
The remark seemed somewhat over-obvious.
David went across the short grass to the very margin of the river, and
looked right and left.
“It would seem,” said he smiling, “that you are right.”
All around lay the drowsy summer silence, broken only by the faint
humming of insects, and the ripple of water against the stones.
“What,” demanded Elizabeth, “is the next move?”
“Up stream,” said David promptly.
“Why so certain?” asked Elizabeth.
David looked at her with something of the smile one might give to an
inquiring child.
“Will you,” he said, “look down stream, and then look up stream; and I
fancy you will perceive the answer yourself.”
Elizabeth looked down stream.
Here, as already mentioned, the river ran smoothly, bordered by the
flat meadow and the wood. Some hundred yards distant the wood gave
place to grass land, flat and open. Up stream the ground became uneven,
rough, covered with blackberry bushes and small trees. The river itself
was interspersed with little rocks, while sight of it extended not more
than fifty yards ahead.
“You mean that up stream there are possible surprises,” suggested
Elizabeth.
“Precisely,” said David. “No one, man, woman, or child, turns to the
obvious when there is the unknown to explore, possible adventure ahead.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“I bow to your judgment,” said she.
They turned up stream.
It was rough enough walking here. The river lay in a sort of gorge, the
wood on one side, the moorland on the other. A mere track ran along its
right bank, a narrow grass path. There was no sign of footprints. The
grass was short and springy, taking no definite impress on its surface.
David was obviously the leader of the expedition. He had taken complete
control of it, not masterfully, you understand, but merely because it
belonged to him by right to do so. He was in his natural element.
Elizabeth was conscious of totally new characteristics in him. All
trace of the child in false surroundings had vanished. The man element
had appeared in him, and had appeared strongly. There was a new
strength in him, a new decision. There was a curious air of confidence
about him, also a certain indefinable joyousness. It seemed an almost
incredible change, considering the brief space of time in which it had
been accomplished, nevertheless it was actual, real.
For the most part they pursued their way in silence. The sky, as you
may well guess, was gradually growing darker. Clouds had already
blotted out the sun.
Suddenly David gave a little exclamation. He bent to the ground, and
picked up something from beneath a blackberry bush. He turned it over,
then held it triumphantly towards Elizabeth. After all, it was only a
piece of brown paper.
“But,” demurred Elizabeth, “is it _the_ piece?”
David pointed to writing upon it.
“Mr. Murphy Biddulph, Malford,” read Elizabeth aloud. And then she
laughed.
David lifted up his voice and coo-ed, a long, far-reaching note.
Striking some distant rock, it was flung back to him in echo, but no
other cry came in response.
“They’ve gone a pretty tramp,” said David.
He looked around. A short distance ahead the wood levelled and thinned.
A gateway into it led to a wider path. A tree-trunk fallen across the
river, which here was nothing but a fair-sized stream, made approach to
the gate easy. David made for the tree-trunk. Giving Elizabeth a hand
across it, they went towards the gate.
David looked at the ground, then pointed silently. A dark patch on the
earth, just under the gate, showed where water had been recently spilt.
“Molly has upset some of the contents of her can in climbing the gate,”
laughed David.
There was triumph in his eyes. There is a good deal of pleasure
to be found in successful scouting, let alone the importance, or
non-importance of its issue.
They surmounted the gate and made off down the path. After some five
minutes or so walking, it led to a second gate, this one giving on to
a road. David opened it and they went through. Here, in the dust, were
small footprints, easily discernible as going leftwards.
“Who would have dreamed of their coming this distance!” exclaimed
Elizabeth.
“It seems to me,” quoth David succinctly, “that from all accounts it
is wiser to dream vividly and extensively where Miss Molly Biddulph is
concerned.”
And they set off down the road.
They hadn’t gone more than a hundred paces, when the first low mutter
of thunder broke upon their ears. There was a second rumble, louder,
more insistent. Then came the wind. It swept the dust along the road in
a cloud, thick and blinding, and a few drops of rain fell.
The next instant the sky was transformed into a sea of fire, and a
crash like the crash of cannon-balls broke above them. Then the rain
came down.
David caught hold of Elizabeth dragging her beneath a hedge.
“Is it safe?” gasped Elizabeth.
“It would strike the trees first,” said David, “and there are none on
this side of the road.”
Elizabeth crouched down. The rain slashed upon the roadway, churning
the dust into a sea of mud. To right and left all vision was blotted
out in the downpour, even the hedge opposite was almost obliterated.
“Are you getting very wet?” asked David solicitously.
“Hardly at all,” said Elizabeth cheerfully. “This hedge seems specially
constructed to give shelter.”
“Then,” said David, “I am off in search.”
As he spoke there came the sound of pattering feet on the road, and the
next instant, abreast them, came two flying, drenched, little figures,
the girl with white scared face, the boy frankly sobbing aloud.
David darted towards them.
“Antony, Molly,” he cried.
At the sound of his voice the two came to a halt. Joy, rapturous joy,
illumined their woe-begone faces.
“Oh, it’s you, it’s you,” cried Antony.
The next moment they were beneath the friendly shelter of the hedge;
while Molly, with a marvellously rapid transition from depression to
confidence, was taking a lively interest in the storm.
“Isn’t it splendid!” she cried exultantly. “Isn’t the rain just hitting
the earth!”
“It’s hit you pretty considerably, I fancy,” said David coolly.
“Oh, I’ll be drying,” responded Molly calmly. “Is Master Antony wet?”
“You can hardly imagine him to be dry,” remarked David. “If you stand
under a shower-bath you generally get a trifle damp. And this--I guess
fifty shower-baths would be nearer the reckoning than one.”
“A million _I_ think,” said Molly, snuggling a wet hand through
Elizabeth’s arm. “_Isn’t_ it lovely!”
“To speak candidly,” said Elizabeth, “I could admire it better in a
less cramped position, and if the rain were a little, just a trifle,
less--wet.”
“Isn’t rain,” demanded Antony interested, “always wet?”
He was beginning to take a cheerier outlook on life.
“I believe it is,” remarked David reflectively, “but there are times
when it appears infinitely wetter than others. This is one of them. Are
you _very_ wet?” he asked Elizabeth.
“On the contrary,” returned Elizabeth cheerfully, “owing to the
position I mentioned, I am quite dry. If I were to relax it, however, I
should doubtless become excessively wet.”
“We are all like beggars now,” said Molly gleefully.
David pricked up his ears.
“Beggars?” he queried politely.
Molly looked a trifle embarrassed. In a manner of speaking she had
given herself away.
“Well, we are,” she replied airily, after a moment. “Sitting under
hedges and things, you know.”
“It _isn’t_ very nice,” said Antony.
“Nobody sensible could ever imagine it was,” remarked Elizabeth. She
fancied she saw a glimmer of light on the escapade.
“Must it always be horrid?” asked Antony. There was an ominous quaver
in his voice.
“Always,” said Elizabeth firmly.
She had, you will realize, no intention of aiding a repetition of
today’s little drama.
David was watching Antony’s face.
“What’s the trouble?” he demanded.
Antony choked.
“Tell me,” urged David.
Antony was silent.
“Tell me,” coaxed David again.
“I--I _are_ a beggar,” owned Antony.
David laughed, a laugh at once incredulous and consoling.
“Now who,” he demanded, “has been telling you that nonsense?”
“Isn’t it true?” asked Antony.
“Not a bit of it. Who on earth made you think it was?”
“L-Louisa,” stammered Antony.
David said something under his breath.
“Tell us all about it,” he said consolingly.
Then the whole story came forth, aided in the telling by a dexterous
question or two.
“Idiot,” muttered David, arriving at the kernel of the matter.
“I didn’t mean to be naughty,” said Antony quaveringly.
“You weren’t naughty.” David’s voice was assuring. “It was Louisa who
didn’t understand. You aren’t a beggar boy; you never were a beggar
boy. You are,” David’s voice was firm, “exactly the same as you always
have been.”
Elizabeth’s heart was singing a curiously joyful song, considering
what extraordinarily little difference the announcement made to her
individually.
“Exactly,” said David again, “as you always have been.”
“Deo gratias,” whispered Elizabeth below her breath.
“And here,” said David, “comes the sun, to laugh at you for your fears,
and dry us all.”
The clouds had broken. Through the rifts between them the sun poured
forth, sparkling on diamond-hung hedges and trees, turning the pools
in the roadway to little mirrors of fire. The rain became the thinnest
veil of silver, presently mere scattered drops.
Elizabeth unbent herself, and stood upright.
“I wonder,” she said smiling, “if my back will ever feel quite straight
again.”
And then she pointed to the sky.
“Look,” said she, “the rainbow!”
CHAPTER XLIX
THE FALLEN OAK
FATHER MALONEY came down the steps of Delancey Castle. News of the
wanderers might by this time have reached the village. With a view to
making inquiries, he had taken his departure.
The storm had passed; only leaves and twigs scattered on the lawn,
battered rose bushes, marigolds beaten to the earth, showed what its
fury had been.
He turned into the park. As he came abreast the great oak, he paused.
Split from apex to base it lay upon the ground, its branches strewn for
yards around,--the oldest tree in the park, the king of centuries, a
devastated wreck.
A lump rose in Father Maloney’s throat. He was not given to
superstitions, but I fancy he saw an omen in the fallen monarch.
Considering the happenings of the last few weeks, it was hardly
surprising.
He crossed the grass, picking his way among the fallen branches, till
he came to the very base of the tree itself,--a jagged, deplorable
stump, a pitiable remnant.
“Sic transit gloria mundi,” he said sorrowfully. And then he stopped.
“Glory be to God!” he ejaculated, and stood staring at the débris
before him.
It was some seconds before his brain began to take in the possible
significance of what he saw, and even when the significance dawned on
him, it is certain that he did not grasp its probable magnitude.
“Glory be to God!” he ejaculated again, and bent towards the ground.
Two minutes later he was trotting, with vastly more haste than dignity,
once more in the direction of the Castle, a small iron box tightly
tucked under his arm.
CHAPTER L
A MIRACLE
“’TIS a miracle! ’Tis nothing but a miracle!” cried Father Maloney, for
perhaps the fiftieth time.
He stared at the yellow parchment upon the table in front of him. It
was real, it was tangible. He could touch it, finger it, even read the
crabbed writing upon it; and yet, for the life of him, he could hardly
bring his brain to believe that he was not dreaming.
“To think,” he ejaculated, “that it has lain there under our very
noses, so to speak, and us wondering and worrying all these weeks.
Well, well!”
Lady Mary looked silently at the yellow parchment. Words, so far, had
failed her. The bigness of the thing, gripping her, had held her silent.
“’Tis plain enough what the old Sir Antony was up to, when Henry came
upon him, the scoundrel,” said Father Maloney. “And the secret kept all
these years! ’Tis a miracle has brought it to light now.”
Lady Mary raised her head.
“And perhaps too late,” she said quietly, voicing the fear at her
heart; a fear which, with the last hour, had been waxing stronger.
“Too late!” cried Father Maloney cheerily, “not a bit of it. If it’s
two miracles is needed, God will be working them; though I’m thinking
there’ll be no miracle in bringing the boy home. He’s hiding safe
enough somewhere, and will be found before sun-down, I’ll be bound.”
“Perhaps,” said Lady Mary very low, and unheeding his words, “I didn’t
give up everything whole-heartedly. Perhaps I still held to it in my
mind. If I did, it was for him, and not for myself. And now he is gone.”
“Rubbish,” said Father Maloney.
“Is it?” asked Lady Mary.
Father Maloney put his hands upon the table and looked across at her.
“Weren’t you doing your best to accept God’s will in the matter?” he
demanded.
Lady Mary smiled faintly.
“I believe so,” she said.
“Then if you did your best, you may be sure God took it as such, and
wasn’t holding you to account for any little weakness which was but
part and parcel of human nature. I’m thinking He knows the human side
of us well enough, and doesn’t look at it too closely when we’re trying
to do His will. He’ll not have been taking a trifle of fretting into
consideration, when your heart was set the right way. You needn’t be
thinking He was waiting to pounce down and punish you because you
didn’t throw the Castle over to that young fella with devil a bit may
care in your heart. Sure, it’s giving Him the things the human side
of us is fretting after that counts. Don’t you go fearing God likes
punishing people. Where’s your faith at all?”
“But supposing--” began Lady Mary.
“I’m not supposing at all,” broke in Father Maloney. “The child’s safe
enough. And if he isn’t--though surely ’tis in my heart he is--’tis no
punishment to you. Glory be to God! Who do you think loves him best,
our Blessed Lord, or you? I tell you he’s as safe in His keeping,
storm or no storm, as if he was in his bed this very minute with you
on one side of him, and Biddy on the other. ’Tis all for talking about
the Love of Christ we are, and when it comes to the test, it’s precious
little believing we show. And I’m as bad as any of ye.”
“Then you are anxious,” said Lady Mary quietly.
Father Maloney blew his nose.
“Anxious! of course I’m anxious,” he said half-testily. “Who wouldn’t
be anxious with a bit of a boy out in the weather we’ve had. ’Tis
against all sense I shouldn’t be anxious. But he’ll come home right
enough,” he ended obstinately.
And then suddenly the cloak of quiet dignity, the gentle control, fell
from Lady Mary.
“Oh, Father,” she cried, “go on saying that. Say it again and again.
I don’t mind how often you say it. Somehow,” her lips were trembling
piteously, “it makes it seem true.”
For the moment she was nothing but a frightened old woman, fear
gripping her close.
“There, there,” said Father Maloney soothingly speaking as he would
speak to a child, “aren’t I understanding every bit of what you’re
feeling. But remember you’ve got Michael, whatever happens. And
whatever happens is the very best thing possible; though, for that
matter, as I’ve told ye--” He broke off, listening.
And then, through the open window, came the sound of voices, Rosamund’s
plainly distinguishable, and a child laughing.
“Glory be to God!” cried Father Maloney, the laugh finding triumphant
echo in his voice. “What did I tell you, at all!”
CHAPTER LI
AND SO THE STORY ENDS
“AND that,” said David, concluding a little speech, “is all.”
A curious silence fell upon the room. Rosamund and John looked at each
other; Lady Mary had her hands folded over an old piece of parchment;
Elizabeth was watching her; Father Maloney looked at David.
“You mean,” said Father Maloney, breaking the silence, “that you wish
to give up your claim to the whole thing?”
“That’s so,” said David pleasantly.
“And what,” demanded Father Maloney, “has brought you to this
conclusion?”
“Simply,” said David smiling, “that I have seen that fishes live best
in water, as birds live best on land. This,” he waved his hand around
the hall, “isn’t my element.”
Lady Mary rose quietly from her chair, and thrust something into a
drawer of her desk. Then she turned to David.
“Is that your sole reason?” she asked.
David coloured.
“For practical purposes,” he replied.
Lady Mary looked straight at him.
“In my grandson’s name,” she said, a little smile trembling on her
lips, “I accept your generous offer in the spirit in which you make it.”
Father Maloney stared.
“Glory be to God!” he ejaculated inwardly, “she doesn’t mean to tell
him. She’s a wonderful woman, is Lady Mary. A wonderful woman!”
And then suddenly a bell rang out, pulled by the stalwart arm of the
under gardener.
Father Maloney started.
“Bless my soul,” he cried, “’tis time for Benediction.”
And he bolted towards the dining-hall, which, as I told you long ago
led to the chapel.
Lady Mary looked at the little group.
“We’re all coming,” said Elizabeth with fine assurance.
And then Lady Mary led the way.
Said John in a low voice to Rosamund:
“I have at least three thanksgivings to make.”
“I think,” she replied, looking at him, “that so have I.”
Said David in a low voice to Elizabeth:
“What are you thinking about?”
“I am thinking,” quoth she smiling, “that there is a folly which is
very very wise.”
And then they all went in to Benediction.
_A Selection from the Catalogue of_
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
On page 7, grimmess has been changed to grimness.
On page 9, known has been changed to know.
On page 16, solicitiously has been changed to solicitously.
On page 33, Brampton has been changed to Brompton.
On page 39, MURRL has been changed to MURAL.
On page 44, scroll work has been changed to scroll-work.
On page 65, circumlocutous has been changed to circumlocutious.
On page 110, mischeevousness has been changed to mischievousness.
On page 146, carpetted has been changed to carpeted.
On page 147, pocketted has been changed to pocketed.
On page 176, sumbeam has been changed to sunbeam.
On page 270, you has been changed to your.
On page 276, comorant has been changed to cormorant.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The wiser folly" ***
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