Chapter Nine.The Arrival.John Seward Mervyn was seated within the same armchair in which we first saw him gazing at the mysterious and shadowy door in the corner—but now it was the middle of a brilliant winter forenoon—and he was occupied in the reperusal of two letters, not bearing even date, for one was that of Violet Clinock informing him of his niece’s existence and illness, while the other was from his niece herself.Comparing this with the former epistle he smiled to himself. Violet’s glowing description of her friend, and her multifold attractions, both physical and mental, amused him. He was gratified, too, that his niece should prove neither unattractive nor a fool. Melian’s missive, on the other hand, struck him as rather strained and stiff as to style, but then, she had been ill, and likewise was he not a perfect stranger to her?How would the experiment work, he was speculating? If satisfactorily, why should she not make her home with him altogether? He was not so young as he used to be, but there was plenty of “go” in him yet, and he was not deficient in ideas; perhaps she might not find him quite such an old bore as she probably expected to find. He gathered from her friend’s letter that she had gone through no particularly glowing times, nor were there any likely to be in store for her; and life here, quietly, and at any rate for a while, might be the very thing to make the girl happy, dull under ordinary circumstances as such life might be.There was one point, however, as to which he was not without secret misgiving. By this time no doubt was left in his own mind as to there being something about this house that was not about other houses; and which, for want of a better word, he described to himself as an “influence.” He had experienced it himself, when sitting alone of an evening, and even in broad daylight. Sounds, too, shadowy, vague, and explicable by no natural or material cause—again as to such there could be no two opinions. And this girl who was coming had been ill, and naturally her nerves would not be at their best. It would be ghastly if she were to undergo the shock of some sudden fright.With this in view he himself occupied the room he had destined for her, until she should arrive. But absolutely nothing untoward occurred to disturb him, either waking or sleeping. Further, he got hold of old Joe and his ancient spouse, and charged them by every consideration likely to carry weight, that they were on no account—by word, nod or wink—to let fall the slightest hint to the visitor as to there being any stories afloat about Heath Hover at all.“I’ll not nabble, b’lieve me, Mus’ Mervyn,” old Judy had said, clicking her Punch-like profile together, “I don’t b’lieve in nabbling on things like they. Folkses finds ’em out soon enough—”“If there’s anything to be found,” supplied the master. “Here there isn’t, you understand, Judy?” And the old woman declared that she did, and Joe emphasised the statement by a brace of emphatic nods.The fact was that strict fealty to their employer came entirely within this old couple’s interests, for he remunerated them at rather more than double the rate of earnings they could have obtained from any other source or sources. John Seward Mervyn was shrewd, though poor. When he had to lay out money he did so to the best of advantage, and in the proper quarter.The mysterious end of the mysterious stranger had been very much of a nine days’ wonder. It had puzzled the police, and, more important still, perhaps, it had puzzled the doctors. There had been an inquest of course, and a great deal of disagreement among doctors. Mervyn’s evidence was perfectly straight and to the point; given so straightforwardly too, that none who heard entertained the slightest doubt as to its thorough exhaustiveness; and his narrative of the rescue of the stranger in the freezing midnight, only for the latter to meet his death so mysteriously but a few hours later, created something of a sensation. But the official mind listened to it all with some reserve and the official mind, as represented by Inspector Nashby and the expert from Scotland Yard, resolved to keep a continuous but furtive eye—and that for sometime to come—upon the goings out and comings in of Mr John Seward Mervyn.Old Joe Sayers, too, gave his evidence with straightforwardness, but that he was constantly harking back, with the suspicious persistency of the countryman, to the fact that he had never seen the deceased when alive. Likewise when he began to “feel his feet,” he volunteered again the opinion which we heard him enunciate to his master, that “folks as gets on the ice, middle of Plane Pond, middle of the night, etc, bean’t up to no good;” a remark whosenaïvetédrew forth a great laugh, and likewise an admonition from the coroner that the witness should not volunteer opinions containing an imputation of motive until he was asked for it—which admonition for the most part was sheer Sanscrit to old Joe.Not the least strange side of the investigation lay in the fact that no amount of enquiry was able to elicit any information whatever as to the previous movements of the stranger. The heavy snowfall which had supervened upon the arrival of the doctor and the police inspector at Heath Hover had lasted a couple of days, and had utterly obliterated all and every trace. Further, none of the dwellers in the neighbourhood—whether in village or scattered cottages—could be found to speak as to having noticed any stranger at all, let alone one bearing the slightest resemblance to the circulated descriptions. The man might have appeared out of nowhere. So the verdict was an open one, and the man was buried at the expense of Mervyn and a few more who came forward with subscriptions toward that end—as we have said.Mervyn sat scanning the two letters, as though to make the utmost he could out of every word and line of each. In his heart of hearts he felt rather impatient. His was not such an eventful life but that the impending arrival of a girl relative—and that an attractive one, he had reason to believe—should not inspire some modicum of pleasurable anticipation. What would she be like, all round, he found himself, for the fiftieth time, wondering?There was a slight movement beside him. The little black kitten had leaped on to the table, and sat there purring softly, its green gold eyes staring roundly out of a little ball of fluffiness. Then, with one light, scarcely perceptible, movement it transferred itself to his shoulder and sat there, purring louder and more contentedly than ever.“Ah, poogie?” he said, pressing the little fluffy ball against his ear. “You’ll have some one else to love now. I wonder if she will though. Yes, of course she must.”The light waggonette, which, with the cart, constituted the sole wheel motive power at Heath Hover, swung easily over the hardened snow; but once under way, Mervyn felt himself beset with misgivings. What on earth had he been thinking about—or rather not been thinking about—to bring an open conveyance to meet a girl who was just recovering from an attack of “flu” and a fairly hard one at that? In the cloudless sunniness of the day this was a side of things he had entirely overlooked. Well, he would leave his own conveyance at Clancehurst and charter a closed fly.But when he reached the station, the 2:57 from Victoria was just signalled. The station was busy and bustling as usual, and he did not care to risk not being there when his niece arrived. So he left the trap in charge of a hanger-on and went on to the platform.Quite a number were getting out of the train as it drew up, nearly punctual to time. For a moment he felt bewildered, and was moving rapidly among the alighting passengers, scanning each face. But none seemed to answer the description given by Violet Clinock’s glowing pen, as to her friend’s outward appearance.Then he became aware of being himself a centre of interest. A girl was standing there, looking intently at him—a girl, plainly dressed, with a pale face and golden hair framed in a wide black hat, and her straight carriage and erectly held head made her look taller than she actually was. As he turned, an exclamation escaped her, and the colour suffused her cheeks, leaving them paler than before. And the look in her eyes was positively a startled one. Small wonder that it was so, for, standing there in the hurrying throng, Melian Seward almost thought she was looking at her dead father.The likeness was extraordinary. The same face, the same features, even the cut of the grizzling, pointed beard; the same height, the same set of the shoulders. Good Heavens! The farewell on the terminus platform, the joke about the insurance ticket—small wonder that she should have reeled unsteadily as though beneath a shock. Mervyn made a hasty step forward, both hands extended.“My dear child, there is no mistaking you,” he said warmly. “You have the regular Mervyn stamp. But you are not looking at all the thing,” with a glance of very great concern. “Well, well, we’ll soon put that right here. Come along now. Porter, take this lady’s things. Come and show him what you’ve got in the van, dear.”He took her arm, and Melian, who had not expected anything like so affectionate a welcome, felt in her present tottery state inclined to break down utterly. This he saw, and kept her answering questions about herself, and other things, the while the luggage was being got out and taken across.“You will have to get outside of a hot cup of tea, dear, while they are loading up the things,” he said, leading the way to the refreshment room. “Oh, and by the by—” For the idea had come back to him, and now he put it to her that she would not be up to a five mile drive in an open trap, so it would only mean a little longer to wait while he went across to the inn opposite and ordered a closed one. But opposition met him at once.“Why, Uncle Seward,” she exclaimed, “that’s the very thing I’ve been looking forward to—a glorious open air drive through the lovely country, and it’s such a ripping afternoon. Do let’s have it. Why, it’ll do me all the world of good. Fancy being shut up in a close, fusty fly! And there’s going to be such a ripping sunset too, I could see there was coming along in the train. No. Do let’s drive in the open.”“Certainly, dear. I was only thinking that after a bad bout of ‘flu’ you have to be careful—very careful.”“Yes—yes. But this air—why, it has done me good already; it’s doing me good every minute. And I’ve plenty of wraps. The drive will be ripping.”He looked at her admiringly. The colour had come back to her cheeks and the blue eyes danced with delighted anticipation.“Very well,” he said. “Here’s your tea. Is it all as you like it? Yes? Well, I’ll just go and see that all your things are aboard.”He went into the bar department, drank a glass of brandy and water, then went out to the waggonette. Everything was stowed safe and snug. There was certainly not a “mountain of luggage” he noticed, but it struck him that Melian’s “plenty of wraps” was a bit of imagination. He shed his fur coat and threw a French cloak over his shoulders. Then he went back to her.She was ready, and the blue eyes had taken on quite a new light—very different eyes now, to when their sole look out was bounded by a patch of grey murk as a background to bizarre and hideous patterns in chimney pots.“Here’s the shandradan, dear. Now are you absolutely dead cert you’re equal to a five mile open drive. Here—put on this.”“This” was the fur coat—and she objected.“Tut-tut, I’m skipper of this ship, and I won’t have opposition. So—in you get.”He had hoisted it on to her, and now enveloped in it she climbed to the front seat beside him. He arranged a corresponding thickness of double rug over her knees.“Thank you, sir,” said the porter, catching what was thrown to him. “Beg pardon, Mr Mervyn,” he went on, sinking his voice, “but has anything more been ’eard about—”But Mervyn drew his whip across the pony’s hind quarters with a sharpness that that long suffering quadruped had certainly never merited, and the vehicle sprang into lively motion, which was all the answer the ill-advised querist obtained.“Wasn’t he asking you something?” said Melian, as they spun over the railway bridge above the station. The town lay beneath and behind; an old church tower just glimpsed above tall bare elms.“I dare say. But if we are going to get home before you get chilly, we can’t stop to answer all sorts of idiotic questions.”Even then the reply struck Melian as odd, less so perhaps than the change in her kinsman’s manner while making it. But she said:“Before I get chilly. Why I’m wrapped up like—Shackleton, or Peary, or any of them. In your coat too. It was quite wrong of you to have insisted upon my wearing it, and I had plenty of wraps.”“Had you? As a prologue to our time together child, I may as well tell you I am a man of fads. One is that of being skipper in my own ship. You obeyed orders, so there’s no more to be said.”It was put so kindly, so pleasantly. The tone was everything, and again the girl felt a lump rise to her throat, for it reminded her all of her dead father. Just the sort of thing he would have said; just the sort of tone in which he would have said it.
John Seward Mervyn was seated within the same armchair in which we first saw him gazing at the mysterious and shadowy door in the corner—but now it was the middle of a brilliant winter forenoon—and he was occupied in the reperusal of two letters, not bearing even date, for one was that of Violet Clinock informing him of his niece’s existence and illness, while the other was from his niece herself.
Comparing this with the former epistle he smiled to himself. Violet’s glowing description of her friend, and her multifold attractions, both physical and mental, amused him. He was gratified, too, that his niece should prove neither unattractive nor a fool. Melian’s missive, on the other hand, struck him as rather strained and stiff as to style, but then, she had been ill, and likewise was he not a perfect stranger to her?
How would the experiment work, he was speculating? If satisfactorily, why should she not make her home with him altogether? He was not so young as he used to be, but there was plenty of “go” in him yet, and he was not deficient in ideas; perhaps she might not find him quite such an old bore as she probably expected to find. He gathered from her friend’s letter that she had gone through no particularly glowing times, nor were there any likely to be in store for her; and life here, quietly, and at any rate for a while, might be the very thing to make the girl happy, dull under ordinary circumstances as such life might be.
There was one point, however, as to which he was not without secret misgiving. By this time no doubt was left in his own mind as to there being something about this house that was not about other houses; and which, for want of a better word, he described to himself as an “influence.” He had experienced it himself, when sitting alone of an evening, and even in broad daylight. Sounds, too, shadowy, vague, and explicable by no natural or material cause—again as to such there could be no two opinions. And this girl who was coming had been ill, and naturally her nerves would not be at their best. It would be ghastly if she were to undergo the shock of some sudden fright.
With this in view he himself occupied the room he had destined for her, until she should arrive. But absolutely nothing untoward occurred to disturb him, either waking or sleeping. Further, he got hold of old Joe and his ancient spouse, and charged them by every consideration likely to carry weight, that they were on no account—by word, nod or wink—to let fall the slightest hint to the visitor as to there being any stories afloat about Heath Hover at all.
“I’ll not nabble, b’lieve me, Mus’ Mervyn,” old Judy had said, clicking her Punch-like profile together, “I don’t b’lieve in nabbling on things like they. Folkses finds ’em out soon enough—”
“If there’s anything to be found,” supplied the master. “Here there isn’t, you understand, Judy?” And the old woman declared that she did, and Joe emphasised the statement by a brace of emphatic nods.
The fact was that strict fealty to their employer came entirely within this old couple’s interests, for he remunerated them at rather more than double the rate of earnings they could have obtained from any other source or sources. John Seward Mervyn was shrewd, though poor. When he had to lay out money he did so to the best of advantage, and in the proper quarter.
The mysterious end of the mysterious stranger had been very much of a nine days’ wonder. It had puzzled the police, and, more important still, perhaps, it had puzzled the doctors. There had been an inquest of course, and a great deal of disagreement among doctors. Mervyn’s evidence was perfectly straight and to the point; given so straightforwardly too, that none who heard entertained the slightest doubt as to its thorough exhaustiveness; and his narrative of the rescue of the stranger in the freezing midnight, only for the latter to meet his death so mysteriously but a few hours later, created something of a sensation. But the official mind listened to it all with some reserve and the official mind, as represented by Inspector Nashby and the expert from Scotland Yard, resolved to keep a continuous but furtive eye—and that for sometime to come—upon the goings out and comings in of Mr John Seward Mervyn.
Old Joe Sayers, too, gave his evidence with straightforwardness, but that he was constantly harking back, with the suspicious persistency of the countryman, to the fact that he had never seen the deceased when alive. Likewise when he began to “feel his feet,” he volunteered again the opinion which we heard him enunciate to his master, that “folks as gets on the ice, middle of Plane Pond, middle of the night, etc, bean’t up to no good;” a remark whosenaïvetédrew forth a great laugh, and likewise an admonition from the coroner that the witness should not volunteer opinions containing an imputation of motive until he was asked for it—which admonition for the most part was sheer Sanscrit to old Joe.
Not the least strange side of the investigation lay in the fact that no amount of enquiry was able to elicit any information whatever as to the previous movements of the stranger. The heavy snowfall which had supervened upon the arrival of the doctor and the police inspector at Heath Hover had lasted a couple of days, and had utterly obliterated all and every trace. Further, none of the dwellers in the neighbourhood—whether in village or scattered cottages—could be found to speak as to having noticed any stranger at all, let alone one bearing the slightest resemblance to the circulated descriptions. The man might have appeared out of nowhere. So the verdict was an open one, and the man was buried at the expense of Mervyn and a few more who came forward with subscriptions toward that end—as we have said.
Mervyn sat scanning the two letters, as though to make the utmost he could out of every word and line of each. In his heart of hearts he felt rather impatient. His was not such an eventful life but that the impending arrival of a girl relative—and that an attractive one, he had reason to believe—should not inspire some modicum of pleasurable anticipation. What would she be like, all round, he found himself, for the fiftieth time, wondering?
There was a slight movement beside him. The little black kitten had leaped on to the table, and sat there purring softly, its green gold eyes staring roundly out of a little ball of fluffiness. Then, with one light, scarcely perceptible, movement it transferred itself to his shoulder and sat there, purring louder and more contentedly than ever.
“Ah, poogie?” he said, pressing the little fluffy ball against his ear. “You’ll have some one else to love now. I wonder if she will though. Yes, of course she must.”
The light waggonette, which, with the cart, constituted the sole wheel motive power at Heath Hover, swung easily over the hardened snow; but once under way, Mervyn felt himself beset with misgivings. What on earth had he been thinking about—or rather not been thinking about—to bring an open conveyance to meet a girl who was just recovering from an attack of “flu” and a fairly hard one at that? In the cloudless sunniness of the day this was a side of things he had entirely overlooked. Well, he would leave his own conveyance at Clancehurst and charter a closed fly.
But when he reached the station, the 2:57 from Victoria was just signalled. The station was busy and bustling as usual, and he did not care to risk not being there when his niece arrived. So he left the trap in charge of a hanger-on and went on to the platform.
Quite a number were getting out of the train as it drew up, nearly punctual to time. For a moment he felt bewildered, and was moving rapidly among the alighting passengers, scanning each face. But none seemed to answer the description given by Violet Clinock’s glowing pen, as to her friend’s outward appearance.
Then he became aware of being himself a centre of interest. A girl was standing there, looking intently at him—a girl, plainly dressed, with a pale face and golden hair framed in a wide black hat, and her straight carriage and erectly held head made her look taller than she actually was. As he turned, an exclamation escaped her, and the colour suffused her cheeks, leaving them paler than before. And the look in her eyes was positively a startled one. Small wonder that it was so, for, standing there in the hurrying throng, Melian Seward almost thought she was looking at her dead father.
The likeness was extraordinary. The same face, the same features, even the cut of the grizzling, pointed beard; the same height, the same set of the shoulders. Good Heavens! The farewell on the terminus platform, the joke about the insurance ticket—small wonder that she should have reeled unsteadily as though beneath a shock. Mervyn made a hasty step forward, both hands extended.
“My dear child, there is no mistaking you,” he said warmly. “You have the regular Mervyn stamp. But you are not looking at all the thing,” with a glance of very great concern. “Well, well, we’ll soon put that right here. Come along now. Porter, take this lady’s things. Come and show him what you’ve got in the van, dear.”
He took her arm, and Melian, who had not expected anything like so affectionate a welcome, felt in her present tottery state inclined to break down utterly. This he saw, and kept her answering questions about herself, and other things, the while the luggage was being got out and taken across.
“You will have to get outside of a hot cup of tea, dear, while they are loading up the things,” he said, leading the way to the refreshment room. “Oh, and by the by—” For the idea had come back to him, and now he put it to her that she would not be up to a five mile drive in an open trap, so it would only mean a little longer to wait while he went across to the inn opposite and ordered a closed one. But opposition met him at once.
“Why, Uncle Seward,” she exclaimed, “that’s the very thing I’ve been looking forward to—a glorious open air drive through the lovely country, and it’s such a ripping afternoon. Do let’s have it. Why, it’ll do me all the world of good. Fancy being shut up in a close, fusty fly! And there’s going to be such a ripping sunset too, I could see there was coming along in the train. No. Do let’s drive in the open.”
“Certainly, dear. I was only thinking that after a bad bout of ‘flu’ you have to be careful—very careful.”
“Yes—yes. But this air—why, it has done me good already; it’s doing me good every minute. And I’ve plenty of wraps. The drive will be ripping.”
He looked at her admiringly. The colour had come back to her cheeks and the blue eyes danced with delighted anticipation.
“Very well,” he said. “Here’s your tea. Is it all as you like it? Yes? Well, I’ll just go and see that all your things are aboard.”
He went into the bar department, drank a glass of brandy and water, then went out to the waggonette. Everything was stowed safe and snug. There was certainly not a “mountain of luggage” he noticed, but it struck him that Melian’s “plenty of wraps” was a bit of imagination. He shed his fur coat and threw a French cloak over his shoulders. Then he went back to her.
She was ready, and the blue eyes had taken on quite a new light—very different eyes now, to when their sole look out was bounded by a patch of grey murk as a background to bizarre and hideous patterns in chimney pots.
“Here’s the shandradan, dear. Now are you absolutely dead cert you’re equal to a five mile open drive. Here—put on this.”
“This” was the fur coat—and she objected.
“Tut-tut, I’m skipper of this ship, and I won’t have opposition. So—in you get.”
He had hoisted it on to her, and now enveloped in it she climbed to the front seat beside him. He arranged a corresponding thickness of double rug over her knees.
“Thank you, sir,” said the porter, catching what was thrown to him. “Beg pardon, Mr Mervyn,” he went on, sinking his voice, “but has anything more been ’eard about—”
But Mervyn drew his whip across the pony’s hind quarters with a sharpness that that long suffering quadruped had certainly never merited, and the vehicle sprang into lively motion, which was all the answer the ill-advised querist obtained.
“Wasn’t he asking you something?” said Melian, as they spun over the railway bridge above the station. The town lay beneath and behind; an old church tower just glimpsed above tall bare elms.
“I dare say. But if we are going to get home before you get chilly, we can’t stop to answer all sorts of idiotic questions.”
Even then the reply struck Melian as odd, less so perhaps than the change in her kinsman’s manner while making it. But she said:
“Before I get chilly. Why I’m wrapped up like—Shackleton, or Peary, or any of them. In your coat too. It was quite wrong of you to have insisted upon my wearing it, and I had plenty of wraps.”
“Had you? As a prologue to our time together child, I may as well tell you I am a man of fads. One is that of being skipper in my own ship. You obeyed orders, so there’s no more to be said.”
It was put so kindly, so pleasantly. The tone was everything, and again the girl felt a lump rise to her throat, for it reminded her all of her dead father. Just the sort of thing he would have said; just the sort of tone in which he would have said it.
Chapter Ten.Of the Brightening of Heath Hover.They had left the outskirts of the town behind, and were bowling along a tree-hung road, which in summer would have been a green tunnel. The brown woods stood out above the whitened landscape, sombre in their winter nakedness, but always beautiful, over beyond an open, snow powdered stubble. Then between coverts of dark firs, where pheasants crowed, flapping their way up to their nightly roost. Past a hamlet embedded in tall, naked trees, then more dark firwoods interstudded with birch where the heathery openings broke the uniform evergreen—then out again for a space—on a bit of heathery upland which would be glowing crimson in golden August.“You can see around here for a bit,” said Mervyn, pointing with his whip. “Away there on the ridge, that tower is Lower Gidding, so called, presumably because Upper Gidding, ten miles away, is about two hundred feet lower down to the sea level. Beyond that last wooded ridge but one, is my shop—our shop I mean.”“It’s lovely,” replied the girl looking round with animation, and taking in the whole landscape.“Yes, perfectly lovely. And look. Here’s the sunset I told you we were going to get.”On the north eastern sky line, an opaque bank of clouds had heaved up—a bank of clouds that seemed to bode another snowfall. The sun, sinking in a fiery bed, away in the cloudless west, was touching this—and lo, in a trice, the mountainous masses of the rising cloud-tier were first tinged, than bathed in a flood of glowing copper red. Between, the long tongues of dark woodland stood out from the whitened ground. The bark of a dog, from this or that distant farmhouse, came up clear on the silent distance, and then from this or that covert, arose the melodious hoot of owls, answering each other.“What a picture!” cried the girl, turning an animated face upon her new guardian. “Heavens, what a picture! And to think that this time yesterday I was staring at a row of hideous black chimney pots under a hideous murky sky. Not only yesterday, but day after day before! And—Uncle Seward, youlivein the midst ofthis!”Mervyn smiled to himself, then at her, and his smile was a very good one to behold.“Yes, dear, I do,” he answered gently. “And now you are going to as well.”Down a steep road between dark woods, then an opening. A long reach of ice cleft their depth; then a sudden quacking as several wild duck sprang upwards from an open hole by the sluice, and swished high above their heads.“Wild duck, aren’t they?” cried the girl, turning her head to watch them, then looking up the frozen expanse. “Why it might be some lake in the middle of the backwoods of Canada, such as one reads about.”“Yes, so it might. I can tell you you haven’t come into exactly a tame part, even in our southern counties, which reminds me that I didn’t sufficiently rub it into you that you would have to—well—er—rough it a bit.”“If you had, that would have made it better still,” was the answer. “I prefer country places that are not too civilised.”“That’s fortunate,” rejoined Mervyn with a pleased smile, “for you’ll be exactly suited as far as that goes, in my shack.”Up another steep bit of road at a foot’s pace. It was quite dusk now, but a golden moon, at half, rising over the tree-tops, threw a glitter upon the frosty banks. Quite close by an owl hooted.“Oh, but this is too lovely for anything,” cried Melian. “By the way, what on earth are people talking about when they talk about the hoot of an owl being dismal. Why, it’s melodious to a degree.”“Great minds skip together, dear. That’s just what I think.”In his own mind the speaker was thinking something else; thinking it too, with a great glow of satisfaction. They would get on splendidly together. All her ideas, so far expressed, were the exact counterpart of his own. What a gold mine he had lighted on when he had opened Violet Clinock’s letter but a couple of days back. Then he became aware that Melian had turned, with a quick movement, and was gazing at him with a curious—he even fancied half-startled—look.“That was exactly one of father’s expressions,” she said slowly. “And—do you know, Uncle Seward, youareso like him.”“Am I, dear?” was the answer, made very gently. “All the better, because then I shall be all the more able, as far as possible, to replace him. But—here we are—at home.”The waggonette had topped the rise, and was now descending a similarly wood-fringed road. On the left front extended another long, narrow, triangular expanse of ice; set in its sombre, tree-framed encasing. Below the broad end of this a light or two gleamed.Old Joe and his ancient spouse were there to receive them, and did so with alacrity. It was a tacit part of the bond that they were not to be required to remain at Heath Hover after dark, but on this occasion they were stretching a point; partly through motives of curiosity in that they were anxious to see what the new arrival was like; partly, that with the house well lighted up, and the bustle and stir of preparation, and the advent of some one young, and therefore presumably lively, on the scene, the idea of shadowy manifestations didn’t seem in keeping somehow.“Why, this is ripping,” cried Melian as she obtained her first view of the old living-room. The deep, old-fashioned grate with its wide chimney was piled high with roaring logs, and a bright lamp on the table lighted up the low-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, and even the dark, red-papered walls. “Why, it’s a typical old-world sort of place. Ought to have a ghost, and all that kind of thing.”At this remark the venerable Judy, who was hobbling about putting some finishing touches to the table, stopped and stared. Then, shaking her head, she hobbled out again.“What’s the matter with the old party, Uncle Seward?” said Melian, whom this behaviour struck. But she looked up too soon—just in time to catch her uncle’s frown in fact. “Is there one?” she added suddenly, and pointedly.“Good Heavens, child. Every blessed house that wasn’t built the day before yesterday, that isn’t reeking with raw plaster and new cement, is supposed to carry a ghost, especially in the country, and standing in lonely solitude in the middle of woods like this. Throw in a deep old-fashioned fireplace and some oak panelling and there—you’ve got your Christmas number at once.”Telepathy may be bosh or it may not. At any rate, to Melian Seward, the lightness of her uncle’s tone, together with the annoyed look she had caught upon his face, and the sudden perturbation of the old woman at her remark, did not carry conviction. She felt certain that there was some story attaching to the place.“What a jolly old door,” she remarked, catching sight of the one in the corner, half hidden as it was, behind a curtain. “Why it looks quite old. Oh, but it is good,” going over to it with her quick, rapid habit of movement. “And the lock! Why it’s splendid. What is it, Uncle Seward? Sixteenth century, at least?”Mervyn looked at her, and strove not to look at her queerly.“I don’t know what date it is,” he said. “It leads down to an old vault-like cellar, which probably was used for storing wine. It isn’t now, because I’m too poor to have any wine to store. At least, I mean, darling,”—catching the expression with which she looked up—“I can’t afford to run wine cellars, but,”—and then came in a little embarrassment—“I’m not quite too poor to be able to offer a home to my—stranded little niece, shall we say?”The additional term of endearment had struck her. She looked at him in the lamplight, standing erect and beautiful.“Dear Uncle Seward,” she said. “I can’t say anything—except that—I don’t know how it is—there seems to have come something since I met you—since I heard from you. Why, you bring back my dear old father to me at every turn. You are so like him. You have the same expressions—everything. And yet—you were not even brothers.”“Cousins, though. Nearly the same thing. Kiss me, child. You haven’t yet. You know—all the public squash on the station platform.”She did, and in the act it seemed as if her dead father—dead under the impression that he could serve her interests best by so dying—were alive and speaking within this room. Even in the quiet, contained voice, she seemed to recognise his.It may have been imagination, but Mervyn seemed to think she could not withdraw her attention from the old nail-studded, shaded door in the corner. She kept looking at it even while they were talking. He remembered his vigil on the night of the rescue. Heavens! was this beastly, deluding mesmeristic effect going to hold her too, now at the first few minutes of her arrival? Then a diversion occurred. A cry from Melian suddenly drew his attention.“What’s this? Oh you little sweet. Here come to me, little pooge-pooge!”The little black kitten had suddenly landed itself, without notice, upon the white tablecloth, where it squatted, purring.“Oh, you sweet little woolly ball—where did you come from?” cried Melian, picking up the tiny creature and stuffing it into the hollow of her cheek and neck. “Uncle Seward, did you get this on purpose for me? Tell me.”Her cheeks were pink with animation, and her blue eyes shone.“No, dear. That’s a special child of my own, since it’s little life began. It is with me always. I’m glad you’ve taken to it.”“Taken to it? I should think so. Now you’re going to be jealous, Uncle Seward. I’m going to appropriate it. Oh, what a sweet little beast!” holding it up under the armpits. But the kitten growled expostulatingly.“‘Beast’? But it’s human,” laughed Mervyn. “Well, you shall have it, dear. Poogie—there’s your new owner. See? My nose is clean out of joint. I can take a back seat.”Again Melian started, and momentarily grew grave.“Poogie.” That too was one of her father’s expressions. She looked again at her uncle. Bright as the lamplight was, still it was artificial light, and under it the likenesss was more and more emphasised, in fact, startling.“Come upstairs, child, and I’ll show you your room. It’s right next to mine, so you’ve only to bang on the wall—if you want—I mean—er—if you were to get nervous in the middle of the night, in a strange place.”“But what on earth should I get nervous about?” exclaimed the girl, in round-eyed wonderment.“Oh, nothing. But the sex is given that way, so I only thought I’d tell you, that’s all. Now, you can find your way down, and we’ll have dinner when you’re ready.”Left alone, Melian proceeded to look round the room. It was small but cosy, with two cupboards let into the wall. A bright fire burned in the grate, and four lighted candles made a full and cheerful glow. The window she noticed was rather small, and looking out of this, under the light of the moon, she again took stock of the house. The windows at the projecting ends, unoccupied, seemed to stare lifelessly. The house was too much below the level of the sluice to allow a view of the pond, but the outline of the woods towered up against the frosty stars, and the hoot of owls and the high up quacking of flighting duck, sounded upon the stillness. A feeling of intense peace, of intense thankfulness came over her. She had found a very haven of rest she felt already, and her newly acquired relative—well—she was sure she was going to get very fond of him indeed.Soon she betook herself downstairs, and cosy and bright indeed the room looked. A roast fowl lay temptingly upturned and surrounded by shreds of bacon, and the potatoes were beautifully white and flowery. The little black kitten was playing riotously with a cork tied to the end of a string which always hung from the back of one of the armchairs.“Well, child, I hope you’ve brought an appetite with you,” said Mervyn, as they sat down. “You’ll have to be fed up. ‘Plain but wholesome,’ you know, as the school prospectuses used to say.”“Yes, I’ve brought one. I feel miles better already.” And then she talked on—telling him about her life of late, and its ups and downs. But of her earlier life she seemed to avoid mention.And Mervyn, encouraging her to talk, was furtively watching her. The animation which lit up her face, bringing with it a tinge of colour, the gleam of the golden hair in the lamplight, the movement of the long, white, artistic fingers—there was no point in the entrancing picture that escaped him. Indeed, he had been lucky beyond compare, he decided, when Violet Clinock’s letter had found him; and again and again as he looked at Melian, he made up his mind that she was there for good, unless she got tired of it and of him and insisted on leaving. But he would not think of that to-night.They got up at last, and Mervyn drew two big chairs to the fire. Then he lighted his pipe. The kitten in the most matter of course way jumped upon Melian’s lap and curled up there.“There you are,” laughed her uncle. “My nose is out of joint the first thing. It used to prefer me for a couch, but I don’t quarrel with its taste.”So they sat on and chatted cosily. At last, bedtime came. Then Melian remarked on the circumstance that the table hadn’t been cleared.“No. It won’t be, till to-morrow morning,” was the reply. “Old Judy has taken herself off long ago. I told you you’d have to rough it—eh? You see she and old Joe are the only people I can get to do my outlying work, and they hang out in a cottage the other side of the hill—beyond the first pond we passed. The young ones won’t stay on the place—find it too lonely, they say. So there you are.”“Yes. I’m going to turn to and do things,” answered Melian decisively.“Well, never mind about beginning now,” he said, lighting her candle and preceding her to her room. “Look, here’s a handbell. If you want anything, or are feeling lonely or ‘nervy’ in the night, ring it like the mischief—and I’ll be there. Good-night, dear.”“Good-night, Uncle Seward,” and she kissed him affectionately.Mervyn returned to the living-room and re-lighted his pipe. His gaze wandered to the shadowy door in the corner. Was its tradition really and completely upset? That strange manifestation, as to which he was hardly yet prepared to swear to as entirely an optical delusion—had presaged good to somebody, in that by keeping him awake he had been able to save the life of the stranger. But then the stranger had died immediately afterwards, under mysterious circumstances, and had this not befallen why then he, John Seward Mervyn would never have become aware of the existence or propinquity of his niece. And what a find that was—a young, bright, beautiful presence to irradiate the shadows of this gloomy old haunted grange. No room for any melancholic, fanciful imaginings with that about.And yet—and yet—it may be that he was not quite easy in his mind. Not for nothing had he shown her that clearly ringing handbell, and laid emphasis on the unhesitating use of it.
They had left the outskirts of the town behind, and were bowling along a tree-hung road, which in summer would have been a green tunnel. The brown woods stood out above the whitened landscape, sombre in their winter nakedness, but always beautiful, over beyond an open, snow powdered stubble. Then between coverts of dark firs, where pheasants crowed, flapping their way up to their nightly roost. Past a hamlet embedded in tall, naked trees, then more dark firwoods interstudded with birch where the heathery openings broke the uniform evergreen—then out again for a space—on a bit of heathery upland which would be glowing crimson in golden August.
“You can see around here for a bit,” said Mervyn, pointing with his whip. “Away there on the ridge, that tower is Lower Gidding, so called, presumably because Upper Gidding, ten miles away, is about two hundred feet lower down to the sea level. Beyond that last wooded ridge but one, is my shop—our shop I mean.”
“It’s lovely,” replied the girl looking round with animation, and taking in the whole landscape.
“Yes, perfectly lovely. And look. Here’s the sunset I told you we were going to get.”
On the north eastern sky line, an opaque bank of clouds had heaved up—a bank of clouds that seemed to bode another snowfall. The sun, sinking in a fiery bed, away in the cloudless west, was touching this—and lo, in a trice, the mountainous masses of the rising cloud-tier were first tinged, than bathed in a flood of glowing copper red. Between, the long tongues of dark woodland stood out from the whitened ground. The bark of a dog, from this or that distant farmhouse, came up clear on the silent distance, and then from this or that covert, arose the melodious hoot of owls, answering each other.
“What a picture!” cried the girl, turning an animated face upon her new guardian. “Heavens, what a picture! And to think that this time yesterday I was staring at a row of hideous black chimney pots under a hideous murky sky. Not only yesterday, but day after day before! And—Uncle Seward, youlivein the midst ofthis!”
Mervyn smiled to himself, then at her, and his smile was a very good one to behold.
“Yes, dear, I do,” he answered gently. “And now you are going to as well.”
Down a steep road between dark woods, then an opening. A long reach of ice cleft their depth; then a sudden quacking as several wild duck sprang upwards from an open hole by the sluice, and swished high above their heads.
“Wild duck, aren’t they?” cried the girl, turning her head to watch them, then looking up the frozen expanse. “Why it might be some lake in the middle of the backwoods of Canada, such as one reads about.”
“Yes, so it might. I can tell you you haven’t come into exactly a tame part, even in our southern counties, which reminds me that I didn’t sufficiently rub it into you that you would have to—well—er—rough it a bit.”
“If you had, that would have made it better still,” was the answer. “I prefer country places that are not too civilised.”
“That’s fortunate,” rejoined Mervyn with a pleased smile, “for you’ll be exactly suited as far as that goes, in my shack.”
Up another steep bit of road at a foot’s pace. It was quite dusk now, but a golden moon, at half, rising over the tree-tops, threw a glitter upon the frosty banks. Quite close by an owl hooted.
“Oh, but this is too lovely for anything,” cried Melian. “By the way, what on earth are people talking about when they talk about the hoot of an owl being dismal. Why, it’s melodious to a degree.”
“Great minds skip together, dear. That’s just what I think.”
In his own mind the speaker was thinking something else; thinking it too, with a great glow of satisfaction. They would get on splendidly together. All her ideas, so far expressed, were the exact counterpart of his own. What a gold mine he had lighted on when he had opened Violet Clinock’s letter but a couple of days back. Then he became aware that Melian had turned, with a quick movement, and was gazing at him with a curious—he even fancied half-startled—look.
“That was exactly one of father’s expressions,” she said slowly. “And—do you know, Uncle Seward, youareso like him.”
“Am I, dear?” was the answer, made very gently. “All the better, because then I shall be all the more able, as far as possible, to replace him. But—here we are—at home.”
The waggonette had topped the rise, and was now descending a similarly wood-fringed road. On the left front extended another long, narrow, triangular expanse of ice; set in its sombre, tree-framed encasing. Below the broad end of this a light or two gleamed.
Old Joe and his ancient spouse were there to receive them, and did so with alacrity. It was a tacit part of the bond that they were not to be required to remain at Heath Hover after dark, but on this occasion they were stretching a point; partly through motives of curiosity in that they were anxious to see what the new arrival was like; partly, that with the house well lighted up, and the bustle and stir of preparation, and the advent of some one young, and therefore presumably lively, on the scene, the idea of shadowy manifestations didn’t seem in keeping somehow.
“Why, this is ripping,” cried Melian as she obtained her first view of the old living-room. The deep, old-fashioned grate with its wide chimney was piled high with roaring logs, and a bright lamp on the table lighted up the low-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, and even the dark, red-papered walls. “Why, it’s a typical old-world sort of place. Ought to have a ghost, and all that kind of thing.”
At this remark the venerable Judy, who was hobbling about putting some finishing touches to the table, stopped and stared. Then, shaking her head, she hobbled out again.
“What’s the matter with the old party, Uncle Seward?” said Melian, whom this behaviour struck. But she looked up too soon—just in time to catch her uncle’s frown in fact. “Is there one?” she added suddenly, and pointedly.
“Good Heavens, child. Every blessed house that wasn’t built the day before yesterday, that isn’t reeking with raw plaster and new cement, is supposed to carry a ghost, especially in the country, and standing in lonely solitude in the middle of woods like this. Throw in a deep old-fashioned fireplace and some oak panelling and there—you’ve got your Christmas number at once.”
Telepathy may be bosh or it may not. At any rate, to Melian Seward, the lightness of her uncle’s tone, together with the annoyed look she had caught upon his face, and the sudden perturbation of the old woman at her remark, did not carry conviction. She felt certain that there was some story attaching to the place.
“What a jolly old door,” she remarked, catching sight of the one in the corner, half hidden as it was, behind a curtain. “Why it looks quite old. Oh, but it is good,” going over to it with her quick, rapid habit of movement. “And the lock! Why it’s splendid. What is it, Uncle Seward? Sixteenth century, at least?”
Mervyn looked at her, and strove not to look at her queerly.
“I don’t know what date it is,” he said. “It leads down to an old vault-like cellar, which probably was used for storing wine. It isn’t now, because I’m too poor to have any wine to store. At least, I mean, darling,”—catching the expression with which she looked up—“I can’t afford to run wine cellars, but,”—and then came in a little embarrassment—“I’m not quite too poor to be able to offer a home to my—stranded little niece, shall we say?”
The additional term of endearment had struck her. She looked at him in the lamplight, standing erect and beautiful.
“Dear Uncle Seward,” she said. “I can’t say anything—except that—I don’t know how it is—there seems to have come something since I met you—since I heard from you. Why, you bring back my dear old father to me at every turn. You are so like him. You have the same expressions—everything. And yet—you were not even brothers.”
“Cousins, though. Nearly the same thing. Kiss me, child. You haven’t yet. You know—all the public squash on the station platform.”
She did, and in the act it seemed as if her dead father—dead under the impression that he could serve her interests best by so dying—were alive and speaking within this room. Even in the quiet, contained voice, she seemed to recognise his.
It may have been imagination, but Mervyn seemed to think she could not withdraw her attention from the old nail-studded, shaded door in the corner. She kept looking at it even while they were talking. He remembered his vigil on the night of the rescue. Heavens! was this beastly, deluding mesmeristic effect going to hold her too, now at the first few minutes of her arrival? Then a diversion occurred. A cry from Melian suddenly drew his attention.
“What’s this? Oh you little sweet. Here come to me, little pooge-pooge!”
The little black kitten had suddenly landed itself, without notice, upon the white tablecloth, where it squatted, purring.
“Oh, you sweet little woolly ball—where did you come from?” cried Melian, picking up the tiny creature and stuffing it into the hollow of her cheek and neck. “Uncle Seward, did you get this on purpose for me? Tell me.”
Her cheeks were pink with animation, and her blue eyes shone.
“No, dear. That’s a special child of my own, since it’s little life began. It is with me always. I’m glad you’ve taken to it.”
“Taken to it? I should think so. Now you’re going to be jealous, Uncle Seward. I’m going to appropriate it. Oh, what a sweet little beast!” holding it up under the armpits. But the kitten growled expostulatingly.
“‘Beast’? But it’s human,” laughed Mervyn. “Well, you shall have it, dear. Poogie—there’s your new owner. See? My nose is clean out of joint. I can take a back seat.”
Again Melian started, and momentarily grew grave.
“Poogie.” That too was one of her father’s expressions. She looked again at her uncle. Bright as the lamplight was, still it was artificial light, and under it the likenesss was more and more emphasised, in fact, startling.
“Come upstairs, child, and I’ll show you your room. It’s right next to mine, so you’ve only to bang on the wall—if you want—I mean—er—if you were to get nervous in the middle of the night, in a strange place.”
“But what on earth should I get nervous about?” exclaimed the girl, in round-eyed wonderment.
“Oh, nothing. But the sex is given that way, so I only thought I’d tell you, that’s all. Now, you can find your way down, and we’ll have dinner when you’re ready.”
Left alone, Melian proceeded to look round the room. It was small but cosy, with two cupboards let into the wall. A bright fire burned in the grate, and four lighted candles made a full and cheerful glow. The window she noticed was rather small, and looking out of this, under the light of the moon, she again took stock of the house. The windows at the projecting ends, unoccupied, seemed to stare lifelessly. The house was too much below the level of the sluice to allow a view of the pond, but the outline of the woods towered up against the frosty stars, and the hoot of owls and the high up quacking of flighting duck, sounded upon the stillness. A feeling of intense peace, of intense thankfulness came over her. She had found a very haven of rest she felt already, and her newly acquired relative—well—she was sure she was going to get very fond of him indeed.
Soon she betook herself downstairs, and cosy and bright indeed the room looked. A roast fowl lay temptingly upturned and surrounded by shreds of bacon, and the potatoes were beautifully white and flowery. The little black kitten was playing riotously with a cork tied to the end of a string which always hung from the back of one of the armchairs.
“Well, child, I hope you’ve brought an appetite with you,” said Mervyn, as they sat down. “You’ll have to be fed up. ‘Plain but wholesome,’ you know, as the school prospectuses used to say.”
“Yes, I’ve brought one. I feel miles better already.” And then she talked on—telling him about her life of late, and its ups and downs. But of her earlier life she seemed to avoid mention.
And Mervyn, encouraging her to talk, was furtively watching her. The animation which lit up her face, bringing with it a tinge of colour, the gleam of the golden hair in the lamplight, the movement of the long, white, artistic fingers—there was no point in the entrancing picture that escaped him. Indeed, he had been lucky beyond compare, he decided, when Violet Clinock’s letter had found him; and again and again as he looked at Melian, he made up his mind that she was there for good, unless she got tired of it and of him and insisted on leaving. But he would not think of that to-night.
They got up at last, and Mervyn drew two big chairs to the fire. Then he lighted his pipe. The kitten in the most matter of course way jumped upon Melian’s lap and curled up there.
“There you are,” laughed her uncle. “My nose is out of joint the first thing. It used to prefer me for a couch, but I don’t quarrel with its taste.”
So they sat on and chatted cosily. At last, bedtime came. Then Melian remarked on the circumstance that the table hadn’t been cleared.
“No. It won’t be, till to-morrow morning,” was the reply. “Old Judy has taken herself off long ago. I told you you’d have to rough it—eh? You see she and old Joe are the only people I can get to do my outlying work, and they hang out in a cottage the other side of the hill—beyond the first pond we passed. The young ones won’t stay on the place—find it too lonely, they say. So there you are.”
“Yes. I’m going to turn to and do things,” answered Melian decisively.
“Well, never mind about beginning now,” he said, lighting her candle and preceding her to her room. “Look, here’s a handbell. If you want anything, or are feeling lonely or ‘nervy’ in the night, ring it like the mischief—and I’ll be there. Good-night, dear.”
“Good-night, Uncle Seward,” and she kissed him affectionately.
Mervyn returned to the living-room and re-lighted his pipe. His gaze wandered to the shadowy door in the corner. Was its tradition really and completely upset? That strange manifestation, as to which he was hardly yet prepared to swear to as entirely an optical delusion—had presaged good to somebody, in that by keeping him awake he had been able to save the life of the stranger. But then the stranger had died immediately afterwards, under mysterious circumstances, and had this not befallen why then he, John Seward Mervyn would never have become aware of the existence or propinquity of his niece. And what a find that was—a young, bright, beautiful presence to irradiate the shadows of this gloomy old haunted grange. No room for any melancholic, fanciful imaginings with that about.
And yet—and yet—it may be that he was not quite easy in his mind. Not for nothing had he shown her that clearly ringing handbell, and laid emphasis on the unhesitating use of it.
Chapter Eleven.A Slip on a Stone.The morning broke, bright and clear, one of those rare winter mornings without a cloud in the blue, and the sun making additional patterns through the frost facets on the window pane. And the said sun had not very long since risen.Mervyn looked out of the window; the house faced due east and caught the first glory of the morning sun—when there was any to catch, and to-day there was. The frosted pines glistened and gleamed with it, so too did the earth, with its newly laid coating of crystals. But in the midst of this setting was a picture.Melian was coming down the path. A large hooded cloak was wrapped round her, but she had nothing on her head, and the glory of her golden hair shone like fire in the new born, clear rays. The kitten, a woolly ball of black fluffiness, was squatted upon her shoulder, and she was singing to herself in a full, clear voice. He noted her straight carriage, and the swing of her young, joyous, elastic gait. A picture indeed! And this bright, beautiful, joyous child, was going to belong to him henceforward—to him, all alone. No one else in the wide world had the shadow of a claim upon her. She had come to him out of sordid surrounding of depression and want—yes, it would soon have come to that, judging from the account she had given of herself. Well, she had fallen upon the right place, and at the right time.He dressed quickly. He heard her enter the house, and old Judy’s harsh croaky tones mingling with the clear melodious ones. Then a silvery rippling laugh, then another. He remembered old Judy could be funny at times in her dry, cautious old rustic way. John Seward Mervyn felt the times had indeed changed for him. He felt years and years younger, under the bright spell of this youthful influence in the gloomy and shunned old house.“Well dear!” he cried gaily, coming into the room. “You don’t look much of the ‘flu’ patient slowly convalescing. What sort of an ungodly early time did you get up?”“Oh Uncle Seward, I’ve had such fun. I’ve been out all up the pond, and this little poogie had a romp all over the ice. Then it rushed up a tree after a squirrel, and they sat snarling at each other at the end of a thin bough, and the squirrel jumped to another tree, but the poogie wasn’t taking any. Were you, pooge-pooge?” And she squeezed the little woolly ball into her face and neck.“Well, it won’t take you long to get on your legs again,” said Mervyn, looking admiringly at the perfect picture she presented. “What shall we do with you to-day? Go for a long drive—or what? Well, I don’t know. The old shandradan I brought you here in isn’t too snug for a convalescing invalid, and it’s the best I’ve got. But first we’ll have breakfast.” And he hailed Judy, with an order to hurry on that repast.“Oh, that be hanged for a yarn, Uncle Seward. I’m not a convalescing anything. I’ve convalesced already, in this splendid air and surroundings. Let’s go out somewhere. Do let’s.”She had clasped both hands round his arm and the blue eyes were sparkling with anticipation.“All right. You shall be Queen of the May, to-day at any rate. But I think we mustn’t overdo it at the start. We’ll lunch early, and then start on a rambling round of exploration—equipped with plenty of wraps.”“And we may get another ripping sunset like yesterday,” she exclaimed.“You are extraordinarily fond of Nature’s effects, child. What else appeals to you?”“Old stones?”“What?”“Old stones. Ruined castles—churches—Roman remains—everything of that kind.”Mervyn emitted a long and expressive whistle.“Good Lord! but you’ve come to the right shop for that,” he said. “Why this countryside just grows them. All sorts of old mouldy monuments, in musty places, just choking with dry rot. Eh? That what you mean?”“That’s just what I do mean.”“Oh Lord?”He was looking at her, quizzically ruthful. He foresaw himself being dragged into all sorts of weird places; hoary old churches, whose interiors would suggest the last purpose on earth to that for which they had been constructed, and reeking of dry rot—half an ancient arch in the middle of a field which would require wading through a swamp to get at—and so on. But while he looked at her he was conscious that if she had expressed a wish to get a relic chipped out of the moon, he would probably have given serious thought to the feasibility of that achievement.“But that sort of thing’s all so infernally ugly,” he said.“Is it? Ugly? Old Norman architecture ugly! What next?”Mervyn whistled again.“I don’t know anything about Norman, or any other architecture,” he said, with a laugh. “I only know that when I run into any Johnnies who do, or think they do—they fight like the devil over it, and vote each other crass ignoramuses. How’s that?”“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s go and look at something of the kind this afternoon. Shall we?”“No, my child. Not if I know it. You wait till you’re clean through this ailment of yours before I sanction you going into any damp old vault to look at gargoyles.”Melian went off into a rippling peal.“Gargoyles don’t live in vaults, Uncle Seward. They live on roofs, and towers.”“Do they? Well, wherever they live, God’s good open English country is going to be the thing for you to-day, anyhow.”“All safe. The other will keep.”Mervyn dawdled over breakfast, absolutely contrary to his wont. His wont was to play with it; now he ate it. This bright presence turned a normally gloomy necessity into a fairy feast.“Come and let’s potter round a bit,” he said, soon after they had done.“Rather.”Melian swung on her large hooded cloak, and they went up the step path to the sluice. The sheen of ice lay before them, running up in a far triangle to the distance of the woods.“By the way, do you know how to skate?” said Mervyn.“Yes, but I’m not great at it, and it makes my ankles horribly stiff.”“Well, I sometimes take a turn or two, just to keep in practice. But it’s awful slow work all alone. If you like, dear, I’ll get you a pair from Clancehurst and you can take a turn with me.”“It wouldn’t be worth while I think,” she answered. “In point of fact I’m feeling rather too much of a worm for hard exercise just now, and the ice will probably vanish any day.”They wandered on, over the crisp frozen woodland path, and then he pointed out the scene of the stranger’s immersion and rescue. Melian looked at it with vivid interest.“It must have been a lively undertaking, Uncle Seward,” she commented. “And that you should only just have heard his call for help? And then—him dying afterwards. Poor man, I wonder who he was.”“So do I—did rather—for you can’t go on wondering for ever. But that idiot, Nashby, has still more than a suspicion that I murdered him. By the way, Melian, you remember I said there were reasons why I couldn’t come up to Town to fetch you; well, there it is. I’ve been practically under police supervision ever since. If I had gone up to London they’d have concluded I’d bolted, and started all Scotland Yard on the spot. How’s that?”“How’s that? They must be idiots.”“Yes. That’s near the ‘bull.’ But Nashby, though an excellent county police inspector, imagines himself a very real Sherlock Holmes whose light is hidden in a bushel called Clancehurst; consequently there being no earthly motive for me making away with the stranger, therefore I must have made away with him—according to Nashby.”“But, Uncle Seward. Do you really mean to say you’re suspected of murdering the man?”“Well, more than half—by Nashby. I don’t know that any one else shares his opinion. In fact, I don’t think they do. Look. Here’s the place where I hauled him out.”They had come near the head of the pond. In the weeks of frost that had supervened there were still traces in the ice of that midnight tragedy. Melian looked at them with wide eyed wonderment.“Come along,” said Mervyn extending a hand. “It’s quite safe—from seven to nine inches thick. We can walk all over it now, can even walk back on it instead of through the wood.”And they did; but first they went up it to where it narrowed to its head, where the feeding stream trickled in. Two wild ducks rose with alarmed quacking, and winnowed away at a surprising velocity over the tree-tops.“There’d have been a good chance if I’d got a gun,” remarked Mervyn. “I come along at dusk sometimes and bag a brace. Old Sir John Tullibard up at the Hall gave me a sort of carte blanche to shoot anything in that line, and told the keeper to cut me in when the pheasants wanted thinning down. He’s a decent old chap, but isn’t at home much. To put it nakedly he’s a regular absentee landlord, but his people seem snug enough.”“The Hall? What sort of place is it? What’s it called?”Mervyn laughed.“Why I do believe you’re scenting old stones already. Well, it’s rather a jolly old place, Plane House it’s called. Old Tullibard’s my landlord.”“Good. We must have a look over Plane House.”“Easy enough. If the old man comes over we’ll go and dine there. I do that when he is here, but that’s not often. He’s an old Indian too, though we weren’t in the same part. Now he prefers hanging out on the Riviera. I don’t. Old England’s good enough for me. Look at this for instance.”She did look, and thoroughly agreed. They were walking down the frozen surface of the pond as on a broad highway. The gossamer branches of the leafless trees shone in the sunlight, picked out in myriad frosted, scintillating patterns of indescribable delicacy against the cloudless blue of the winter sky, and, in between, the dark foliage of firs. Now and then a slide of snow from these, dislodged by the focussed rays of the midday sun, thudded to the ground, with a ghostly break upon the silence of the woodland. But the air—crisp, invigorating—Melian’s cheeks were aglow with it, and the blue eyes, thus framed, shone forth in all the animation begotten of the scene and surroundings. Mervyn stared, in whole-souled admiration, likewise wonderment.“Well done, my ‘flu’ convalescent,” he cried, dropping an arm round her shoulders. “You’ve come to the right sort of hospital and no mistake.”“Yes, I have indeed,” she answered, becoming suddenly grave, as she thought of the all pervading murk and the blackened vista of chimney stacks. Then, as they gained the broad end of the pond, and she climbed lightly over the fence on to the road that ran along the top of the sluice—“What an awfully picturesque old place Heath Hover looks from here, Uncle Seward. By the way, it’s a curious name. What does it come from?”“Ah—ah! An enquiring mind? I suppose that goes on all fours with the love of old stones—eh? Heath I take it is after the surroundings. When you get up beyond these woods you’re on heathery slopes, which glow red in summer, so I suppose they called it after that; the other in local parlance is something coldish or damp, and this house is situated that way in all conscience. So there you are.”“How ripping, I would like to see that same red glow.”“Well, and you will,” he answered. “But you’ll have to wait for it, like for everything else. And summer’s none too near just now.”They were halfway down the path from the sluice by now. Melian had halted to take in the view, her eyes wide open and fairly revelling in it. Mervyn did not fail to notice that one foot rested on the largish round stone which covered something—which constituted the tombstone of—something. And then, whether it was that the stone was slippery with the frost, her footing suddenly failed, and she would have fallen, had he not caught her in a firm grasp.“Steady up, child,” he laughed, as he set her on her feet again. “Why you haven’t got your ice legs even yet, although we’ve walked down that long frozen pond.”She laughed too. But the coincidence struck him. Why on earth should that have been the one stone of all those around, on which she should have chanced to trip? It was significant. Further, as they resumed their way, he noticed that the stone had been displaced, though ever so little. Even that circumstance sent an uneasy chill through him. It had been firm enough before. Could the frost have loosened it? Or—could any other agency? And then came the sound of approaching footsteps on the road above.“Good-day, sir,” and the passing man saluted, respectfully enough. “Sharp, middlin’ weather, this, sir?”“It is,” he answered, with a genial nod, and the man passed on.“You remember what I told you about being under police surveillance,” he said as they entered the house—old Judy could be dimly heard grumbling at her ancient proprietor through the back of the kitchen door.“Yes,” answered the girl wonderingly.“Well that was one of Nashby’s pickets.”“What? That old yokel who just passed?”Mervyn nodded, with a whimsical smile on his face.“But what in the world does he think he’s going to discover?”“Ah, exactly. Well, that’s his job, not mine. Only he’s wasting a precious lot of valuable time.”All the same the speaker was just a trifle—and unaccountably—disposed to uneasiness. What a curious coincidence it was, for instance, that his niece should have suddenly slipped and so nearly fallen, headlong, on that very stone that custodied this infernal thing! Then again, that the plain clothes man, with his unmistakable imprint of Scotland Yard, and his transparent affectation of local speech and dialect, should have happened upon the spot at the very moment of that coincidence! There was nothing in coincidence. Coincidence spelt accident:—sheer accident. Still, this one set John Seward Mervyn thinking—thinking more than a bit.
The morning broke, bright and clear, one of those rare winter mornings without a cloud in the blue, and the sun making additional patterns through the frost facets on the window pane. And the said sun had not very long since risen.
Mervyn looked out of the window; the house faced due east and caught the first glory of the morning sun—when there was any to catch, and to-day there was. The frosted pines glistened and gleamed with it, so too did the earth, with its newly laid coating of crystals. But in the midst of this setting was a picture.
Melian was coming down the path. A large hooded cloak was wrapped round her, but she had nothing on her head, and the glory of her golden hair shone like fire in the new born, clear rays. The kitten, a woolly ball of black fluffiness, was squatted upon her shoulder, and she was singing to herself in a full, clear voice. He noted her straight carriage, and the swing of her young, joyous, elastic gait. A picture indeed! And this bright, beautiful, joyous child, was going to belong to him henceforward—to him, all alone. No one else in the wide world had the shadow of a claim upon her. She had come to him out of sordid surrounding of depression and want—yes, it would soon have come to that, judging from the account she had given of herself. Well, she had fallen upon the right place, and at the right time.
He dressed quickly. He heard her enter the house, and old Judy’s harsh croaky tones mingling with the clear melodious ones. Then a silvery rippling laugh, then another. He remembered old Judy could be funny at times in her dry, cautious old rustic way. John Seward Mervyn felt the times had indeed changed for him. He felt years and years younger, under the bright spell of this youthful influence in the gloomy and shunned old house.
“Well dear!” he cried gaily, coming into the room. “You don’t look much of the ‘flu’ patient slowly convalescing. What sort of an ungodly early time did you get up?”
“Oh Uncle Seward, I’ve had such fun. I’ve been out all up the pond, and this little poogie had a romp all over the ice. Then it rushed up a tree after a squirrel, and they sat snarling at each other at the end of a thin bough, and the squirrel jumped to another tree, but the poogie wasn’t taking any. Were you, pooge-pooge?” And she squeezed the little woolly ball into her face and neck.
“Well, it won’t take you long to get on your legs again,” said Mervyn, looking admiringly at the perfect picture she presented. “What shall we do with you to-day? Go for a long drive—or what? Well, I don’t know. The old shandradan I brought you here in isn’t too snug for a convalescing invalid, and it’s the best I’ve got. But first we’ll have breakfast.” And he hailed Judy, with an order to hurry on that repast.
“Oh, that be hanged for a yarn, Uncle Seward. I’m not a convalescing anything. I’ve convalesced already, in this splendid air and surroundings. Let’s go out somewhere. Do let’s.”
She had clasped both hands round his arm and the blue eyes were sparkling with anticipation.
“All right. You shall be Queen of the May, to-day at any rate. But I think we mustn’t overdo it at the start. We’ll lunch early, and then start on a rambling round of exploration—equipped with plenty of wraps.”
“And we may get another ripping sunset like yesterday,” she exclaimed.
“You are extraordinarily fond of Nature’s effects, child. What else appeals to you?”
“Old stones?”
“What?”
“Old stones. Ruined castles—churches—Roman remains—everything of that kind.”
Mervyn emitted a long and expressive whistle.
“Good Lord! but you’ve come to the right shop for that,” he said. “Why this countryside just grows them. All sorts of old mouldy monuments, in musty places, just choking with dry rot. Eh? That what you mean?”
“That’s just what I do mean.”
“Oh Lord?”
He was looking at her, quizzically ruthful. He foresaw himself being dragged into all sorts of weird places; hoary old churches, whose interiors would suggest the last purpose on earth to that for which they had been constructed, and reeking of dry rot—half an ancient arch in the middle of a field which would require wading through a swamp to get at—and so on. But while he looked at her he was conscious that if she had expressed a wish to get a relic chipped out of the moon, he would probably have given serious thought to the feasibility of that achievement.
“But that sort of thing’s all so infernally ugly,” he said.
“Is it? Ugly? Old Norman architecture ugly! What next?”
Mervyn whistled again.
“I don’t know anything about Norman, or any other architecture,” he said, with a laugh. “I only know that when I run into any Johnnies who do, or think they do—they fight like the devil over it, and vote each other crass ignoramuses. How’s that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s go and look at something of the kind this afternoon. Shall we?”
“No, my child. Not if I know it. You wait till you’re clean through this ailment of yours before I sanction you going into any damp old vault to look at gargoyles.”
Melian went off into a rippling peal.
“Gargoyles don’t live in vaults, Uncle Seward. They live on roofs, and towers.”
“Do they? Well, wherever they live, God’s good open English country is going to be the thing for you to-day, anyhow.”
“All safe. The other will keep.”
Mervyn dawdled over breakfast, absolutely contrary to his wont. His wont was to play with it; now he ate it. This bright presence turned a normally gloomy necessity into a fairy feast.
“Come and let’s potter round a bit,” he said, soon after they had done.
“Rather.”
Melian swung on her large hooded cloak, and they went up the step path to the sluice. The sheen of ice lay before them, running up in a far triangle to the distance of the woods.
“By the way, do you know how to skate?” said Mervyn.
“Yes, but I’m not great at it, and it makes my ankles horribly stiff.”
“Well, I sometimes take a turn or two, just to keep in practice. But it’s awful slow work all alone. If you like, dear, I’ll get you a pair from Clancehurst and you can take a turn with me.”
“It wouldn’t be worth while I think,” she answered. “In point of fact I’m feeling rather too much of a worm for hard exercise just now, and the ice will probably vanish any day.”
They wandered on, over the crisp frozen woodland path, and then he pointed out the scene of the stranger’s immersion and rescue. Melian looked at it with vivid interest.
“It must have been a lively undertaking, Uncle Seward,” she commented. “And that you should only just have heard his call for help? And then—him dying afterwards. Poor man, I wonder who he was.”
“So do I—did rather—for you can’t go on wondering for ever. But that idiot, Nashby, has still more than a suspicion that I murdered him. By the way, Melian, you remember I said there were reasons why I couldn’t come up to Town to fetch you; well, there it is. I’ve been practically under police supervision ever since. If I had gone up to London they’d have concluded I’d bolted, and started all Scotland Yard on the spot. How’s that?”
“How’s that? They must be idiots.”
“Yes. That’s near the ‘bull.’ But Nashby, though an excellent county police inspector, imagines himself a very real Sherlock Holmes whose light is hidden in a bushel called Clancehurst; consequently there being no earthly motive for me making away with the stranger, therefore I must have made away with him—according to Nashby.”
“But, Uncle Seward. Do you really mean to say you’re suspected of murdering the man?”
“Well, more than half—by Nashby. I don’t know that any one else shares his opinion. In fact, I don’t think they do. Look. Here’s the place where I hauled him out.”
They had come near the head of the pond. In the weeks of frost that had supervened there were still traces in the ice of that midnight tragedy. Melian looked at them with wide eyed wonderment.
“Come along,” said Mervyn extending a hand. “It’s quite safe—from seven to nine inches thick. We can walk all over it now, can even walk back on it instead of through the wood.”
And they did; but first they went up it to where it narrowed to its head, where the feeding stream trickled in. Two wild ducks rose with alarmed quacking, and winnowed away at a surprising velocity over the tree-tops.
“There’d have been a good chance if I’d got a gun,” remarked Mervyn. “I come along at dusk sometimes and bag a brace. Old Sir John Tullibard up at the Hall gave me a sort of carte blanche to shoot anything in that line, and told the keeper to cut me in when the pheasants wanted thinning down. He’s a decent old chap, but isn’t at home much. To put it nakedly he’s a regular absentee landlord, but his people seem snug enough.”
“The Hall? What sort of place is it? What’s it called?”
Mervyn laughed.
“Why I do believe you’re scenting old stones already. Well, it’s rather a jolly old place, Plane House it’s called. Old Tullibard’s my landlord.”
“Good. We must have a look over Plane House.”
“Easy enough. If the old man comes over we’ll go and dine there. I do that when he is here, but that’s not often. He’s an old Indian too, though we weren’t in the same part. Now he prefers hanging out on the Riviera. I don’t. Old England’s good enough for me. Look at this for instance.”
She did look, and thoroughly agreed. They were walking down the frozen surface of the pond as on a broad highway. The gossamer branches of the leafless trees shone in the sunlight, picked out in myriad frosted, scintillating patterns of indescribable delicacy against the cloudless blue of the winter sky, and, in between, the dark foliage of firs. Now and then a slide of snow from these, dislodged by the focussed rays of the midday sun, thudded to the ground, with a ghostly break upon the silence of the woodland. But the air—crisp, invigorating—Melian’s cheeks were aglow with it, and the blue eyes, thus framed, shone forth in all the animation begotten of the scene and surroundings. Mervyn stared, in whole-souled admiration, likewise wonderment.
“Well done, my ‘flu’ convalescent,” he cried, dropping an arm round her shoulders. “You’ve come to the right sort of hospital and no mistake.”
“Yes, I have indeed,” she answered, becoming suddenly grave, as she thought of the all pervading murk and the blackened vista of chimney stacks. Then, as they gained the broad end of the pond, and she climbed lightly over the fence on to the road that ran along the top of the sluice—“What an awfully picturesque old place Heath Hover looks from here, Uncle Seward. By the way, it’s a curious name. What does it come from?”
“Ah—ah! An enquiring mind? I suppose that goes on all fours with the love of old stones—eh? Heath I take it is after the surroundings. When you get up beyond these woods you’re on heathery slopes, which glow red in summer, so I suppose they called it after that; the other in local parlance is something coldish or damp, and this house is situated that way in all conscience. So there you are.”
“How ripping, I would like to see that same red glow.”
“Well, and you will,” he answered. “But you’ll have to wait for it, like for everything else. And summer’s none too near just now.”
They were halfway down the path from the sluice by now. Melian had halted to take in the view, her eyes wide open and fairly revelling in it. Mervyn did not fail to notice that one foot rested on the largish round stone which covered something—which constituted the tombstone of—something. And then, whether it was that the stone was slippery with the frost, her footing suddenly failed, and she would have fallen, had he not caught her in a firm grasp.
“Steady up, child,” he laughed, as he set her on her feet again. “Why you haven’t got your ice legs even yet, although we’ve walked down that long frozen pond.”
She laughed too. But the coincidence struck him. Why on earth should that have been the one stone of all those around, on which she should have chanced to trip? It was significant. Further, as they resumed their way, he noticed that the stone had been displaced, though ever so little. Even that circumstance sent an uneasy chill through him. It had been firm enough before. Could the frost have loosened it? Or—could any other agency? And then came the sound of approaching footsteps on the road above.
“Good-day, sir,” and the passing man saluted, respectfully enough. “Sharp, middlin’ weather, this, sir?”
“It is,” he answered, with a genial nod, and the man passed on.
“You remember what I told you about being under police surveillance,” he said as they entered the house—old Judy could be dimly heard grumbling at her ancient proprietor through the back of the kitchen door.
“Yes,” answered the girl wonderingly.
“Well that was one of Nashby’s pickets.”
“What? That old yokel who just passed?”
Mervyn nodded, with a whimsical smile on his face.
“But what in the world does he think he’s going to discover?”
“Ah, exactly. Well, that’s his job, not mine. Only he’s wasting a precious lot of valuable time.”
All the same the speaker was just a trifle—and unaccountably—disposed to uneasiness. What a curious coincidence it was, for instance, that his niece should have suddenly slipped and so nearly fallen, headlong, on that very stone that custodied this infernal thing! Then again, that the plain clothes man, with his unmistakable imprint of Scotland Yard, and his transparent affectation of local speech and dialect, should have happened upon the spot at the very moment of that coincidence! There was nothing in coincidence. Coincidence spelt accident:—sheer accident. Still, this one set John Seward Mervyn thinking—thinking more than a bit.
Chapter Twelve.The Shadow in the Place.A fortnight had gone since Melian’s arrival at Heath Hover, and she had picked up to such an extent that both she and her uncle found it difficult to realise that she had been seriously ill at all. He took her for drives, always carefully wrapped up, and she had revelled in the beauties of the surrounding country, winter as it was—the wide vistas of field and wood, and the line of downs, sometimes near, sometimes far, stretching east and west as far as the eye could travel. But he absolutely refused, with a bracing sturdiness, to allow any practical incursions into the domain of archaeology.“That will keep,” he declared. “Old stones spell damp. You’ve got to steer clear of that for some time to come.”Then, as she got stronger, they had walked too, and the breezy, open uplands, contrasting with fragrant wood, did their share of the tonic. But this was not to last. A damp, muggy thaw set in, and the trees and hedges wept, the day through, under the unbroken murk of a wholly depressing sky; and you wanted very thick boots for underfoot purposes. Mervyn began to look anxiously at his charge.“I’m afraid you’ll be getting awfully fed up with this, dear,” he said one morning, when the thin drizzle and the drip-drip from bare, leafless bough and twig seemed rather more depressing than ordinarily. “What can be done for you? Frankly I’m too poor to take you away to a more sunshiny climate—or I would, like a shot. For my part I’m used to this sort of thing, and it doesn’t ‘get upon’ me any. There was a time when it would have, but that time’s gone. But for you—why it’s devilish rough.”Then Melian had reassured him—had abundantly reassured him. She didn’t find it heavy, she declared—not she. Why, on top of her experience of bearleading a brace of utterly uninteresting and unengaging children—and being at the beck and call of their detestable underbred mother, this was ideal. And she somehow or other managed to convey that her sense of the improvement was not merely a material one. Did they not get on splendidly together? Had they not any number of ideas in common—those they had not, only serving to create variety by giving rise to more or less spirited but always jocose arguments? Rough on her? Dull for her? It was nothing of the sort, she declared with unambiguous emphasis. And the fascination of the open country, even with the weeping woodlands and soggy, miry underfoot, was coming more and more over her, she further declared. And her uncle was hugely gratified, more so than he cared to realise. This bright young presence lightening his lonely existence from morn till night—how on earth would he be able to do without it again? Those long rambles, not by himself now, beset as they had been with uncheering thoughts of the past and a less cheering vista of the future; the now cosy snug evenings by his own fireside, with the after-dinner pipe, listening to the girl’s bright talk and entering into her ideas while the lamplight gleamed upon her golden head and animated eyes—and she herself made up such a picture sitting framed in the big armchair opposite—the little black fluffy kitten curled up on her lap. Of a truth life held something yet for him after all, if only this were going to last. But now he said:“How about getting that nice girl you were chumming with—and she must be a nice girl from the way she wrote about you—down here to stop with you a bit, dear? Make a kind of relief from me, you know. Always stewed up from morning till night with an old fogey—the same old fogey at that—can’t be altogether lively.”“Violet? She couldn’t come, if she wanted to ever so,” was the answer. “She’s entirely dependent on her job—and, as it was, her people cut up rusty if she chucked it for a day or two when I was ill. What beasts people are—aren’t they. Uncle Seward?”“We shan’t quarrel on that question,” answered Mervyn, sending out a long puff of smoke, and meditatively watching it resolve itself into very perfect rings in mid air. “A very large proportion are, and that just the proportion which could best afford not to be. Doesn’t she ever get any time off then? Holidays?”“She’ll get about four days off at Easter time. It would be jolly to get her down here then, poor old Violet. She does work, and she’s a good sort. It’s precious lucky I had her to go to when I did.”“Precious lucky for me too.”“Look here, Uncle Seward,” said the girl, gravely. “Don’t talk any more about old fogeys and it being heavy and slow for me, and all that. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but it’s—er—it’s bosh.”Mervyn burst into a wholehearted laugh. The answer, and, above all, the look which accompanied it, the tone in which it was made, relieved him beyond measure.“Is it? Very well, little one. We won’t talk any more—bosh. How’s that?”“‘That’ is. So we won’t. Yes, we’ll get her down here at Easter,”—and then the girl broke off suddenly and looked graver still.“Listen to me, Uncle Seward, and how I am running on,” she said. “Any one would think I had come here to live, instead of for a rest until I can find another job. And Easter is a long way off, and—”“And? What then?” he interrupted. “Of course you have come here to live. Do you think I’m going to let you go wasting your young life bearleading a lot of abominable brats while I’ve got a shack that’ll hold the two of us? Well, I’m not, then. How’sthat?”Melian looked embarrassed, and felt it.“Uncle Seward,” she urged at last. “You said you were—poor—more than once. Well, is it likely I’m going to sponge on you for all time? It’s delightful to be here with you, while I’m picking up again, but—”“‘But’,”—and again he interrupted. “My dear child, I see through it all. You are going on the tack of the up-to-date girl, wanting to be independent. There’s a sort of grandiloquent, comforting smack about that good old word ‘independent,’ isn’t there? Well, you can be just as independent as you like here. You can take entire charge. You can order me about as you want to—I don’t say I shall obey, mind—but I shan’t complain. Well, if you go bearleading some woman’s cubs they won’t do the first, and they’ll do the lastad lib. Now then. Which is the lesser evil?”Melian laughed outright. That was so exactly his brusque and to the point way of putting things. He went on, now very gently.“I am getting an old man now, child, and I have led a very lonely life. In my old age it promises to be lonelier still. You are alone too. Is it mere chance that brings us together? But if you think you have a mission, may it not conceivably be one to look after the old instead of the young. So now—there you are.”The voice was even, matter-of-fact sounding. But underlying it was a note of feeling—of real pathos.“When I emphasised the fact of being poor,” the speaker went on, “I meant that I was in no position to indulge in luxuries, or outside jollification, like going abroad, for instance, to escape English winters, and so on. But you can see for yourself how this show is run, and that there’s plenty of everything and no stint, and what’s warm and snug and comfy for one is for two. That’s where the ‘poverty’ begins and ends.”The girl got up and came over to him.“Uncle Seward, I will stay with you as long as ever you want me,” she said gravely, placing her hands upon his shoulders.“Hurrah! This old shack’s going to look up now,” he cried. “I’ll see if I can’t beat up some one young about the country side, to make things livelier for you, dear. And then, when it gets warmer and springlike, we’ll have such romps all over the country. Why these rotten old gargoyles with their noses rubbed off—you’ll soon know them all by heart, be able to write a book about them, and all that sort of thing. Can you ride a bicycle, child?”“Rather, but—”“Oh well, I’ll get one for you. I’ve got mine stowed away. I never use it in winter, but at other times it’s handy forgetting about. Now we’ll have rare romps around together.”She looked at him in something of astonishment. He was talking quite excitedly, quite loudly in fact, for him.“Why, you’re scaring the poogie,” she cried, with a laugh. “Look. It has gone under the table.”The little black kitten had dived under the table, and thence now began to emit a series of growls. Melian was puzzled.“What’s the matter with it?” she said. “Oh, I suppose it hears another poogie out in front, and resents it. But it’s generally so placid, even then.”But to Mervyn’s mind came an uncomfortable chill. He had known just such a demonstration before, but on one occasion only. And now it was behaving in exactly the same way. Its shrill growlings even increased. Melian dived into the shadow to coax it out, then reappeared, holding the tiny creature aloft.“Poogie. What’s the matter with you?” she cried. “Be quiet now, and go seeps again.”But though it curled itself on her lap, it showed no intention of going to sleep. Instead, it lifted its little fluffy head and growled again, though not so furiously as it had done when alone.“I do believe it’s afraid of something,” said the girl, wonderingly. “It must be something outside. Look. It’s staring towards the window.”Mervyn could not for the life of him account for it, but that a cold shiver was running through his whole being, there could be no doubt. His back was to the window, the blinds were down and there was no draught. But right under this window, and against the wall, was the couch upon which the dead man had fallen asleep—never to wake again. And in this direction the kitten was now staring—and growling; growling just as it had growled on that night of the opening of the door. And, more marvellous still, a feeling was upon him that he dare not look round, dare not turn his head and follow the little creature’s set, unquiet glance—and that in the thoroughly warmed and now cheerful room. But Melian’s voice and movement broke the spell.“What is it, poogie,” she was saying, advancing to the window, and incidentally to the couch. “Another poogie outside or a dog—Oh, you little beast!”She had broken off suddenly, dropping the kitten on to the table, under which it promptly dived and crouched, growling again. For it had grown perfectly frantic as she was carrying it to the window and had struck its claws into her hand, drawing blood.Mervyn sprang to his feet.“What? It has scratched you?” he cried, taking the long white hand and examining it concernedly.“Oh, it’s nothing,” laughed the girl.“Nothing or not, we’ll bathe it a bit,” he said, going over to the sideboard, and dashing some water into a tumbler. “Any sort of wound should be bathed at once, just in case there might be something left in it,” and he proceeded to perform that process then and there.“Oh, it’s all safe,” laughed the girl. “Poor little poogie! I suppose it was scared over something and had to get away at any price. I’m dead cert, it didn’t mean it.”“No—no,” assented Mervyn. “Cats are extraordinarily ‘nervy’ things. I believe they’ve a sight more imagination than they’re given credit for. It’s quite likely it was aware of something outside to which it had an objection, a stoat perhaps or even a badger. Now a dog would have barked the house down, but there’d have been no scare.”“Of course. By the way, Uncle Seward, I wonder you don’t keep a dog or two. They are such jolly beasts to have—especially in a place like this.”“I’ve tried it, and they’ve disappeared. They get into the coverts you know, and then—! I don’t care to keep one always on a chain. It’s beastly rough luck on them.”He had tried it, and the dogs had disappeared, even as he had said. They had done so, however, on their own initiative. But he did not tell her this.Yet it struck him that she must instinctively have grasped—or been affected by—something of the “influence” which at times seemed to haunt the place. She, too, now kept looking towards the blind-drawn window, and that not in her natural way. So far he had guarded her from any rumours from outside as to its sinister repute; and, as we have said, had threatened the old couple with the last extremity if they should let go anything. And now, just as he was congratulating himself that she would settle down quite happily and contentedly, comes this untoward mysterious making towards upset. And now, all at once, she had grown quite grave, quite subdued.“Uncle Seward,” she said, suddenly. “Do you remember what I said the night I arrived—that this place ought to be haunted?”“Yes, dear, and I remember my answer—that every place not screechingly new, etc, etc, is supposed to be.”“Well, is it?”The directness of the question was a trifle staggering, coming just when it did.“Well, I’ve been in it some months—all alone too, mind you,” he answered, “and I’ve never seen anything. All alone, mind,” he reiterated, “through long, dark winter evenings and nights. Of course, that poor chap coming to grief here so mysteriously, might give rise to all sorts of yarns among the yokels. But then, where is the house—built longer ago than last year—in which some one or other hasn’t died? No, child; you mustn’t bother your little gold head over such boshy ideas as that. And if you listen to all the old women of both sexes round the country side, why half of them are afraid to cross their village street after dark, unless some one invites them to the pub.”She laughed; yet somehow or other her laugh did not ring quite spontaneous.“Of course,” she said. “But—”“But—what?”“Oh, nothing. As you say, it’s astonishing how one’s imagination can play the fool with one. Tell me, Uncle Seward, do you believe in that sort of thing?”“What? In imagination? Of course I do.”“No—no. I mean in places being haunted, and apparitions and all that?”“No. Certainly not. The Christmas numbers have a great deal to answer for in that line. Surroundings, solitude, the state of your nerves—the weather, even—all do the rest. You can get yourself into a state which I believe theologians call ‘the dispositions’—which done into plain English means that if you want to see a thing, you can, in the long run, bring yourself to see it—in imagination.”“Only in imagination. You’re sure you mean that, Uncle Seward?”“I should rather think I was sure. Go to bed now, child,”—she had lighted her candle—“and chuck out all that sort of disquieting bosh. Why, we are as jolly here together as we can be, and we are going to be ever so much jollier. So chuck these imaginings—by the way, just because the little poogie starts growling at nothing in particular. Eh? Sounds rather absurd doesn’t it?”“It does rather,” she said, with a laugh as they bade each other good-night. But there was just a subtle something about her laugh, about her tone of voice, even about the expression of her eyes, that left her uncle in a state of vague uneasiness. Something must have occurred to alarm her; but then women were “skeery” creatures—especially where the imaginative element came in. But for all that he didn’t want even this to come in where Melian was concerned.He sat on, after she had gone, sat on over the cosy fire, thinking. He could hear her footsteps overhead as she crossed and recrossed her room—could hear her sweet young voice trilling forth snatches of all sorts of melodies, and again he blessed the chance that had sent her here to him in his loneliness.He lighted another pipe, and tilted a final “nightcap” out of the square bottle at his elbow. The little black kitten jumped lightly up on to his shoulder and rubbed its soft little woolly shape against his cheek, then dropped down on to his knees and sat purring.What could have occurred to set up a scare in the child, he wondered? Something had—obviously—but he had purposely evaded pressing the point for fear of making it too important. Well, if it came to getting on her nerves, he would, by hook or by crook get her away—at any rate for a time. As a matter of hard fact he had grown attached to Heath Hover—strangely so—and he occupied it practically rent free, that was for the sheer keeping of it up; and this was a consideration. Also he enjoyed a fair modicum of sport—likewise free. But if it were to come to making a choice between this and his niece—why by now he knew that there would be no sort of difficulty in deciding.He dropped more and more into the dreamy—and rather contented—stage. He was looking forward to a very pleasurable time before him when the year should grow and mellow into glorious spring and golden summer. The sound of footsteps overhead had ceased now, and that for some time. She was asleep, and had forgotten her uncanny imaginings. He found himself looking forward to the morrow when she would be with him again—her sweet, quick, animated face, and the golden hair shining in the sunlight.And then?—What was this? A sudden pounding of feet overhead—a strange, half stifled cry—a rush down the old creaky stairs. In a fraction of a second he was at the door, and as he opened it, framed against the dark background of passage and staircase, Melian was standing, her face set with a strange horror that seemed to turn the spectator’s blood to ice, the blue eyes dilating in a wild stare, as though they saw—or had seen—something not of the earth earthly.
A fortnight had gone since Melian’s arrival at Heath Hover, and she had picked up to such an extent that both she and her uncle found it difficult to realise that she had been seriously ill at all. He took her for drives, always carefully wrapped up, and she had revelled in the beauties of the surrounding country, winter as it was—the wide vistas of field and wood, and the line of downs, sometimes near, sometimes far, stretching east and west as far as the eye could travel. But he absolutely refused, with a bracing sturdiness, to allow any practical incursions into the domain of archaeology.
“That will keep,” he declared. “Old stones spell damp. You’ve got to steer clear of that for some time to come.”
Then, as she got stronger, they had walked too, and the breezy, open uplands, contrasting with fragrant wood, did their share of the tonic. But this was not to last. A damp, muggy thaw set in, and the trees and hedges wept, the day through, under the unbroken murk of a wholly depressing sky; and you wanted very thick boots for underfoot purposes. Mervyn began to look anxiously at his charge.
“I’m afraid you’ll be getting awfully fed up with this, dear,” he said one morning, when the thin drizzle and the drip-drip from bare, leafless bough and twig seemed rather more depressing than ordinarily. “What can be done for you? Frankly I’m too poor to take you away to a more sunshiny climate—or I would, like a shot. For my part I’m used to this sort of thing, and it doesn’t ‘get upon’ me any. There was a time when it would have, but that time’s gone. But for you—why it’s devilish rough.”
Then Melian had reassured him—had abundantly reassured him. She didn’t find it heavy, she declared—not she. Why, on top of her experience of bearleading a brace of utterly uninteresting and unengaging children—and being at the beck and call of their detestable underbred mother, this was ideal. And she somehow or other managed to convey that her sense of the improvement was not merely a material one. Did they not get on splendidly together? Had they not any number of ideas in common—those they had not, only serving to create variety by giving rise to more or less spirited but always jocose arguments? Rough on her? Dull for her? It was nothing of the sort, she declared with unambiguous emphasis. And the fascination of the open country, even with the weeping woodlands and soggy, miry underfoot, was coming more and more over her, she further declared. And her uncle was hugely gratified, more so than he cared to realise. This bright young presence lightening his lonely existence from morn till night—how on earth would he be able to do without it again? Those long rambles, not by himself now, beset as they had been with uncheering thoughts of the past and a less cheering vista of the future; the now cosy snug evenings by his own fireside, with the after-dinner pipe, listening to the girl’s bright talk and entering into her ideas while the lamplight gleamed upon her golden head and animated eyes—and she herself made up such a picture sitting framed in the big armchair opposite—the little black fluffy kitten curled up on her lap. Of a truth life held something yet for him after all, if only this were going to last. But now he said:
“How about getting that nice girl you were chumming with—and she must be a nice girl from the way she wrote about you—down here to stop with you a bit, dear? Make a kind of relief from me, you know. Always stewed up from morning till night with an old fogey—the same old fogey at that—can’t be altogether lively.”
“Violet? She couldn’t come, if she wanted to ever so,” was the answer. “She’s entirely dependent on her job—and, as it was, her people cut up rusty if she chucked it for a day or two when I was ill. What beasts people are—aren’t they. Uncle Seward?”
“We shan’t quarrel on that question,” answered Mervyn, sending out a long puff of smoke, and meditatively watching it resolve itself into very perfect rings in mid air. “A very large proportion are, and that just the proportion which could best afford not to be. Doesn’t she ever get any time off then? Holidays?”
“She’ll get about four days off at Easter time. It would be jolly to get her down here then, poor old Violet. She does work, and she’s a good sort. It’s precious lucky I had her to go to when I did.”
“Precious lucky for me too.”
“Look here, Uncle Seward,” said the girl, gravely. “Don’t talk any more about old fogeys and it being heavy and slow for me, and all that. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but it’s—er—it’s bosh.”
Mervyn burst into a wholehearted laugh. The answer, and, above all, the look which accompanied it, the tone in which it was made, relieved him beyond measure.
“Is it? Very well, little one. We won’t talk any more—bosh. How’s that?”
“‘That’ is. So we won’t. Yes, we’ll get her down here at Easter,”—and then the girl broke off suddenly and looked graver still.
“Listen to me, Uncle Seward, and how I am running on,” she said. “Any one would think I had come here to live, instead of for a rest until I can find another job. And Easter is a long way off, and—”
“And? What then?” he interrupted. “Of course you have come here to live. Do you think I’m going to let you go wasting your young life bearleading a lot of abominable brats while I’ve got a shack that’ll hold the two of us? Well, I’m not, then. How’sthat?”
Melian looked embarrassed, and felt it.
“Uncle Seward,” she urged at last. “You said you were—poor—more than once. Well, is it likely I’m going to sponge on you for all time? It’s delightful to be here with you, while I’m picking up again, but—”
“‘But’,”—and again he interrupted. “My dear child, I see through it all. You are going on the tack of the up-to-date girl, wanting to be independent. There’s a sort of grandiloquent, comforting smack about that good old word ‘independent,’ isn’t there? Well, you can be just as independent as you like here. You can take entire charge. You can order me about as you want to—I don’t say I shall obey, mind—but I shan’t complain. Well, if you go bearleading some woman’s cubs they won’t do the first, and they’ll do the lastad lib. Now then. Which is the lesser evil?”
Melian laughed outright. That was so exactly his brusque and to the point way of putting things. He went on, now very gently.
“I am getting an old man now, child, and I have led a very lonely life. In my old age it promises to be lonelier still. You are alone too. Is it mere chance that brings us together? But if you think you have a mission, may it not conceivably be one to look after the old instead of the young. So now—there you are.”
The voice was even, matter-of-fact sounding. But underlying it was a note of feeling—of real pathos.
“When I emphasised the fact of being poor,” the speaker went on, “I meant that I was in no position to indulge in luxuries, or outside jollification, like going abroad, for instance, to escape English winters, and so on. But you can see for yourself how this show is run, and that there’s plenty of everything and no stint, and what’s warm and snug and comfy for one is for two. That’s where the ‘poverty’ begins and ends.”
The girl got up and came over to him.
“Uncle Seward, I will stay with you as long as ever you want me,” she said gravely, placing her hands upon his shoulders.
“Hurrah! This old shack’s going to look up now,” he cried. “I’ll see if I can’t beat up some one young about the country side, to make things livelier for you, dear. And then, when it gets warmer and springlike, we’ll have such romps all over the country. Why these rotten old gargoyles with their noses rubbed off—you’ll soon know them all by heart, be able to write a book about them, and all that sort of thing. Can you ride a bicycle, child?”
“Rather, but—”
“Oh well, I’ll get one for you. I’ve got mine stowed away. I never use it in winter, but at other times it’s handy forgetting about. Now we’ll have rare romps around together.”
She looked at him in something of astonishment. He was talking quite excitedly, quite loudly in fact, for him.
“Why, you’re scaring the poogie,” she cried, with a laugh. “Look. It has gone under the table.”
The little black kitten had dived under the table, and thence now began to emit a series of growls. Melian was puzzled.
“What’s the matter with it?” she said. “Oh, I suppose it hears another poogie out in front, and resents it. But it’s generally so placid, even then.”
But to Mervyn’s mind came an uncomfortable chill. He had known just such a demonstration before, but on one occasion only. And now it was behaving in exactly the same way. Its shrill growlings even increased. Melian dived into the shadow to coax it out, then reappeared, holding the tiny creature aloft.
“Poogie. What’s the matter with you?” she cried. “Be quiet now, and go seeps again.”
But though it curled itself on her lap, it showed no intention of going to sleep. Instead, it lifted its little fluffy head and growled again, though not so furiously as it had done when alone.
“I do believe it’s afraid of something,” said the girl, wonderingly. “It must be something outside. Look. It’s staring towards the window.”
Mervyn could not for the life of him account for it, but that a cold shiver was running through his whole being, there could be no doubt. His back was to the window, the blinds were down and there was no draught. But right under this window, and against the wall, was the couch upon which the dead man had fallen asleep—never to wake again. And in this direction the kitten was now staring—and growling; growling just as it had growled on that night of the opening of the door. And, more marvellous still, a feeling was upon him that he dare not look round, dare not turn his head and follow the little creature’s set, unquiet glance—and that in the thoroughly warmed and now cheerful room. But Melian’s voice and movement broke the spell.
“What is it, poogie,” she was saying, advancing to the window, and incidentally to the couch. “Another poogie outside or a dog—Oh, you little beast!”
She had broken off suddenly, dropping the kitten on to the table, under which it promptly dived and crouched, growling again. For it had grown perfectly frantic as she was carrying it to the window and had struck its claws into her hand, drawing blood.
Mervyn sprang to his feet.
“What? It has scratched you?” he cried, taking the long white hand and examining it concernedly.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” laughed the girl.
“Nothing or not, we’ll bathe it a bit,” he said, going over to the sideboard, and dashing some water into a tumbler. “Any sort of wound should be bathed at once, just in case there might be something left in it,” and he proceeded to perform that process then and there.
“Oh, it’s all safe,” laughed the girl. “Poor little poogie! I suppose it was scared over something and had to get away at any price. I’m dead cert, it didn’t mean it.”
“No—no,” assented Mervyn. “Cats are extraordinarily ‘nervy’ things. I believe they’ve a sight more imagination than they’re given credit for. It’s quite likely it was aware of something outside to which it had an objection, a stoat perhaps or even a badger. Now a dog would have barked the house down, but there’d have been no scare.”
“Of course. By the way, Uncle Seward, I wonder you don’t keep a dog or two. They are such jolly beasts to have—especially in a place like this.”
“I’ve tried it, and they’ve disappeared. They get into the coverts you know, and then—! I don’t care to keep one always on a chain. It’s beastly rough luck on them.”
He had tried it, and the dogs had disappeared, even as he had said. They had done so, however, on their own initiative. But he did not tell her this.
Yet it struck him that she must instinctively have grasped—or been affected by—something of the “influence” which at times seemed to haunt the place. She, too, now kept looking towards the blind-drawn window, and that not in her natural way. So far he had guarded her from any rumours from outside as to its sinister repute; and, as we have said, had threatened the old couple with the last extremity if they should let go anything. And now, just as he was congratulating himself that she would settle down quite happily and contentedly, comes this untoward mysterious making towards upset. And now, all at once, she had grown quite grave, quite subdued.
“Uncle Seward,” she said, suddenly. “Do you remember what I said the night I arrived—that this place ought to be haunted?”
“Yes, dear, and I remember my answer—that every place not screechingly new, etc, etc, is supposed to be.”
“Well, is it?”
The directness of the question was a trifle staggering, coming just when it did.
“Well, I’ve been in it some months—all alone too, mind you,” he answered, “and I’ve never seen anything. All alone, mind,” he reiterated, “through long, dark winter evenings and nights. Of course, that poor chap coming to grief here so mysteriously, might give rise to all sorts of yarns among the yokels. But then, where is the house—built longer ago than last year—in which some one or other hasn’t died? No, child; you mustn’t bother your little gold head over such boshy ideas as that. And if you listen to all the old women of both sexes round the country side, why half of them are afraid to cross their village street after dark, unless some one invites them to the pub.”
She laughed; yet somehow or other her laugh did not ring quite spontaneous.
“Of course,” she said. “But—”
“But—what?”
“Oh, nothing. As you say, it’s astonishing how one’s imagination can play the fool with one. Tell me, Uncle Seward, do you believe in that sort of thing?”
“What? In imagination? Of course I do.”
“No—no. I mean in places being haunted, and apparitions and all that?”
“No. Certainly not. The Christmas numbers have a great deal to answer for in that line. Surroundings, solitude, the state of your nerves—the weather, even—all do the rest. You can get yourself into a state which I believe theologians call ‘the dispositions’—which done into plain English means that if you want to see a thing, you can, in the long run, bring yourself to see it—in imagination.”
“Only in imagination. You’re sure you mean that, Uncle Seward?”
“I should rather think I was sure. Go to bed now, child,”—she had lighted her candle—“and chuck out all that sort of disquieting bosh. Why, we are as jolly here together as we can be, and we are going to be ever so much jollier. So chuck these imaginings—by the way, just because the little poogie starts growling at nothing in particular. Eh? Sounds rather absurd doesn’t it?”
“It does rather,” she said, with a laugh as they bade each other good-night. But there was just a subtle something about her laugh, about her tone of voice, even about the expression of her eyes, that left her uncle in a state of vague uneasiness. Something must have occurred to alarm her; but then women were “skeery” creatures—especially where the imaginative element came in. But for all that he didn’t want even this to come in where Melian was concerned.
He sat on, after she had gone, sat on over the cosy fire, thinking. He could hear her footsteps overhead as she crossed and recrossed her room—could hear her sweet young voice trilling forth snatches of all sorts of melodies, and again he blessed the chance that had sent her here to him in his loneliness.
He lighted another pipe, and tilted a final “nightcap” out of the square bottle at his elbow. The little black kitten jumped lightly up on to his shoulder and rubbed its soft little woolly shape against his cheek, then dropped down on to his knees and sat purring.
What could have occurred to set up a scare in the child, he wondered? Something had—obviously—but he had purposely evaded pressing the point for fear of making it too important. Well, if it came to getting on her nerves, he would, by hook or by crook get her away—at any rate for a time. As a matter of hard fact he had grown attached to Heath Hover—strangely so—and he occupied it practically rent free, that was for the sheer keeping of it up; and this was a consideration. Also he enjoyed a fair modicum of sport—likewise free. But if it were to come to making a choice between this and his niece—why by now he knew that there would be no sort of difficulty in deciding.
He dropped more and more into the dreamy—and rather contented—stage. He was looking forward to a very pleasurable time before him when the year should grow and mellow into glorious spring and golden summer. The sound of footsteps overhead had ceased now, and that for some time. She was asleep, and had forgotten her uncanny imaginings. He found himself looking forward to the morrow when she would be with him again—her sweet, quick, animated face, and the golden hair shining in the sunlight.
And then?—What was this? A sudden pounding of feet overhead—a strange, half stifled cry—a rush down the old creaky stairs. In a fraction of a second he was at the door, and as he opened it, framed against the dark background of passage and staircase, Melian was standing, her face set with a strange horror that seemed to turn the spectator’s blood to ice, the blue eyes dilating in a wild stare, as though they saw—or had seen—something not of the earth earthly.