Ravensdene Court Part 3

"Mr. Middlebrook is a bit of a tease, Uncle Francis," said my guide.

"I've found that out already. He's not the paper-and-parchment person you expected."

"Oh, dear me, I didn't expect anything of the sort!" protested Mr.

Raven. He looked from his niece to me, and laughed, shaking his head.

"These modern young ladies--ah!" he exclaimed. "But come--I'll show Mr. Middlebrook his rooms."

He led the way into the house and up the great stair of the hall to a couple of apartments which overlooked the park. I had a general sense of big s.p.a.ces, ancient things, mysterious nooks and corners; my own rooms, a bed-chamber and a parlour, were delightful. My host was almost painfully anxious to a.s.sure himself that I had everything in them that I was likely to want, and fussed about from one room to the other, seeing to details that I should never have thought of.

"You'll be able to find your way down?" he said at last, as he made for the door. "We dine at seven--perhaps there'll be time to take a little look round before then, after we've dressed. And I must introduce Mr. Cazalette--you don't know him personally?--oh, a remarkable man, a very remarkable man indeed--yes!"

I did not waste much time over my toilet, nor, apparently did Miss Marcia Raven, for I found her, in a smart gown, in the hall when I went down at half-past-six. And she and I had taken a look at its multifarious objects before Mr. Raven appeared on the scene, followed by Mr. Cazalette. One glance at this gentleman a.s.sured me that our host had been quite right when he spoke of him as remarkable--he was not merely remarkable, but so extraordinary in outward appearance that I felt it difficult to keep my eyes off him.

CHAPTER III

THE MORNING TIDE

Miss Raven had already described Mr. Cazalette to me, by inference, as a queer, snuffy bald-pated old man, but this summary synopsis of his exterior features failed to do justice to a remarkable original. There was something supremely odd about him. I thought, at first, that my impression of oddity might be derived from his clothes--he wore a strangely-cut dress-coat of blue cloth, with gold b.u.t.tons, a buff waistcoat, and a frilled shirt--but I soon came to the conclusion that he would be queer and uncommon in any garments. About Mr. Cazalette there was an atmosphere--and it was decidedly one of mystery. First and last, he looked uncanny.

Mr. Raven introduced us with a sort of old-world formality (I soon discovered, as regards him, that he was so far unaware that a vast gulf lay between the manners and customs of society as they are nowadays and as they were when he left England for India in the 'seventies: he was essentially mid-Victorian) and in order to keep up to it, I saluted Mr. Cazalette with great respect and expressed myself as feeling highly honoured by meeting one so famous as my fellow-guest. Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Cazalette's tightly-locked lips relaxed into what was plainly a humorous smile, and he favoured me with a knowing look that was almost a wink.

"Aye, well," he said, "you're just about as well known in your own line, Middlebrook, as I am in mine, and between the pair of us I've no doubt we'll be able to reduce chaos into order. But we'll not talk shop at this hour of the day--there's more welcome matters at hand."

He put his snuff box and his gaudy handkerchief out of sight, and looked at his host and hostess with another knowing glance, reminding me somehow of a wicked old condor which I had sometimes seen at the Zoological Gardens, eyeing the keeper who approached with its meal.

"Mr. Cazalette," remarked Miss Raven, with an informing glance at me, "never, on principle, touches bite or sup between breakfast and dinner--and he has no great love of breakfast."

"I'm a disciple of the justly famed and great man, Abernethy,"

observed Mr. Cazalette. "I'd never have lived to my age nor kept my energy at what, thank Heaven, it is, if I hadn't been. D'ye know how old I am, Middlebrook?"

"I really don't, Mr. Cazalette," I replied.

"Well I'm eighty years of age," he answered with a grin. "And I'm intending to be a hundred! And on my hundredth birthday, I'll give a party, and I'll dance with the sprightliest la.s.sie that's there, and if I'm not as lively as she is I'll be sore out of my calculations."

"A truly wonderful young man!" exclaimed Mr. Raven. "I veritably believe he feels--and is--younger than myself--and I'm twenty years his junior."

So I had now discovered certain facts about Mr. Cazalette. He was an octogenarian. He was uncannily active. He had an almost imp-like desire to live--and to dance when he ought to have been wrapped in blankets and saying his last prayers. And a few minutes later, when we were seated round our host's table, I discovered another fact--Mr.

Cazalette was one of those men to whom dinner is the event of the day, and who regard conversation--on their own part, at any rate--as a wicked disturbance of sacred rites. As the meal progressed (and Mr.

Raven's cook proved to be an unusually clever and good one) I was astonished at Mr. Cazalette's gastronomic powers and at his love of mad dishes: indeed, I never saw a man eat so much, nor with such hearty appreciation of his food, nor in such a concentrated silence.

Nevertheless, that he kept his ears wide open to what was being said around him, I soon discovered. I was telling Mr. Raven and his niece of my adventure of the afternoon, and suddenly I observed that Mr.

Cazalette, on the other side of the round table at which we sat, had stopped eating, and that, knife and fork still in his queer, claw-like hands, he was peering at me under the shaded lamps, his black, burning eyes full of a strange, absorbed interest. I paused--involuntarily.

"Go on!" said he. "Did you mention the name Netherfield just then?"

"I did," said I. "Netherfield."

"Well, continue with your tale," he said. "I'm listening. I'm a silent man when I'm busy with my meat and drink, but I've a fine pair of ears."

He began to ply knife and fork again, and I went on with my story, continuing it until the parting with Salter Quick. When I came to that, the footman who stood behind Mr. Cazalette's chair was just removing his last plate, and the old man leaned back a little and favoured the three of us with a look.

"Aye, well," he said, "and that's an interesting story, Middlebrook, and it tempts me to break my rule and talk a bit. It was some churchyard this fellow was seeking?"

"A churchyard--in this neighbourhood," I replied. "Or--churchyards."

"Where there were graves with the name Netherfield on their stones or slabs or monuments," he continued.

"Aye--just so. And those men he foregathered with at the inn, they'd never heard of anything at that point, nor elsewhere?"

"Neither there nor elsewhere," I a.s.sented.

"Then if there is such a place," said he, "it'll be one of those disused burial-grounds of which there are examples here in the north, and not a few."

"You know of some?" suggested Mr. Raven.

"I've seen such places," answered Mr. Cazalette. "Betwixt here--the sea-coast--and the Cheviots, westward, there's a good many spots that Goldsmith might have drawn upon for his deserted village. The folks go--the bit of a church falls into ruins--its graveyard gets choked with weeds--the stones are covered with moss and lichen--the monuments fall and are obscured by the gra.s.s--underneath the gra.s.s and the weed many an old family name lies hidden. And what'll that man be wanting to find any name at all for, I'd like to know!"

"The queer thing to me," observed Mr. Raven, "is that two men should be wanting to find it at the same time."

"That looks as if there were some very good reason why it should be found, doesn't it?" remarked his niece. "Anyway, it all sounds very queer--you've brought mystery with you, Mr. Middlebrook! Can't you suggest anything, Mr. Cazalette? I'm sure you're good at solving problems."

But just then Mr. Cazalette's particular servant put a fresh dish in front of him--a curry, the peculiar aroma of which evidently aroused his epicurean instinct. Instead of responding to Miss Raven's invitation he relapsed into silence, and picked up another fork.

When dinner was over I excused myself from sitting with the two elder men over their wine--Mr. Cazalette, whom by that time I, of course, knew for a Scotchman, turned out to have an old-fashioned taste for claret--and joined Miss Raven in the hall, a great, roomy, shadowy place which was evidently popular. There was a great fire in its big hearth-place with deep and comfortable chairs set about it; in one of these I found her sitting, a book in her hand. She dropped it as I approached and pointed to a chair at her side.

"What do you think of that queer old man?" she asked in a low voice as I sat down. "Isn't there something almost--what is it?--uncanny?--about him?"

"You might call him that," I a.s.sented. "Yes--I think uncanny would fit him. A very marvellous man, though, at his age."

"Aye!" she exclaimed, under her breath. "If I could live to see it, it wouldn't surprise me if he lived to be four hundred. He's so queer. Do you know that he actually goes out early--very early--in the morning and swims in the open sea?"

"Any weather?" I suggested.

"No matter what the weather is," she replied. "He's been here three weeks now, and he has never missed that morning swim. And sometimes the mornings have been Arctic--more than I could stand, anyway, and I'm pretty well hardened."

"A decided character!" I said musingly. "And somehow, he seems to fit in with his present surroundings. From what I have seen of it, Mr.

Raven was quite right in telling me that this house was a museum."

I was looking about me as I spoke. The big, high-roofed hall, like every room I had so far seen, was filled from floor to ceiling with books, pictures, statuary, armour, curiosities of every sort and of many ages. The prodigious numbers of the books alone showed me that I had no light task in prospect. But Miss Raven shook her head.

"Museum!" she exclaimed. "I should think so! But you've seen nothing--wait till you see the north wing. Every room in that is crammed with things--I think my great-uncle, who left all this to Uncle Francis recently, must have done nothing whatever but buy, and buy, and buy things, and then, when he got them home, have just dumped them down anywhere! There's some order here," she added, looking round, "but across there, in the north wing, it's confusion."

"Did you know your great-uncle?" I asked.

"I? No!" she replied. "Oh, dear me, no! I'd never been in the north until Uncle Francis came home from India some months ago and fetched me from the school where I'd been ever since my father and mother died--that was when I was twelve. No, except my father, I never knew any of the Raven family. I believe Uncle Francis and myself are the very last."