The Haunting of Low Fennel Part 18

"What about your things, sir?" he inquired.

Dillon stared rather blankly at the ivy-covered lodge, which, if appearances were to be trusted, was unoccupied.

"Wait a moment; I will ring," he said curtly; for this furtive curiosity, so ill concealed, had manifested itself in the manner of the taxi-driver from the moment that Dillon had directed him to drive to Hollow Grange.

He pushed open the gate and tugged at the iron ring which was suspended from the wall of the lodge. A discordant clangour rewarded his efforts, the cracked note of a bell that spoke from somewhere high up in the building, that seemed to be buffeted to and fro from fir to fir, until it died away, mournfully, in some place of shadows far up the slope. In the voice of the bell there was something furtive, something akin to the half-veiled curiosity in the eyes of the man who stood watching him; something fearful, too, in both, as though man and bell would whisper: "Return! Beware of disturbing the dwellers in this place."

But Dillon angrily recalled himself to the realities. He felt that these ghostly imaginings were born of the Boche-maltreated flesh, were products of lowered tone; that he would have perceived no query in the glance of the taxi-driver and heard no monkish whisper in the clang of the bell had he been fit, had he been fully recovered from the effects of his wound. Monkish whisper? Yes, that was it--his mind had supplied, automatically, an aptly descriptive term: the cracked bell spoke with the voice of ancient monasteries, had in it the hush of cloisters and the sigh of renunciation.

"Hang it all!" muttered Dillon. "This won't do."

A second time he awoke the ghostly bell-voice, but nothing responded to its call; man, bird, and beast had seemingly deserted Hollow Grange. He was conscious of a sudden nervous irritation, as he turned brusquely and met the inquiring glance of the taxi-man.

"I have arrived before I was expected," he said. "If you will put my things in the porch here I will go up to the house and get a servant to fetch them. They will be safe enough in the meantime."

His own words increased his irritability; for were they not in the nature of an apology on behalf of his silent and unseen host? Were they not a concession to that nameless query in the man's stare? Moreover, deep within his own consciousness, some vague thing was stirring; so that, the man dismissed and promptly departing, Dillon stood glancing from the little stack of baggage in the lodge porch up the gloomy, narrow, and over-arched drive, indignantly aware that he also carried a question in his eyes.

The throb of the motor mounting the steep, winding lane grew dim and more dim until it was borne away entirely upon the fitful breeze.

Faintly he detected the lowing of cattle in some distant pasture; the ranks of firs whispered secretly one to another, and the pall above the hills grew blacker and began to extend over the valley.

Amid that ominous stillness of nature he began to ascend the cone-strewn path. Evidently enough, the extensive grounds had been neglected for years, and that few pedestrians, and fewer vehicles, ever sought Hollow Grange was demonstrated by the presence of luxuriant weeds in the carriage way. Having proceeded for some distance, until the sheer hillside seemed to loom over him like the wall of a tower, Dillon paused, peering about in the ever-growing darkness. He was aware of a physical chill; certainly no ray of sunlight ever penetrated to this tunnel through the firs. Could he have mistaken the path and be proceeding, not toward the house, but away from it and into the midnight of the woods mantling the hills?

There was something uncomfortable in that reflection; momentarily he knew a childish fear of the darkening woods, and walked forward rapidly, self-a.s.sertively. Ten paces brought him to one of the many bends in the winding road--and there, far ahead, as though out of some cavern in the very hillside, a yellow light shone.

He pressed on with greater a.s.surance until the house became visible. Now he perceived that he had indeed strayed from the carriage-sweep in some way, for the path that he was following terminated at the foot of a short flight of moss-covered brick steps. He mounted the steps and found himself at the bottom of a terrace. The main entrance was far to his left and separated from the terrace by a neglected lawn. That portion of the place was Hanoverian and ugly, whilst the wing nearest to him was Tudor and picturesque. Excepting the yellow light shining out from a sunken window almost at his feet, no illuminations were visible about the house, although the brewing storm had already plunged the hollow into premature night.

Indeed, there was no sign of occupancy about the strange-looking mansion, which might have hidden forgotten for centuries in the horseshoe of the hills. He had sought for rest and quiet; here he should find them. The stillness of the place was of that sort which almost seems to be palpable; that can be seen and felt. A humid chill arose apparently from the terrace, with its stone pavings outlined in moss, crept up from the wilderness below and down from the fir-woods above.

A thought struggled to a.s.sume form in his mind. There was something reminiscent about this house of the woods, this silent house which struck no chord of human companionship, in which was no warmth of life or love. Suddenly, the thought leapt into complete being.

This was the palace of the sleeping beauty to which he had penetrated.

It was the fairy-tale dear to childhood which had been struggling for expression in his mind ever since he had emerged from the trees on to the desolate terrace. With the departure of the station cab had gone the last link with to-day, and now he was translated to the goblin realm of fable.

He had crossed the terrace and the lawn, and stood looking through an open French window into a room that evidently adjoined the hall. A great still darkness had come, and on a little table in the room a reading-lamp was burning. It had a quaint, mosaic shade which shut in much of the light, but threw a luminous patch directly on a heap of cushions strewn upon the floor. Face downward in this silken nest, her chin resting upon her hands and her elfin curly brown hair tousled bewitchingly, lay a girl so audaciously pretty that Dillon hesitated to accept the evidence of his eyes.

The crunching of a piece of gravel beneath his foot led to the awakening of the sleeping beauty. She raised her head quickly and then started upright, a lithe, divinely pet.i.te figure in a green velvet dress, having short fur-trimmed sleeves that displayed her pretty arms. For an instant it was a startled nymph that confronted him; then a distracting dimple appeared in one fair cheek, and:

"Oh! how you frightened me!" said the girl, speaking with a slight French accent which the visitor found wholly entrancing. "You must be Jack Dillon? I am Phryne."

Dillon bowed.

"How I envy Hyperides!" he said.

A blush quickly stained the lovely face of Phryne, and the roguish eyes were lowered, whereby the penitent Dillon, who had jested in the not uncommon belief that a pretty girl is necessarily brainless, knew that the story of the wonder-woman of Thespiae was familiar to her modern namesake.

"I am afraid," declared Phryne, with a return of her mischievous composure, "that you are very wicked."

Dillon, who counted himself a man of the world, was temporarily at a loss for a suitable rejoinder. The cause of his hesitancy was twofold.

In the first place he had reached the age of disillusionment, whereat a man ceases to believe that a perfectly lovely woman exists in the flesh, and in the second place he had found such a fabulous being in a house of gloom and silence to which, a few moments ago, he had deeply regretted having come.

His father, who had accepted the invitation from an old college friend on his son's behalf, had made no mention of a Phryne, whereas Phryne clearly took herself for granted and evidently knew all about Jack Dillon. The latter experienced a volcanic change of sentiment; Hollow Grange was metamorphosed, and a.s.sumed magically the guise of a Golden House, an Emperor's pleasure palace, a fair, old-world casket holding this lovely jewel. But who was she?--and in what spirit should he receive her bewildering coquetries?

"I trust," he said, looking into the laughing eyes, "that you will learn to know me better."

Phryne curtsied mockingly.

"You have either too much confidence in your own character or not enough in my wisdom," she said.

Dillon stepped into the room, and, stooping, took up a book which lay open upon the floor. It was a French edition of _The Golden a.s.s_ of Apuleius.

The hollow was illuminated by a blinding flash of lightning, and Phryne's musical laughter was drowned in the thunder that boomed and crashed in deepening peals over the hills. In a sudden tropical torrent the rain descended, as Dr. Ka.s.simere entered the room.

II

Jack Dillon leant from his open window and looked out over the valley to where a dull red glow crowned the hill-top. There was a fire somewhere in the neighbourhood of the distant town; probably a building had been struck by lightning. The storm had pa.s.sed, although thunder was still audible dimly, like the roll of m.u.f.fled drums or a remote bombardment.

Stillness had reclaimed Hollow Grange.

He was restless, uneasy; he sought to collate his impressions of the place and its master. Twelve years had elapsed since his one previous meeting with Dr. Ka.s.simere, and little or no memory of the man had remained. So much had intervened; the war--and Phryne. Now that he was alone and could collect his ideas he knew of what Dr. Ka.s.simere's gaunt, wide-eyed face had reminded him: it was of Thoth, the Ibis-headed G.o.d whose figure he had seen on the walls of the temples during his service in Egypt.

"Ka.s.simere was always a queer fish, Jack," his father had said; "but most of his eccentricities were due to his pa.s.sion for study. The Grange is the very place Sir Francis" (the specialist) "would have chosen for your convalescence, and you'll find nothing dangerously exciting in Ka.s.simere's atmosphere!"

Yet there was that about Dr. Ka.s.simere which he did not and could not like; his quietly cordial welcome, his courteous regret that his guest's arrival by an earlier train (a circ.u.mstance due to reduced service) had led to his not being met at the station; the charming simplicity with which he confessed to the smallness of his household, and to the pleasure which it afforded him to have the son of an old chum beneath his roof--all these kindly overtures had left the bird-like eyes cold, hard, watchful, calculating. The voice was the voice of a friend and a gentleman, but the face was the face of Thoth.

The mystery of Phryne was solved in a measure. She was Dr. Ka.s.simere's adopted daughter and the orphaned child of Louis Devant, the famous Paris cartoonist, who had died penniless in 1911, at the height of his success. In his selection of a name for her, the brilliant and dissolute artist had exhibited a breadth of mind which Phryne inherited in an almost embarra.s.sing degree.

Her mental equipment was bewildering: the erudition of an Oxford don spiced with more than a dash of Boul' Mich', which made for complexity.

Her curious learning was doubtless due to the setting of a receptive mind amid such environment, but how she had retained her piquant vivacity in Hollow Grange was less comprehensible. The servants formed a small and saturnine company, only two--the housekeeper, Mrs.

Harman, a black and forbidding figure, and Madame Charny, a French companion--sleeping in the house. Gawly, a surly creature who neglected the gardens and muttered savagely over other duties, together with his wife, who cooked, resided at the lodge. There were two maids, who lived in the village....

The glow from the distant fire seemed to be reflected upon the firs bordering the terrace below; then Dillon, watching the dull, red light, remembered that Dr. Ka.s.simere's laboratory adjoined the tiny chapel, and that, though midnight drew near, the doctor was still at work there.

Owls and other night birds hooted and shrieked among the trees and many bats were in flight. He found himself thinking of the pyramid bats of Egypt, and of the ibis-headed Thoth who was the scribe of the under-world.

Dr. Ka.s.simere had made himself medically responsible for his case, and had read attentively the letters which Dillon had brought from his own physician. He was to prescribe on the following day, and to-night the visitor found Morpheus a treacherous G.o.d. Furtive activities disturbed the house, or so it seemed to the sleepless man tossing on his bed; alert intelligences within Hollow Grange responded to the night-life of the owls without, and he seemed to lie in the shadow of a watchfulness that never slumbered.

III

"There's many a fine walk hereabouts," said the old man seated in the arm-chair in the corner of the _Threshers' Inn_ bar-parlour.

Dillon nodded encouragingly.

"There's Ganton-on-the-Hill," continued the ancient. "You can see the sea from there in clear weather; and many's the time I've heard the guns in France from Upper Crobury of a still night. Then, four mile away, there's the haunted Grange, though n.o.body's allowed past the gate. Not as n.o.body wants to be," he added, reflectively.

"The haunted Grange?" questioned Dillon. "Where is that?"

"Hollow Grange?" said the old man. "Why, it lies----"