Mr. Fentolin raised to his lips the little gold whistle which hung from his neck and blew it. He seemed to devote very little effort to the operation, yet the strength of the note was wonderful. As the echoes died away, he let it fall by his side and waited with a pleased smile upon his lips. In a few seconds there was the hurried flutter of skirts and the sound of footsteps. The girl who had just completed her railway journey entered, followed by her brother. They were both a little out of breath, they both approached the chair without a smile, the girl in advance, with a certain expression of apprehension in her eyes. Mr. Fentolin sighed. He appeared to notice these things and regret them.
“My child,” he said, holding out his hands, “my dear Esther, welcome home again! I heard the car outside. I am grieved that you did not at once hurry to my side.”
“I have not been in the house two minutes,” Esther replied, “and I haven’t seen mother yet. Forgive me.”
She had come to a standstill a few yards away. She moved now very slowly towards the chair, with the air of one fulfilling a hateful task. The fingers which accepted his hands were extended almost hesitatingly. He drew her closer to him and held her there.
“Your mother, my dear Esther, is, I regret to say, suffering from a slight indisposition,” he remarked. “She has been confined to her room for the last few days. Just a trifling affair of the nerves; nothing more, Doctor Sarson assures me. But my dear child,” he went on, “your fingers are as cold as ice. You look at me so strangely, too. Alas! you have not the affectionate disposition of your dear mother. One would scarcely believe that we have been parted for more than a week.”
“For more than a week,” she repeated, under her breath.
“Stoop down, my dear. I must kiss your forehead—there! Now bring up a chair to my side. You seem frightened—alarmed. Have you ill news for me?”
“I have no news,” she answered, gradually recovering herself.
“The gaieties of London, I fear,” he protested gently, “have proved a little unsettling.”
“There were no gaieties for me,” the girl replied bitterly. “Mrs. Sargent obeyed your orders very faithfully. I was not allowed to move out except with her.”
“My dear child, you would not go about London unchaperoned!”
“There is a difference,” she retorted, “between a chaperon and a jailer.”
Mr. Fentolin sighed. He shook his head slowly. He seemed pained.
“I am not sure that you repay my care as it deserves, Esther,” he declared. “There is something in your deportment which disappoints me. Never mind, your brother has made some atonement. I entrusted him with a little mission in which I am glad to say that he has been brilliantly successful.”
“I cannot say that I am glad to hear it,” Esther replied quietly.
Mr. Fentolin sat back in his chair. His long fingers played nervously together, he looked at her gravely.
“My dear child,” he exclaimed, in a tone of pained surprise, “your attitude distresses me!”
“I cannot help it. I have told you what I think about Gerald and the life he is compelled to live here. I don’t mind so much for myself, but for him I think it is abominable.”
“The same as ever,” Mr. Fentolin sighed. “I fear that this little change has done you no good, dear niece.”
“Change!” she echoed. “It was only a change of prisons.”
Mr. Fentolin shook his head slowly—a distressful gesture. Yet all the time he had somehow the air of a man secretly gratified.
“You are beginning to depress me,” he announced. “I think that you can go away. No, stop for just one moment. Stand there in the light. Dear me, how unfortunate! Who would have thought that so beautiful a mother could have so plain a daughter!”
She stood quite still before him, her hands crossed in front of her, something of the look of the nun from whom the power of suffering has gone in her still, cold face and steadfast eyes.
“Not a touch of colour,” he continued meditatively, “a figure straight as my walking-stick. What a pity! And all the taste, nowadays, they tell me, is in the other direction. The lank damsels have gone completely out. We buried them with Oscar Wilde. Run along, my dear child. You do not amuse me. You can take Gerald with you, if you will. I have nothing to say to Gerald just now. He is in my good books. Is there anything I can do for you, Gerald? Your allowance, for instance—a trifling increase or an advance? I am in a generous humour.”
“Then grant me what I begged for the other day,” the boy answered quickly. “Let me go to Sandhurst. I could enter my name next week for the examinations, and I could pass to-morrow.”
Mr. Fentolin tapped the table thoughtfully with his forefinger.
“A little ungrateful, my dear boy,” he declared, “a little ungrateful that, I think. Your confidence in yourself pleases me, though. You think you could pass your examinations?”
“I did a set of papers last week,” the boy replied. “On the given percentages I came out twelfth or better. Mr. Brown assured me that I could go in for them at any moment. He promised to write you about it before he left.”
Mr. Fentolin nodded gently.
“Now I come to think of it, I did have a letter from Mr. Brown,” he remarked. “Rather an impertinence for a tutor, I thought it. He devoted three pages towards impressing upon me the necessity of your adopting some sort of a career.”
“He wrote because he thought it was his duty,” the boy said doggedly.
“So you want to be a soldier,” Mr. Fentolin continued musingly. “Well, well, why not? Our picture galleries are full of them. There has been a Fentolin in every great battle for the last five hundred years. Sailors, too—plenty of them—and just a few diplomatists. Brave fellows! Not one, I fancy,” he added, “like me—not one condemned to pass their days in a perambulator. You are a fine fellow, Gerald—a regular Fentolin. Getting on for six feet, aren’t you?”
“Six feet two, sir.”
“A very fine fellow,” Mr. Fentolin repeated. “I am not so sure about the army, Gerald. You see, there are some people who say, like your American friend, that we are even now almost on the brink of war.”
“All the more reason for me to hurry,” the boy begged.
Mr. Fentolin closed his eyes.
“Don’t!” he insisted. “Have you ever stopped to think what war means—the war you speak of so lightly? The suffering, the misery of it! All the pageantry and music and heroism in front; and behind, a blackened world, a trail of writhing corpses, a world of weeping women for whom the sun shall never rise again. Ugh! An ugly thing war, Gerald. I am not sure that you are not better at home here. Why not practise golf a little more assiduously? I see from the local paper that you are still playing at two handicap. Now with your physique, I should have thought you would have been a scratch player long before now.”
“I play cricket, sir,” the boy reminded him, a little impatiently, “and, after all, there are other things in the world besides games.”
Mr. Fentolin’s long finger shot suddenly out. He was leaning a little from his chair. His expression of gentle immobility had passed away. His face was stern, almost stony.
“You have spoken the truth, Gerald,” he said. “There are other things in the world besides games. There is the real, the tragical side of life, the duties one takes up, the obligations of honour. You have not forgotten, young man, the burden you carry?”
The boy was paler, but he had drawn himself to his full height.
“I have not forgotten, sir,” he answered bitterly. “Do I show any signs of forgetting? Haven’t I done your bidding year by year? Aren’t I here now to do it?”
“Then do it!” Mr. Fentolin retorted sharply. “When I am ready for you to leave here, you shall leave. Until then, you are mine. Remember that. Ah! this is Doctor Sarson who comes, I believe. That must mean that it is five o’clock. Come in, Doctor. I am not engaged. You see, I am alone with my dear niece and nephew. We have been having a little pleasant conversation.”
Doctor Sarson bowed to Esther, who scarcely glanced at him. He remained in the background, quietly waiting.
“A very delightful little conversation,” Mr. Fentolin concluded. “I have been congratulating my nephew, Doctor, upon his wisdom in preferring the quiet country life down here to the wearisome routine of a profession. He escapes the embarrassing choice of a career by preferring to devote his life to my comfort. I shall not forget it. I shall not be ungrateful. I may have my faults, but I am not ungrateful. Run away now, both of you. Dear children you are, but one wearies, you know, of everything. I am going out. You see, the twilight is coming. The tide is changing. I am going down to meet the sea.”
His little carriage moved towards the door. The brother and sister passed out. Esther led Gerald into the great dining-room, and from there, through the open windows, out on to the terrace. She gripped his shoulder and pointed down to the Tower.
“Something,” she whispered in his ear, “is going to happen there.”
The little station at which Hamel alighted was like an oasis in the middle of a flat stretch of sand and marsh. It consisted only of a few raised planks and a rude shelter—built, indeed, for the convenience of St. David’s Hall alone, for the nearest village was two miles away. The station-master, on his return from escorting the young lady to her car, stared at this other passenger in some surprise.
“Which way to the sea?” Hamel asked.
The man pointed to the white gates of the crossing.
“You can take any of those paths you like, sir,” he said. “If you want to get to Salthouse, though, you should have got out at the next station.”
“This will do for me,” Hamel replied cheerfully.
“Be careful of the dikes,” the station-master advised him. “Some of them are pretty deep.”
Hamel nodded, and passing through the white gates, made his way by a raised cattle track towards the sea. On either side of him flowed a narrow dike filled with salt-water. Beyond stretched the flat marshland, its mossy turf leavened with cracks and creeks of all widths, filled also with sea-slime and sea-water. A slight grey mist rested upon the more distant parts of the wilderness which he was crossing, a mist which seemed to be blown in from the sea in little puffs, resting for a time upon the earth, and then drifting up and fading away like soap bubbles.
More than once where the dikes had overflown he was compelled to change his course, but he arrived at last at the little ridge of pebbled beach bordering the sea. Straight ahead of him now was that strange-looking building towards which he had all the time been directing his footsteps. As he approached it, his forehead slightly contracted. There was ample confirmation before him of the truth of his fellow-passenger’s words. The place, left to itself for so many years, without any attention from its actual owner, was neither deserted nor in ruins. Its solid grey stone walls were sea-stained and a trifle worn, but the arched wooden doors leading into the lifeboat shelter, which occupied one side of the building, had been newly painted, and in the front the window was hung with a curtain, now closely drawn, of some dark red material. The lock from the door had been removed altogether, and in its place was the aperture for a Yale latch-key. The last note of modernity was supplied by the telephone wire attached to the roof of the lifeboat shelter. He walked all round the building, seeking in vain for some other means of ingress. Then he stood for a few moments in front of the curtained window. He was a man of somewhat determined disposition, and he found himself vaguely irritated by the liberties which had been taken with his property. He hammered gently upon the framework with his fist, and the windows opened readily inwards, pushing back the curtain with them. He drew himself up on to the sill, and, squeezing himself through the opening, landed on his feet and looked around him, a little breathless.
He found himself in a simply furnished man’s sitting-room. An easel was standing close to the window. There were reams of drawing paper and several unfinished sketches leaning against the wall. There was a small oak table in the middle of the room; against the wall stood an exquisite chiffonier, on which were resting some cut-glass decanters and goblets. There was a Turkey carpet upon the floor which matched the curtains, but to his surprise there was not a single chair of any sort to be seen. The walls had been distempered and were hung with one or two engravings which, although he was no judge, he was quite sure were good. He wandered into the back room, where he found a stove, a tea-service upon a deal table, and several other cooking utensils, all spotlessly clean and of the most expensive description. The walls here were plainly whitewashed, and the floor was of hard stone. He then tried the door on the left, which led into the larger portion of the building—the shed in which the lifeboat had once been kept. Not only was the door locked, but he saw at once that the lock was modern, and the door itself was secured with heavy iron clamps. He returned to the sitting-room.
“The girl with the grey eyes was right enough,” he remarked to himself. “Mr. Fentolin has been making himself very much at home with my property.”
He withdrew the curtains, noticing, to his surprise, the heavy shutters which their folds had partly concealed. Then he made his way out along the passage to the front door, which from the inside he was able to open easily enough. Leaving it carefully ajar, he went out with the intention of making an examination of the outside of the place. Instead, however, he paused at the corner of the building with his face turned landwards. Exactly fronting him now, about three-quarters of a mile away, on the summit of that strange hill which stood out like a gigantic rock in the wilderness, was St. David’s Hall. He looked at it steadily and with increasing admiration. Its long, red brick front with its masses of clustering chimneys, a little bare and weather-beaten, impressed him with a sense of dignity due as much to the purity of its architecture as the singularity of its situation. Behind—a wonderfully effective background—were the steep gardens from which, even in this uncertain light, he caught faint glimpses of colouring subdued from brilliancy by the twilight. These were encircled by a brick wall of great height, the whole of the southern portion of which was enclosed with glass. From the fragment of rock upon which he had seated himself, to the raised stone terrace in front of the house, was an absolutely straight path, beautifully kept like an avenue, with white posts on either side, and built up to a considerable height above the broad tidal way which ran for some distance by its side. It had almost the appearance of a racing track, and its state of preservation in the midst of the wilderness was little short of remarkable.
“This,” Hamel said to himself, as he slowly produced a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it with tobacco from a battered silver box, “is a queer fix. Looks rather like the inn for me!”
“And who might you be, gentleman?”
He turned abruptly around towards his unseen questioner. A woman was standing by the side of the rock upon which he was sitting, a woman from the village, apparently, who must have come with noiseless footsteps along the sandy way. She was dressed in rusty black, and in place of a hat she wore a black woolen scarf tied around her head and underneath her chin. Her face was lined, her hair of a deep brown plentifully besprinkled with grey. She had a curious habit of moving her lips, even when she was not speaking. She stood there smiling at him, but there was something about that smile and about her look which puzzled him.
“I am just a visitor,” he replied. “Who are you?”
She shook her head.
“I saw you come out of the Tower,” she said, speaking with a strong local accent and yet with a certain unusual correctness, “in at the window and out of the door. You’re a brave man.”
“Why brave?” he asked.
She turned her head very slowly towards St. David’s Hall. A gleam of sunshine had caught one of the windows, which shone like fire. She pointed toward it with her head.
“He’s looking at you,” she muttered. “He don’t like strangers poking around here, that I can tell you.”
“And who is he?” Hamel enquired.
“Squire Fentolin,” she answered, dropping her voice a little. “He’s a very kind-hearted gentleman, Squire Fentolin, but he don’t like strangers hanging around.”
“Well, I am not exactly a stranger, you see,” Hamel remarked. “My father used to stay for months at a time in that little shanty there and paint pictures. It’s a good many years ago.”
“I mind him,” the woman said slowly. “His name was Hamel.”
“I am his son,” Hamel announced.
She pointed to the Hall. “Does he know that you are here?”
Hamel shook his head. “Not yet. I have been abroad for so long.”
She suddenly relapsed into her curious habit. Her lips moved, but no words came. She had turned her head a little and was facing the sea.
“Tell me,” Hamel asked gently, “why do you come out here alone, so far from the village?”
She pointed with her finger to where the waves were breaking in a thin line of white, about fifty yards from the beach.
“It’s the cemetery, that,” she said, “the village cemetery, you know. I have three buried there: George, the eldest; James, the middle one; and David, the youngest. Three of them—that’s why I come. I can’t put flowers on their graves, but I can sit and watch and look through the sea, down among the rocks where their bodies are, and wonder.”
Hamel looked at her curiously. Her voice had grown lower and lower.
“It’s what you land folks don’t believe, perhaps,” she went on, “but it’s true. It’s only us who live near the sea who understand it. I am not an ignorant body, either. I was schoolmistress here before I married David Cox. They thought I’d done wrong to marry a fisherman, but I bore him brave sons, and I lived the life a woman craves for. No, I am not ignorant. I have fancies, perhaps—the Lord be praised for them!—and I tell you it’s true. You look at a spot in the sea and you see nothing—a gleam of blue, a fleck of white foam, one day; a gleam of green with a black line, another; and a grey little sob, the next, perhaps. But you go on looking. You look day by day and hour by hour, and the chasms of the sea will open, and their voices will come to you. Listen!”
She clutched his arm.
“Couldn’t you hear that?” she half whispered.
“‘The light!’ It was David’s voice! ‘The light!’” Hamel was speechless. The woman’s face was suddenly strangely transformed. Her mood, however, swiftly changed. She turned once more towards the hall.
“You’ll know him soon,” she went on, “the kindest man in these parts, they say. It’s not much that he gives away, but he’s a kind heart. You see that great post at the entrance to the river there?” she went on, pointing to it. “He had that set up and a lamp hung from there. Fentolin’s light, they call it. It was to save men’s lives. It was burning, they say, the night I lost my lads. Fentolin’s light!”
“They were wrecked?” he asked her gently.
“Wrecked,” she answered. “Bad steering it must have been. James would steer, and they say that he drank a bit. Bad steering! Yes, you’ll meet Squire Fentolin before long. He’s queer to look at—a small body but a great, kind heart. A miserable life, his, but it will be made up to him. It will be made up to him!”
She turned away. Her lips were moving all the time. She walked about a dozen steps, and then she returned.
“You’re Hamel’s son, the painter,” she said. “You’ll be welcome down here. He’ll have you to stay at the Hall—a brave place. Don’t let him be too kind to you. Sometimes kindness hurts.”
She passed on, walking with a curious, shambling gait, and soon she disappeared on her way to the village. Hamel watched her for a moment and then turned his head towards St. David’s Hall. He felt somehow that her abrupt departure was due to something which she had seen in that direction. He rose to his feet. His instinct had been a true one.
From where Hamel stood a queer object came strangely into sight. Below the terrace of St. David’s Hall—from a spot, in fact, at the base of the solid wall—it seemed as though a gate had been opened, and there came towards him what he at first took to be a tricycle. As it came nearer, it presented even a weirder appearance. Mr. Fentolin, in a black cape and black skull cap, sat a little forward in his electric carriage, with his hand upon the guiding lever. His head came scarcely above the back of the little vehicle, his hands and body were motionless. He seemed to be progressing without the slightest effort, personal or mechanical, as though he rode, in deed, in some ghostly vehicle. From the same place in the wall had issued, a moment or two later, a man upon a bicycle, who was also coming towards him. Hamel was scarcely conscious of this secondary figure. His eyes were fixed upon the strange personage now rapidly approaching him. There was something which seemed scarcely human in that shrunken fragment of body, the pale face with its waving white hair, the strange expression with which he was being regarded. The little vehicle came to a standstill only a few feet away. Mr. Fentolin leaned forward. His features had lost their delicately benevolent aspect; his words were minatory.
“I am under the impression, sir,” he said, “that I saw you with my glasses from the window attempting to force an entrance into that building.”
Hamel nodded.
“I not only tried but I succeeded,” he remarked. “I got in through the window.”
Mr. Fentolin’s eyes glittered for a moment. Hamel, who had resumed his place upon the rock close at hand, had been mixed up during his lifetime in many wild escapades. Yet at that moment he had a sudden feeling that there were dangers in life which as yet he had not faced.
“May I ask for your explanation or your excuse?”
“You can call it an explanation or an excuse, whichever you like,” Hamel replied steadily, “but the fact is that this little building, which some one else seems to have appropriated, is mine. If I had not been a good-natured person, I should be engaged, at the present moment, in turning out its furniture on to the beach.”
“What is your name?” Mr. Fentolin asked suddenly.
“My name is Hamel—Richard Hamel.”
For several moments there was silence. Mr. Fentolin was still leaning forward in his strange little vehicle. The colour seemed to have left even his lips. The hard glitter in his eyes had given place to an expression almost like fear. He looked at Richard Hamel as though he were some strange sea-monster come up from underneath the sands.
“Richard Hamel,” he repeated. “Do you mean that you are the son of Hamel, the R.A., who used to be in these parts so often? He was my brother’s friend.”
“I am his son.”
“But his son was killed in the San Francisco earthquake. I saw his name in all the lists. It was copied into the local papers here.”
Hamel knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“I take a lot of killing,” he observed. “I was in that earthquake, right enough, and in the hospital afterwards, but it was a man named Hamel of Philadelphia who died.”
Mr. Fentolin sat quite motionless for several moments. He seemed, if possible, to have shrunken into something smaller still. A few yards behind, Meekins had alighted from his bicycle and was standing waiting.
“So you are Richard Hamel,” Mr. Fentolin said at last very softly. “Welcome back to England, Richard Hamel! I knew your father slightly, although we were never very friendly.”
He stretched out his hand from underneath the coverlet of his little vehicle—a hand with long, white fingers, slim and white and shapely as a woman’s. A single ring with a dull green stone was on his fourth finger. Hamel shook hands with him as he would have shaken hands with a woman. Afterwards he rubbed his fingers slowly together. There was something about the touch which worried him.
“You have been making use of this little shanty, haven’t you?” he asked bluntly.
Mr. Fentolin nodded. He was apparently beginning to recover himself.
“You must remember,” he explained suavely, “that it was built by my grandfather, and that we have had rights over the whole of the foreshore here from time immemorial. I know quite well that my brother gave it to your father—or rather he sold it to him for a nominal sum. I must tell you that it was a most complicated transaction. He had the greatest difficulty in getting any lawyer to draft the deed of sale. There were so many ancient rights and privileges which it was impossible to deal with. Even now there are grave doubts as to the validity of the transaction. When nothing was heard of you, and we all concluded that you were dead, I ventured to take back what I honestly believed to be my own. Owing,” he continued slowly, “to my unfortunate affliction, I am obliged to depend for interest in my life upon various hobbies. This little place, queerly enough, has become one of them. I have furnished it, in a way; installed the telephone to the house, connected it with my electric plant, and I come down here when I want to be quite alone, and paint. I watch the sea—such a sea sometimes, such storms, such colour! You notice that ridge of sand out yonder? It forms a sort of natural breakwater. Even on the calmest day you can trace that white line of foam.”
“It is a strange coast,” Hamel admitted.
Mr. Fentolin pointed with his forefinger northwards.
“Somewhere about there,” he indicated, “is the entrance to the tidal river which flows up to the village of St. David’s yonder. You see?”
His finger traced its course until it came to a certain point near the beach, where a tall black pillar stood, surmounted by a globe.
“I have had a light fixed there for the benefit of the fishermen,” he said, “a light which I work from my own dynamo. Between where we are sitting now and there—only a little way out to sea—is a jagged cluster of cruel rocks. You can see them if you care to swim out in calm weather. Fishermen who tried to come in by night were often trapped there and, in a rough sea, drowned. That is why I had that pillar of light built. On stormy nights it shows the exact entrance to the water causeway.”
“Very kind of you indeed,” Hamel remarked, “very benevolent.”
Mr. Fentolin sighed.
“So few people have any real feeling for sailors,” he continued. “The fishermen around here are certainly rather a casual class. Do you know that there is scarcely one of them who can swim? There isn’t one of them who isn’t too lazy to learn even the simplest stroke. My brother used to say—dear Gerald—that it served them right if they were drowned. I have never been able to feel like that, Mr. Hamel. Life is such a wonderful thing. One night,” he went on, dropping his voice and leaning a little forward in his carriage—“it was just before, or was it just after I had fixed that light—I was down here one dark winter night. There was a great north wind and a huge sea running. It was as black as pitch, but I heard a boat making for St. David’s causeway strike on those rocks just hidden in front there. I heard those fishermen shriek as they went under. I heard their shouts for help, I heard their death cries. Very terrible, Mr. Hamel! Very terrible!”
Hamel looked at the speaker curiously. Mr. Fentolin seemed absorbed in his subject. He had spoken with relish, as one who loves the things he speaks about. Quite unaccountably, Hamel found himself shivering.
“It was their mother,” Mr. Fentolin continued, leaning again a little forward in his chair, “their mother whom I saw pass along the beach just now—a widow, too, poor thing. She comes here often—a morbid taste. She spoke to you, I think?”
“She spoke to me strangely,” Hamel admitted. “She gave me the impression of a woman whose brain had been turned with grief.”
“Too true,” Mr. Fentolin sighed. “The poor creature! I offered her a small pension, but she would have none of it. A superior woman in her way once, filled now with queer fancies,” he went on, eyeing Hamel steadily,—“the very strangest fancies. She spends her life prowling about here. No one in the village even knows how she lives. Did she speak of me, by-the-by?”
“She spoke of you as being a very kind-hearted man.”
Mr. Fentolin sighed.
“The poor creature! Well, well, let us revert to the object of your coming here. Do you really wish to occupy this little shanty, Mr. Hamel?”
“That was my idea,” Hamel confessed. “I only came back from Mexico last month, and I very soon got fed up with life in town. I am going abroad again next year. Till then, I am rather at a loose end. My father was always very keen indeed about this place, and very anxious that I should come and stay here for a little time, so I made up my mind to run down. I’ve got some things waiting at Norwich. I thought I might hire a woman to look after me and spend a few weeks here. They tell me that the early spring is almost the best time for this coast.”
Mr. Fentolin nodded slowly. He moistened his lips for a moment. One might have imagined that he was anxious.
“Mr. Hamel,” he said softly, “you are quite right. It is the best time to visit this coast. But why make a hermit of yourself? You are a family friend. Come and stay with us at the Hall for as long as you like. It will give me the utmost pleasure to welcome you there,” he went on earnestly, “and as for this little place, of what use is it to you? Let me buy it from you. You are a man of the world, I can see. You may be rich, yet money has a definite value. To me it has none. That little place, as it stands, is probably worth—say a hundred pounds. Your father gave, if I remember rightly, a five pound note for it. I will give you a thousand for it sooner than be disturbed.”
Hamel frowned slightly.
“I could not possibly think,” he said, “of selling what was practically a gift to my father. You are welcome to occupy the place during my absence in any way you wish. On the other hand, I do not think that I care to part with it altogether, and I should really like to spend just a day or so here. I am used to roughing it under all sorts of conditions—much more used to roughing it than I am to staying at country houses.”
Mr. Fentolin leaned a little out of his carriage. He reached the younger man’s shoulder with his hand.
“Ah! Mr. Hamel,” he pleaded, “don’t make up your mind too suddenly. Am I a little spoilt, I wonder? Well, you see what sort of a creature I am. I have to go through life as best I may, and people are kind to me. It is very seldom I am crossed. It is quite astonishing how often people let me have my own way. Do not make up your mind too suddenly. I have a niece and a nephew whom you must meet. There are some treasures, too, at St. David’s Hall. Look at it. There isn’t another house quite like it in England. It is worth looking over.”
“It is most impressive,” Hamel agreed, “and wonderfully beautiful. It seems odd,” he added, with a laugh, “that you should care about this little shanty here, with all the beautiful rooms you must have of your own.”
“It’s Naboth’s vineyard,” Mr. Fentolin groaned. “Now, Mr. Hamel, you are going to be gracious, aren’t you? Let us leave the question of your little habitation here alone for the present. Come back with me. My niece shall give you some tea, and you shall choose your room from forty. You can sleep in a haunted chamber, or a historical chamber, in Queen Elizabeth’s room, a Victorian chamber, or a Louis Quinze room. All my people have spent their substance in furniture. Don’t look at your bag. Clothes are unnecessary. I can supply you with everything. Or, if you prefer it, I can send a fast car into Norwich for your own things. Come and be my guest, please.”
Hamel hesitated. He had not the slightest desire to go to St. David’s Hall, and though he strove to ignore it, he was conscious of an aversion of which he was heartily ashamed for this strange fragment of humanity. On the other hand, his mission, the actual mission which had brought him down to these parts, could certainly best be served by an entree into the Hall itself—and there was the girl, whom he felt sure belonged there. He had never for a moment been able to dismiss her from his thoughts. Her still, cold face, the delicate perfection of her clothes and figure, the grey eyes which had rested upon his so curiously, haunted him. He was desperately anxious to see her again. If he refused this invitation, if he rejected Mr. Fentolin’s proffered friendship, it would be all the more difficult.
“You are really very kind,” he began hesitatingly—.
“It is settled,” Mr. Fentolin interrupted, “settled. Meekins, you can ride back again. I shall not paint to-day. Mr. Hamel, you will walk by my side, will you not? I can run my little machine quite slowly. You see, I have an electric battery. It needs charging often, but I have a dynamo of my own. You never saw a vehicle like this in all your travellings, did you?”
Hamel shook his head.
“An electrical bath-chair,” Mr. Fentolin continued. “Practice has made me remarkably skilful in its manipulation. You see, I can steer to an inch.”
He was already turning around. Hamel rose to his feet.
“You are really very kind,” he said. “I should like to come up and see the Hall, at any rate, but in the meantime, as we are here, could I just look over the inside of this little place? I found the large shed where the lifeboat used to be kept, locked up.”
Mr. Fentolin was manoeuvring his carriage. His back was towards Hamel.
“By all means,” he declared. “We will go in together. I have had the entrance widened so that I can ride straight into the sitting-room. But wait.”
He paused suddenly. He felt in all his pockets.
“Dear me,” he exclaimed, “I find that I have left the keys! We will come down a little later, if you do not mind, Mr. Hamel. Or to-morrow, perhaps. You will not mind? It is very careless of me, but seeing you about the place and imagining that you were an intruder, made me angry, and I started off in a hurry. Now walk by my side up to the house, please, and talk to me. It is so interesting for me to meet men,” he went on, as they started along the straight path, “who do things in life; who go to foreign countries, meet strange people, and have new experiences. I have been a good many years like this, you know.”
“It is a great affliction,” Hamel murmured sympathetically.
“In my youth I was an athlete,” Mr. Fentolin continued. “I played cricket for the Varsity and for my county. I hunted, too, and shot. I did all the things a man loves to do. I might still shoot, they tell me, but my strength has ebbed away. I am too weak to lift a gun, too weak even to handle a fishing-rod. I have just a few hobbies in life which keep me alive. Are you a politician, Mr. Hamel?”
“Not in the least,” Hamel replied. “I have been out of England too long to keep in touch with politics.”
“Naturally,” Mr. Fentolin agreed. “It amuses me to follow the course of events. I have a good many friends in London and abroad who are kind to me, who keep me informed, send me odd bits of information not available for every one, and it amuses me to put these things together in my mind and to try and play the prophet. I was in the Foreign Office once, you know. I take up my paper every morning, and it is one of my chief interests to see how near my own speculations come to the truth. Just now for example, there are strange things doing on the Continent.”
“In America,” Hamel remarked, “they affect to look upon England as a doomed Power.”
“Not altogether supine yet,” Mr. Fentolin observed, “yet even this last generation has seen weakening. We have lost so much self-reliance. Perhaps it is having these grown-up children who we think can take care of us—Canada and Australia, and the others. However, we will not talk of politics. It bores you, I can see. We will try and find some other subject. Now tell me, don’t you think this is ingenious?”
They had reached the foot of the hill upon which the Hall was situated. In front of them, underneath the terrace, was a little iron gate, held open now by Meekins, who had gone on ahead and dismounted from his bicycle.
“I have a subterranean way from here into the Hall,” Mr. Fentolin explained. “Come with me. You will only have to stoop a little, and it may amuse you. You need not be afraid. There are electric lights every ten yards. I turn them on with this switch—see.”
Mr. Fentolin touched a button in the wall, and the place was at once brilliantly illuminated. A little row of lights from the ceiling and the walls stretched away as far as one could see. They passed through the iron gates, which shut behind them with a click. Stooping a little, Hamel was still able to walk by the side of the man in the chair. They traversed about a hundred yards of subterranean way. Here and there a fungus hung down from the wall, otherwise it was beautifully kept and dry. By and by, with a little turn, they came to an incline and another iron gate, held open for them by a footman. Mr. Fentolin sped up the last few feet into the great hall, which seemed more imposing than ever by reason of this unexpected entrance. Hamel, blinking a little, stepped to his side.
“Welcome!” Mr. Fentolin cried gaily. “Welcome, my friend Mr. Hamel, to St. David’s Hall!”
During the next half-hour, Hamel was introduced to luxuries to which, in a general way, he was entirely unaccustomed. One man-servant was busy preparing his bath in a room leading out of his sleeping apartment, while another brought him a choice of evening clothes and superintended his disrobing. Hamel, always observant, studied his surroundings with keen interest. He found himself in a queerly mixed atmosphere of luxurious modernity and stately antiquity. His four-poster, the huge couch at the foot of his bed, and all the furniture about the room, was of the Queen Anne period. The bathroom which communicated with his apartment was the latest triumph of the plumber’s art—a room with floor and walls of white tiles, the bath itself a little sunken and twice the ordinary size. He dispensed so far as he could with the services of the men and descended, as soon as he was dressed, into the hall. Meekins was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, dressed now in somber black.
“Mr. Fentolin will be glad if you will step into his room, sir,” he announced, leading the way.
Mr. Fentolin was seated in his chair, reading the Times in a corner of his library. Shaped blocks had been placed behind and in front of the wheels of his little vehicle, to prevent it from moving. A shaded reading-lamp stood on the table by his side. He did not at once look up, and Hamel glanced around with genuine admiration. The shelves which lined the walls and the winged cases which protruded into the room were filled with books. There was a large oak table with beautifully carved legs, piled with all sorts of modern reviews and magazines. A log fire was burning in the big oaken grate. The perfume from a great bowl of lavender seemed to mingle curiously yet pleasantly with the half musty odour of the old leather-bound volumes. The massive chimneypiece was of black oak, and above it were carved the arms of the House of Fentolin. The walls were oak-panelled to the ceiling.
“Refreshed, I hope, by your bath and change, my dear visitor?” the head of the house remarked, as he laid down his paper. “Draw a chair up here and join me in a glass of vermouth. You need not be afraid of it. It comes to me from the maker as a special favour.”
Hamel accepted a quaintly-cut wine-glass full of the amber liquid. Mr. Fentolin sipped his with the air of a connoisseur.
“This,” he continued, “is one of our informal days. There is no one in the house save my sister-in-law, niece, and nephew, and a poor invalid gentleman who, I am sorry to say, is confined to his bed. My sister-in-law is also, I regret to say, indisposed. She desired me to present her excuses to you and say how greatly she is looking forward to making your acquaintance during the next few days.”
Hamel bowed.
“It is very kind of Mrs. Fentolin,” he murmured.
“On these occasions,” Mr. Fentolin continued, “we do not make use of a drawing-room. My niece will come in here presently. You are looking at my books, I see. Are you, by any chance, a bibliophile? I have a case of manuscripts here which might interest you.”
Hamel shook his head.
“Only in the abstract, I fear,” he answered. “I have scarcely opened a serious book since I was at Oxford.”
“What was your year?” Mr. Fentolin asked.
“Fourteen years ago I left Magdalen,” Hamel replied. “I had made up my mind to be an engineer, and I went over to the Boston Institute of Technology.”
Mr. Fentolin nodded appreciatively.
“A magnificent profession,” he murmured. “A healthy one, too, I should judge from your appearance. You are a strong man, Mr. Hamel.”
“I have had reason to be,” Hamel rejoined. “During nearly the whole of the time I have been abroad, I have been practically pioneering. Building railways in the far West, with gangs of Chinese and Italians and Hungarians and scarcely a foreman who isn’t terrified of his job, isn’t exactly drawing-room work.”
“You are going back there?” Mr. Fentolin asked, with interest.
Hamel shook his head.
“I have no plans,” he declared. “I have been fortunate enough, or shall I some day say unfortunate enough, I wonder, to have inherited a large legacy.”
Mr. Fentolin smiled.
“Don’t ever doubt your good fortune,” he said earnestly. “The longer I live—and in my limited way I do see a good deal of life—the more I appreciate the fact that there isn’t anything in this world that compares with the power of money. I distrust a poor man. He may mean to be honest, but he is at all times subject to temptation. Ah! here is my niece.”
Mr. Fentolin turned towards the door. Hamel rose at once to his feet. His surmise, then, had been correct. She was coming towards them very quietly. In her soft grey dinner-gown, her brown hair smoothly brushed back, a pearl necklace around her long, delicate neck, she seemed to him a very exquisite embodiment of those memories which he had been carrying about throughout the afternoon.
“Here, Mr. Hamel,” his host said, “is a member of my family who has been a deserter for a short time. This is Mr. Richard Hamel, Esther; my niece, Miss Esther Fentolin.”
She held out her hand with the faintest possible smile, which might have been of greeting or recognition.
“I travelled for some distance in the train with Mr. Hamel this afternoon, I think,” she remarked.
“Indeed?” Mr. Fentolin exclaimed. “Dear me, that is very interesting—very interesting, indeed! Mr. Hamel, I am sure, did not tell you of his destination?”
He watched them keenly. Hamel, though he scarcely understood, was quick to appreciate the possible significance of that tentative question.
“We did not exchange confidences,” he observed. “Miss Fentolin only changed into my carriage during the last few minutes of her journey. Besides,” he continued, “to tell you the truth, my ideas as to my destination were a little hazy. To come and look for some queer sort of building by the side of the sea, which has been unoccupied for a dozen years or so, scarcely seems a reasonable quest, does it?”
“Scarcely, indeed,” Mr. Fentolin assented. “You may thank me, Mr. Hamel, for the fact that the place is not in ruins. My blatant trespassing has saved you from that, at least. After dinner we must talk further about the Tower. To tell you the truth, I have grown accustomed to the use of the little place.”
The sound of the dinner gong boomed through the house. A moment later Gerald entered, followed by a butler announcing dinner.
“The only remaining member of my family,” Mr. Fentolin remarked, indicating his nephew. “Gerald, you will be pleased, I know, to meet Mr. Hamel. Mr. Hamel has been a great traveller. Long before you can remember, his father used to paint wonderful pictures of this coast.”
Gerald shook hands with his visitor. His face, for a moment, lighted up. He was looking pale, though, and singularly sullen and dejected.
“There are two of your father’s pictures in the modern side of the gallery up-stairs,” he remarked, a little diffidently. “They are great favourites with everybody here.”
They all went in to dinner together. Meekins, who had appeared silently, had glided unnoticed behind his master’s chair and wheeled it across the hall.
“A partie carree to-night,” Mr. Fentolin declared. “I have a resident doctor here, a very delightful person, who often dines with us, but to-night I thought not. Five is an awkward number. I want to get to know you better, Mr. Hamel, and quickly. I want you, too, to make friends with my niece and nephew. Mr. Hamel’s father,” he went on, addressing the two latter, “and your father were great friends. By-the-by, have I told you both exactly why Mr. Hamel is a guest here to-night—why he came to these parts at all? No? Listen, then. He came to take possession of the Tower. The worst of it is that it belongs to him, too. His father bought it from your father more years ago than we should care to talk about. I have really been a trespasser all this time.”
They took their places at a small round table in the middle of the dining-room. The shaded lights thrown downwards upon the table seemed to leave most of the rest of the apartment in semi-darkness. The gloomy faces of the men and women whose pictures hung upon the walls were almost invisible. The servants themselves, standing a little outside the halo of light, were like shadows passing swiftly and noiselessly back and forth. At the far end of the room was an organ, and to the left a little balcony, built out as though for an orchestra. Hamel looked about him almost in wonderment. There was something curiously impressive in the size of the apartment and its emptiness.
“A trespasser,” Mr. Fentolin continued, as he took up the menu and criticised it through his horn-rimmed eyeglass, “that is what I have been, without a doubt.”
“But for your interest and consequent trespass,” Hamel remarked, “I should probably have found the roof off and the whole place in ruins.”
“Instead of which you found the door locked against you,” Mr. Fentolin pointed out. “Well, we shall see. I might, at any rate, have lost the opportunity of entertaining you here this evening. I am particularly glad to have an opportunity of making you known to my niece and nephew. I think you will agree with me that here are two young people who are highly to be commended. I cannot offer them a cheerful life here. There is little society, no gaiety, no sort of excitement. Yet they never leave me. They seem to have no other interest in life but to be always at my beck and call. A case, Mr. Hamel, of really touching devotion. If anything could reconcile me to my miserable condition, it would be the kindness and consideration of those by whom I am surrounded.”
Hamel murmured a few words of cordial agreement. Yet he found himself, in a sense, embarrassed. Gerald was looking down upon his plate and his face was hidden. Esther’s features had suddenly become stony and expressionless. Hamel felt instinctively that something was wrong.
“There are compensations,” Mr. Fentolin continued, with the air of one enjoying speech, “which find their way into even the gloomiest of lives. As I lie on my back, hour after hour, I feel all the more conscious of this. The world is a school of compensations, Mr. Hamel. The interests—the mental interests, I mean—of unfortunate people like myself, come to possess in time a peculiar significance and to yield a peculiar pleasure. I have hobbies, Mr. Hamel. I frankly admit it. Without my hobbies, I shudder to think what might become of me. I might become a selfish, cruel, misanthropical person. Hobbies are indeed a great thing.”
The brother and sister sat still in stony silence. Hamel, looking across the little table with its glittering load of cut glass and silver and scarlet flowers, caught something in Esther’s eyes, so rarely expressive of any emotion whatever, which puzzled him. He looked swiftly back at his host. Mr. Fentolin’s face, at that moment, was like a beautiful cameo. His expression was one of gentle benevolence.
“Let me be quite frank with you,” Mr. Fentolin murmured. “My occupation of the Tower is one of these hobbies. I love to sit there within a few yards of the sea and watch the tide come in. I catch something of the spirit, I think, which caught your father, Mr. Hamel, and kept him a prisoner here. In my small way I, too, paint while I am down there, paint and dream. These things may not appeal to you, but you must remember that there are few things left to me in life, and that those, therefore, which I can make use of, are dear to me. Gerald, you are silent to-night. How is it that you say nothing?”
“I am tired, sir,” the boy answered quietly.
Mr. Fentolin nodded gravely.
“It is inexcusable of me,” he declared smoothly, “to have forgotten even for a moment. My nephew, Mr. Hamel,” he went on, “had quite an exciting experience last night—or rather a series of experiences. He was first of all in a railway accident, and then, for the sake of a poor fellow who was with him and who was badly hurt, he motored back here in the grey hours of the morning and ran, they tell me, considerable risk of being drowned on the marshes. A very wonderful and praiseworthy adventure, I consider it. I trust that our friend up-stairs, when he recovers, will be properly grateful.”
Gerald rose to his feet precipitately. The service of dinner was almost concluded, and he muttered something which sounded like an excuse. Mr. Fentolin, however, stretched out his hand and motioned him to resume his seat.
“My dear Gerald!” he exclaimed reprovingly. “You would leave us so abruptly? Before your sister, too! What will Mr. Hamel think of our country ways? Pray resume your seat.”
For a moment the boy stood quite still, then he slowly subsided into his chair. Mr. Fentolin passed around a decanter of wine which had been placed upon the table by the butler. The servants had now left the room.
“You must excuse my nephew, if you please, Mr. Hamel,” he begged. “Gerald has a boy’s curious aversion to praise in any form. I am looking forward to hearing your verdict upon my port. The collection of wine and pictures was a hobby of my grandfather’s, for which we, his descendants, can never be sufficiently grateful.”
Hamel praised his wine, as indeed he had every reason to, but for a few moments the smooth conversation of his host fell upon deaf ears. He looked from the boy’s face, pale and wrinkled as though with some sort of suppressed pain, to the girl’s still, stony expression. This was indeed a house of mysteries! There was something here incomprehensible, some thing about the relations of these three and their knowledge of one another, utterly baffling. It was the queerest household, surely, into which any stranger had ever been precipitated.
“The planting of trees and the laying down of port are two virtues in our ancestors which have never been properly appreciated,” Mr. Fentolin continued. “Let us, at any rate, free ourselves from the reproach of ingratitude so far as regards my grandfather—Gerald Fentolin—to whom I believe we are indebted for this wine. We will drink—”
Mr. Fentolin broke off in the middle of his sentence. The august calm of the great house had been suddenly broken. From up-stairs came the tumult of raised voices, the slamming of a door, the falling of something heavy upon the floor. Mr. Fentolin listened with a grim change in his expression. His smile had departed, his lower lip was thrust out, his eyebrows met. He raised the little whistle which hung from his chain. At that moment, however, the door was opened. Doctor Sarson appeared.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Fentolin,” he said, “but our patient is becoming a little difficult. The concussion has left him, as I feared it might, in a state of nervous excitability. He insists upon an interview with you.”
Mr. Fentolin backed his little chair from the table. The doctor came over and laid his hand upon the handle.
“You will, I am sure, excuse me for a few moments, Mr. Hamel,” his host begged. “My niece and nephew will do their best to entertain you. Now, Sarson, I am ready.”
Mr. Fentolin glided across the dim, empty spaces of the splendid apartment, followed by the doctor; a ghostly little procession it seemed. The door was closed behind them. For a few moments a curious silence ensued. Gerald remained tense and apparently suffering from some sort of suppressed emotion. Esther for the first time moved in her place. She leaned towards Hamel. Her lips were slowly parted, her eyes sought the door as though in terror. Her voice, although save for themselves there was no one else in the whole of that great apartment, had sunk to the lowest of whispers.
“Are you a brave man, Mr. Hamel?” she asked.
He was staggered but he answered her promptly.
“I believe so.”
“Don’t give up the Tower—just yet. That is what—he has brought you here for. He wants you to give it up and go back. Don’t!”
The earnestness of her words was unmistakable. Hamel felt the thrill of coming events.
“Why not?”
“Don’t ask me,” she begged. “Only if you are brave, if you have feeling for others, keep the Tower, if it be for only a week. Hush!”
The door had been noiselessly opened. The doctor appeared and advanced to the table with a grave little bow.
“Mr. Fentolin,” he said, “has been kind enough to suggest that I take a glass of wine with you. My presence is not needed up-stairs. Mr. Hamel,” he added, “I am glad, sir, to make your acquaintance. I have for a long time been a great admirer of your father’s work.”
He took his place at the head of the table and, filling his glass, bowed towards Hamel. Once more Gerald and his sister relapsed almost automatically into an indifferent and cultivated silence. Hamel found civility towards the newcomer difficult. Unconsciously his attitude became that of the other two. He resented the intrusion. He found himself regarding the advent of Doctor Sarson as possessing some secondary significance. It was almost as though Mr. Fentolin preferred not to leave him alone with his niece and nephew.
Nevertheless, his voice, when he spoke, was clear and firm.