Huntingtower Part 5

"He's a brute," said Heritage. "But I'm not going to be done in by that cla.s.s of lad. There can be no gates on the sea side, so we'll work round that way, for I won't sleep till I've seen the place."

Presently the trees grew thinner, and the road plunged through thickets of hazel till it came to a sudden stop in a field. There the cover ceased wholly, and below them lay the glen of the Laver. Steep green banks descended to a stream which swept in coils of gold into the eye of the sunset. A little further down the channel broadened, the slopes fell back a little, and a tongue of glittering sea ran up to meet the hill waters. The Laver is a gentle stream after it leaves its cradle heights, a stream of clear pools and long bright shallows, winding by moorland steadings and upland meadows; but in its last half-mile it goes mad, and imitates its childhood when it tumbled over granite shelves. Down in that green place the crystal water gushed and frolicked as if determined on one hour of rapturous life before joining the sedater sea.

Heritage flung himself on the turf.

"This is a good place! Ye G.o.ds, what a good place! Dogson, aren't you glad you came? I think everything's bewitched to-night. That village is bewitched, and that old woman's tea. Good white magic! And that foul innkeeper and that brigand at the gate. Black magic! And now here is the home of all enchantment--'island valley of Avilion'--'waters that listen for lovers'--all the rest of it!"

d.i.c.kson observed and marvelled.

"I can't make you out, Mr. Heritage. You were saying last night you were a great democrat, and yet you were objecting to yon laddies camping on the moor. And you very near bit the neb off me when I said I liked Tennyson. And now...." Mr. McCunn's command of language was inadequate to describe the transformation.

"You're a precise, pragmatical Scot," was the answer. "Hang it, man, don't remind me that I'm inconsistent. I've a poet's licence to play the fool, and if you don't understand me, I don't in the least understand myself. All I know is that I'm feeling young and jolly and that it's the Spring."

Mr. Heritage was a.s.suredly in a strange mood. He began to whistle with a far-away look in his eye.

"Do you know what that is?" he asked suddenly.

d.i.c.kson, who could not detect any tune, said No.

"It's an _aria_ from a Russian opera that came out just before the war.

I've forgotten the name of the fellow who wrote it. Jolly thing, isn't it? I always remind myself of it when I'm in this mood, for it is linked with the greatest experience of my life. You said, I think, that you had never been in love?"

d.i.c.kson replied in the native fashion. "Have you?" he asked.

"I have, and I am--been for two years. I was down with my battalion on the Italian front early in 1918, and because I could speak the language they hoicked me out and sent me to Rome on a liaison job. It was Easter time and fine weather and, being glad to get out of the trenches, I was pretty well pleased with myself and enjoying life.... In the place where I stayed there was a girl. She was a Russian, a princess of a great family, but a refugee and of course as poor as sin.... I remember how badly dressed she was among all the well-to-do Romans. But, my G.o.d, what a beauty! There was never anything in the world like her.... She was little more than a child, and she used to sing that air in the morning as she went down the stairs.... They sent me back to the front before I had a chance of getting to know her, but she used to give me little timid good mornings, and her voice and eyes were like an angel's.... I'm over my head in love, but it's hopeless, quite hopeless. I shall never see her again."

"I'm sure I'm honoured by your confidence," said d.i.c.kson reverently.

The Poet, who seemed to draw exhilaration from the memory of his sorrows, arose and fetched him a clout on the back. "Don't talk of confidence as if you were a reporter," he said. "What about that House?

If we're to see it before the dark comes we'd better hustle."

The green slopes on their left, as they ran seaward, were clothed towards their summit with a tangle of broom and light scrub. The two forced their way through this, and found to their surprise that on this side there were no defences of the Huntingtower demesne. Along the crest ran a path which had once been gravelled and trimmed. Beyond through a thicket of laurels and rhododendrons they came on a long unkempt aisle of gra.s.s, which seemed to be one of those side avenues often found in connection with old Scots dwellings. Keeping along this they reached a grove of beech and holly through which showed a dim shape of masonry. By a common impulse they moved stealthily, crouching in cover, till at the far side of the wood they found a sunk fence and looked over an acre or two of what had once been lawn and flower-beds to the front of the mansion.

The outline of the building was clearly silhouetted against the glowing west, but since they were looking at the east face the detail was all in shadow. But, dim as it was, the sight was enough to give d.i.c.kson the surprise of his life. He had expected something old and baronial. But this was new, raw and new, not twenty years built. Some madness had prompted its creator to set up a replica of a Tudor house in a countryside where the thing was unheard of. All the tricks were there--oriel windows, lozenged panes, high twisted chimney stacks; the very stone was red, as if to imitate the mellow brick of some ancient Kentish manor. It was new, but it was also decaying. The creepers had fallen from the walls, the pilasters on the terrace were tumbling down, lichen and moss were on the doorsteps. Shuttered, silent, abandoned, it stood like a harsh _memento mori_ of human hopes.

d.i.c.kson had never before been affected by an inanimate thing with so strong a sense of disquiet. He had pictured an old stone tower on a bright headland; he found instead this raw thing among trees. The decadence of the brand-new repels as something against nature, and this new thing was decadent. But there was a mysterious life in it, for though not a chimney smoked, it seemed to enshrine a personality and to wear a sinister _aura_. He felt a lively distaste, which was almost fear. He wanted to get far away from it as fast as possible. The sun, now sinking very low, sent up rays which kindled the crests of a group of firs to the left of the front door. He had the absurd fancy that they were torches flaming before a bier.

It was well that the two had moved quietly and kept in shadow. Footsteps fell on their ears, on the path which threaded the lawn just beyond the sunk-fence. It was the keeper of the West Lodge and he carried something on his back, but both that and his face were indistinct in the half-light.

Other footsteps were heard, coming from the other side of the lawn. A man's shod feet rang on the stone of a flagged path, and from their irregular fall it was plain that he was lame. The two men met near the door, and spoke together. Then they separated, and moved one down each side of the house. To the two watchers they had the air of a patrol, or of warders pacing the corridors of a prison.

"Let's get out of this," said d.i.c.kson, and turned to go.

The air had the curious stillness which precedes the moment of sunset, when the birds of day have stopped their noises and the sounds of night have not begun. But suddenly in the silence fell notes of music. They seemed to come from the house, a voice singing softly but with great beauty and clearness.

d.i.c.kson halted in his steps. The tune, whatever it was, was like a fresh wind to blow aside his depression. The house no longer looked sepulchral. He saw that the two men had hurried back from their patrol, had met and exchanged some message, and made off again as if alarmed by the music. Then he noticed his companion....

Heritage was on one knee with his face rapt and listening. He got to his feet and appeared to be about to make for the House. d.i.c.kson caught him by the arm and dragged him into the bushes, and he followed unresistingly, like a man in a dream. They ploughed through the thicket, recrossed the gra.s.s avenue, and scrambled down the hillside to the banks of the stream.

Then for the first time d.i.c.kson observed that his companion's face was very white, and that sweat stood on his temples. Heritage lay down and lapped up water like a dog. Then he turned a wild eye on the other.

"I am going back," he said. "That is the voice of the girl I saw in Rome, and it is singing her song!"

CHAPTER IV

DOUGAL

"You'll do nothing of the kind," said d.i.c.kson. "You're coming home to your supper. It was to be on the chap of nine."

"I'm going back to that place."

The man was clearly demented and must be humoured. "Well, you must wait till the morn's morning. It's very near dark now, and those are two ugly customers wandering about yonder. You'd better sleep the night on it."

Mr. Heritage seemed to be persuaded. He suffered himself to be led up the now dusky slopes to the gate where the road from the village ended.

He walked listlessly like a man engaged in painful reflection. Once only he broke the silence.

"You heard the singing?" he asked.

d.i.c.kson was a very poor hand at a lie. "I heard something," he admitted.

"You heard a girl's voice singing?"

"It sounded like that," was the admission. "But I'm thinking it might have been a seagull."

"You're a fool," said the Poet rudely.

The return was a melancholy business, compared to the bright speed of the outward journey. d.i.c.kson's mind was a chaos of feelings, all of them unpleasant. He had run up against something which he violently, blindly detested, and the trouble was that he could not tell why. It was all perfectly absurd, for why on earth should an ugly house, some overgrown trees and a couple of ill-favoured servants so malignly affect him? Yet this was the fact; he had strayed out of Arcady into a sphere that filled him with revolt and a nameless fear. Never in his experience had he felt like this, this foolish childish panic which took all the colour and zest out of life. He tried to laugh at himself but failed. Heritage, stumbling alone by his side, effectually crushed his effort to discover humour in the situation. Some exhalation from that infernal place had driven the Poet mad. And then that voice singing! A seagull, he had said. More like a nightingale, he reflected--a bird which in the flesh he had never met.

Mrs. Morran had the lamp lit and a fire burning in her cheerful kitchen.

The sight of it somewhat restored d.i.c.kson's equanimity, and to his surprise he found that he had an appet.i.te for supper. There was new milk, thick with cream, and most of the dainties which had appeared at tea, supplemented by a n.o.ble dish of shimmering "potted-head." The hostess did not share their meal, being engaged in some duties in the little cubby-hole known as the back kitchen.

Heritage drank a gla.s.s of milk but would not touch food.

"I called this place Paradise four hours ago," he said. "So it is, but I fancy it is next door to h.e.l.l. There is something devilish going on inside that park wall and I mean to get to the bottom of it."

"Hoots! Nonsense!" d.i.c.kson replied with affected cheerfulness.

"To-morrow you and me will take the road for Auchenlochan. We needn't trouble ourselves about an ugly old house and a wheen impident lodge-keepers."

"To-morrow I'm going to get inside the place. Don't come unless you like, but it's no use arguing with me. My mind is made up."

Heritage cleared a s.p.a.ce on the table and spread out a section of a large-scale Ordnance map.

"I must clear my head about the topography, the same as if this were a battle-ground. Look here, Dogson.... The road past the inn that we went by to-night runs north and south." He tore a page from a note-book and proceeded to make a rough sketch.[1]... "One end we know abuts on the Laver glen, and the other stops at the South Lodge. Inside the wall which follows the road is a long belt of plantation--mostly beeches and ash--then to the west a kind of park, and beyond that the lawns of the house. Strips of plantation with avenues between follow the north and south sides of the park. On the sea side of the House are the stables and what looks like a walled garden, and beyond them what seems to be open ground with an old dovecot marked and the ruins of Huntingtower keep. Beyond that there is more open ground, till you come to the cliffs of the cape. Have you got that?... It looks possible from the contouring to get on to the sea cliffs by following the Laver, for all that side is broken up into ravines.... But look at the other side--the Garple glen. It's evidently a deep-cut gully, and at the bottom it opens out into a little harbour. There's deep water there, you observe. Now the House on the south side--the Garple side--is built fairly close to the edge of the cliffs. Is that all clear in your head? We can't reconnoitre unless we've got a working notion of the lie of the land."