Beaumaroy Home from the Wars Part 8

"Part of his chivalry to a.s.sume she can't think of him yet!" Mary was half impatient, half reluctantly admiring; not an uncommon mixture of feeling for the extreme forms of virtue to produce. In the net result, however, her mental image of Alec lost something of its heroic proportions.

But professionally (the distinction must not be pushed too far, she was not built in water-tight compartments) Tower Cottage remained obstinately in the centre of her thoughts; and, connected with it, there arose a puzzle over Dr. Irechester's demeanour. She had taken advantage of Beaumaroy's permission--though rather doubtful whether she was doing right, for she was still inexperienced in niceties of etiquette--and sent on the letter, with a frank note explaining her own feelings and the reason which had caused her to pay her visit to Mr. Saffron. But though Irechester was quite friendly when they met at Old Place before dinner, and talked freely to her during a rather prolonged period of waiting (Captain Alec and Cynthia, Gertie and two subalterns were very late, having apparently forgotten dinner in more refined delights), he made no reference to the letters, nor to Tower Cottage or its inmates.

Mary herself was too shy to break the ice, but wondered at his silence, and the more because the matter evidently had not gone out of his mind.

For, after dinner, when the port had gone round once and the proper healths been honoured, he said across the table to Mr. Penrose:

"We were talking the other day of the Tower--on the heath, you know, by old Saffron's cottage--and none of us knew its history. You know all about Inkston from time out o' mind. Have you got any story about it?"

Mr. Penrose practised as a solicitor in London, but lived in a little old house near the Irechesters' in the village street, and devoted his leisure to the antiquities and topography of the neighbourhood; his lore was plentiful and curious, if not important. He was a small, neat old fellow, with white whiskers of the antique cut, a thin voice, and a dry cackling laugh.

"There was a story about it, and one quite fit for Christmas evening, if you're in the mood to hear it."

The thin voice was penetrating. At the promise of a story silence fell on the company, and Mr. Penrose told his tale, vouching as his authority an erstwhile "oldest inhabitant," now gathered to his fathers; for the tale dated back some eighty years, to the date of the ancient's early manhood.

A seafaring man had suddenly appeared, out of s.p.a.ce, as it were, at Inkston, and taken the cottage. He carried with him a strong smell of rum and tobacco, and gave it to be understood that his name was Captain Duggle. He was no beauty, and his behaviour was worse than his looks. To that quiet village, in those quiet strait-laced times, he was a horror and a portent. He not only drank prodigiously--that, being in character and also a source of local profit, might have pa.s.sed with mild censure--but he swore and blasphemed horribly, spurning the parson, mocking at Revelation, even at the Deity Himself. The Devil was his friend, he said. A most terrible fellow, this Captain Duggle. Inkston's hair stood on end, and no wonder!

"No doubt they shivered with delight over it all," commented Mr. Naylor.

Captain Duggle lived all by himself--well, what G.o.d-fearing Christian, male or female, would be found to live with him?--came and went mysteriously and capriciously, always full of money, and at least equally full of drink. What he did with himself n.o.body knew, but evil legends gathered about him. Terrified wayfarers, pa.s.sing the cottage by night, took oath that they had heard more than one voice!

"This is proper Christmas!" a subaltern interjected into Gertie's ear.

Mr. Penrose, with an air of gratification, continued his narrative.

"The story goes on to tell," he said, "of a final interview with the village clergyman, in which that reverend man, as in duty bound, solemnly told Captain Duggle that, however much he might curse, and blaspheme, and drink, and--er--do all the other things that the Captain did" (Obviously here Mr. Penrose felt hampered by the presence of ladies), "yet Death, Judgment, and Churchyard waited for him at last.

Whereupon the Captain, emitting an inconceivably terrific imprecation, which no one ever dared to repeat and which consequently is lost to tradition, declared that the first he'd never feared, the second was parson's gabble, and as to the third, never should his dead toes be nearer any church than for the last forty years his living feet had been! If so be as he wasn't drowned at sea, he'd make a grave for himself!"

Mr. Penrose paused, sipped port wine, and resumed.

"And so, no doubt, he did, building the Tower for that purpose. By bribes and threats he got two men to work for him. One was the uncle of my informant. But though he built that Tower, and inside it dug his grave, he never lay there, being, as things turned out, carried off by the Devil. Oh, yes, there was no doubt! He went home one night--a Sat.u.r.day--very drunk, as usual. On the Sunday night a belated wayfarer--possibly also drunk--heard wild shrieks and saw a strange red glow through the window of the Tower--now, by the way, boarded up. And no doubt he'd have smelt brimstone if the wind hadn't set the wrong way!

Anyhow Captain Duggle was never seen again by mortal eyes--at Inkston, at all events. After a time the landlord of the cottage screwed up his courage to resume possession--the Captain had only a lease of it, though he built the Tower at his own charges, and, I believe, without any permission, the landlord being much too frightened to interfere with him. He found everything in a sad mess there, while in the Tower itself every blessed stick had been burnt up. So the story looks pretty plausible."

"And the grave?" This question came eagerly from at least three of the company.

"In front of the fireplace there was a big oblong hole--six feet by three feet by four--planks at the bottom, the sides roughly lined with brick. Captain Duggle's grave; but he wasn't in it!"

"But what really became of him, Mr. Penrose?" cried Cynthia.

"The Rising Generation is very sceptical," said old Naylor. "You, of course, Penrose, believe the story?"

"I do," said Mr. Penrose composedly. "I believe that a devil carried him off--and that its name was _delirium tremens_. We can guess--can't we, Irechester?--why he smashed or burnt everything, and fled in mad terror into the darkness. Where to? Was he drowned at sea, or did he take his life, or did he rot to death in some filthy hole? n.o.body knows. But the grave he dug is there in the Tower--unless it's been filled up since old Saffron has lived there."

"Why in the world wasn't it filled up before?" asked Alec Naylor, with a laugh. "People lived in the cottage, didn't they?"

"I've visited the cottage often," Irechester interposed, "when various people had it, but I never saw any signs of the Tower being used."

"It never was, I'm sure; and as for the grave--well, Alec, in country parts, to this day, you'd be thought a bold man if you filled up a grave that your neighbour had dug for himself--and such a neighbour as Captain Duggle! He might take it into his head some night to visit it, and if he found it filled up there'd be trouble--nasty trouble!" His laugh cackled out rather uncomfortably. Gertie shivered, and one of the subalterns gulped down his port.

"Old Saffron's a man of education, I believe. No doubt he pays no heed to such nonsense, and has had the thing covered up," said Naylor.

"As to that I don't know. Perhaps you do, Irechester? He's your patient, isn't he?"

Dr. Irechester sat four places from Mary. Before he replied to the question he cast a glance at her, smiling rather mockingly. "I've attended him on one or two occasions, but I've never seen the inside of the Tower. So I don't know either."

"Oh, but I'm curious! I shall ask Mr. Beaumaroy," cried Cynthia.

The ironical character of Irechester's smile grew more p.r.o.nounced, and his voice was at its driest: "Certainly you can ask Beaumaroy, Miss Walford. As far as asking goes, there's no difficulty."

A pause followed this pointed remark, on which n.o.body seemed disposed to comment. Mrs. Naylor ended the session by rising from her chair.

But Mary Arkroyd was disquieted, worried as to how she stood with Irechester, vaguely but insistently worried over the whole Tower Cottage business. Well, the first point she could soon settle--or try to settle, anyhow.

With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was made up, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; her resolute approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himself isolated for the moment from everybody except Mary.

"You got my letter, Dr. Irechester? I--I rather expected an answer."

"Your conduct was so obviously and punctiliously correct," he replied suavely, "that I thought my answer could wait till I met you here to-day, as I knew that I was to have the pleasure of doing." He looked her full in the eyes. "You were placed--placed, my dear colleague--in a position in which you had no alternative."

"I thought so, Dr. Irechester, but----"

"Oh yes, clearly! I'm far from making any complaint." He gave her a courteous little bow, but it was one which plainly closed the subject.

Indeed he pa.s.sed by her and joined a group that had gathered on the hearthrug, leaving her alone.

So she stood for a moment, oppressed by a growing uneasiness. Irechester said nothing, but surely meant something of import? He mocked her, but not idly or out of wantonness. He seemed almost to warn her. What could there be to warn her about? He had laid an odd emphasis on the word "placed"; he had repeated it. Who had "placed" her there? Mr. Saffron?

Or Mr.----?

Alec Naylor broke in on her uneasy meditation. "It's a clinking night, Doctor Mary," he observed. "Do you mind if I walk Miss Walford home--instead of her going with you in your car, you know? It's only a couple of miles and----"

"Do you think your leg can stand it?"

He laughed. "I'll cut the thing off, if it dares to make any objection!"

CHAPTER VII

A GENTLEMANLY STRANGER

On this same Christmas Day Sergeant Hooper was feeling morose and discontented; not because he was alone in the world (a situation comprising many advantages); nor on the score of his wages, which were extremely liberal; nor on account of the "old blighter's"--that is, Mr.

Saffron's--occasional outbursts of temper, these being in the nature of the case and within the terms of the contract; nor, finally, by reason of Beaumaroy's airy insolence, since from his youth up the Sergeant was hardened to unfavourable comments on his personal appearance, trifling vulgarities which a man of sense could afford to ignore.

No; the winter of his discontent--a bitter winter--was due to the conviction, which had been growing in his mind for some time, that he was only in half the secret, and that not the more profitable half. He knew that the old blighter had to be humoured in certain small ways--as, for example, in regard to the combination knife-and-fork--and the reason for it. But, first, he did not know what happened inside the Tower; he had never seen the inside of it; the door was always locked; he was never invited to accompany his masters when they repaired thither by day, and he was not on the premises by night. And, secondly, he did not understand the Wednesday journeys to London, and he had never seen the inside of Beaumaroy's brown bag--that, like the Tower door, was always locked. He had handled it once, just before the pair set out for London one Wednesday. Beaumaroy, a careless man sometimes, in spite of the cunning which Dr. Irechester attributed to him, had left it on the parlour table while he helped Mr. Saffron on with his coat in the pa.s.sage, and the Sergeant had swiftly and surrept.i.tiously lifted it up.

It was very light--obviously empty, or, at all events, holding only feather-weight contents. He had never got near it when it came back from town; then it always went straight into the Tower and had the key turned on it forthwith.

But the Sergeant, although slow-witted as well as ugly, had had his experiences; he had carried weights both in the army and in other inst.i.tutions which are officially described as His Majesty's, and had seen other men carry them too. From the set of Beaumaroy's figure as he arrived home on at least two occasions with the brown bag, and from the way in which he handled it, the Sergeant confidently drew the conclusion that it was of a considerable, almost a grievous, weight. What was the heavy thing in it? What became of that thing after it was taken into the Tower? To whose use or profit did it, or was it to, ensure? Because it was plain, even to the meanest capacity, that the contents of the bag had a value in the eyes of the two men who went to London for them, and who shepherded them from London to the custody of the Tower.

These thoughts filled and racked his brain as he sat drinking rum and water in the bar of the Green Man on Christmas evening; a solitary man, mixing little with the people of the village, he sat apart at a small table in the corner, musing within himself, yet idly watching the company--villagers, a few friends from London and elsewhere, some soldiers and their ladies. Besides these, a tall slim man stood leaning against the bar, at the far end of it, talking to Bill Smithers, the landlord, and sipping a whisky-and-soda between pulls at his cigar. He wore a neat dark overcoat, brown shoes, and a bowler hat rather on one side; his appearance was, in fact, genteel, though his air was a trifle raffish. In age he seemed about forty. The Sergeant had never seen him before, and therefore favoured him with a glance of special attention.