Fern Seed (Saturday Evening Post)/Part 1
AFTERNOON sun beat down on the quays of Alexandria, making the air boil and dance along stonework, above dock water, among masts and funnels. A crowd waiting under the sun found it hot. Leonard Corsant, after some years in the Far East, cared little for this heat of Egypt. He had known worse, but now he felt impatient to go aboard, get out into good sea breeze once more, and continue his journey. He was going home to America.
Through her window in the little sentry-box office, a girl passed him his papers, and smiled. She was dark, pretty, and much more his friend than the occasion demanded.
"Again, sir! Ah, we always lose you!" she mourned in excellent French.
Leonard returned her smile, as he took her pen. He had a good-humored face, sunburned, careless, with a hawk nose of rather determined cut and easy bright-blue eyes. Lifting his hat, he bared a crop head of close fair curls. He was no ladies' man, to speak of—they did not bother him often; and while he read her printed slip he thought this one must be of those who reveal tenderness when a ship casts off or a train rolls out. They were not in his line of life.
"Yes, thank you—but see here, mademoiselle," he objected, "I can't sign."
There was plague in Alexandria. The officers of public health were anxious. Their paper which the girl had given him, said, in French: "I declare upon my honor as a gentleman that I have no soiled linen in my baggages."
She looked at him coyly through the grating.
"Oh, it is a form, sir."
"Yes, but I can't sign your form," said Leonard. "I have some in my baggages—a shirt and so on. Pardon, but this holy document raises a point of honor."
The girl laughed, snatched it from his hand, snatched the pen also, and wrote.
"There! I have signed," she cried. "On my head be all the perjury!"
Leonard seldom forgot a face, and hers was too pretty to be forgotten. He had never seen her before, yet the name she wrote, blotted, and held up gaily for approval, was correct—"L. Corsant."
The signature might almost have been his own; and beneath it she had drawn a paraph that no one could have guessed—a flourish which as a little boy he had copied from his father's writing. A pothook run through a bull's head, his father called it—a family joke, meaningless. He stared at this copy, then at her.
"How on earth did you know?"
She laughed again.
"Oh, monsieur, how should I forget? You are not in the vein of compliment this afternoon. But me, I will say you look much better and more brown. Now go, please. I am busy. You pretend I forget you, when you always block the way standing on your punctilio."
The dark young minx waved him farewell, and rolled her eyes with a look of the sort called ravishing. Leonard passed on. The queue of sweating Europeans behind him—Holy Land tourists, who wore mosquito veils draped voluptuously round ferocious helmets—began in fact to grumble, push, and use unholy outlandish words.
"Well, at last!" he thought, following his porters up the Rubattino gangway. "There's an Egyptian mystery for you—black magic. It's come too late, of course."
He soon forgot this riddle. A very fat Italian woman, dressed magnificently, helped him to forget, by waving her farewells to someone on board, and falling between quay and ship. Blue-gowned Arabs calmly hauled her out with ropes—one yelling mass of rage and terror, crowned with muddy cascades from what had been her Paris bonnet. The poor lady became a source of artless glee. Crew and longshoremen cast off merrily. Veiled pilgrims from the Holy Land were still enjoying the memory of her misfortune, and chuckling, long after Pharos and Pharallon had sunk in the horizon.
Leonard found the voyage a disappointment. After the hot, dreamy azure of the Red Sea, Mediterranean water seemed dark, bleak, and chilly. Across this old route of the Roman grain ships came biting winds, like those loosed on the Trojan fleet—his former schoolbook enemies, Eurus, Notus, Africus all together—more fresh air than he had bargained for. Aquilo or something worse blew from the Adriatic mouth, when all hands took to the smoking room and shivered. Below in the doctor's cabin he enjoyed the company of a third-class passenger, an old Nestorian monk, whom he treated to Gragnano and Flor de Dindigul, and who treated him to many hours of profitable talk.
Naples drew near from the sea one morning early as a cold amphitheater of whited villas. Its welcome took the form of a printed order, distributed with care by men in uniform, commanding every stranger to report himself daily for ten days.
"I haven't any plague," said Corsant. "Be hanged if they keep me down here to freeze!"
His friend the monk smiled.
"Your blood has grown thin in the tropics. Not so thin as mine. Hélas, beaux jours perdus! Go then, my boy, in God's name—but do not leave them your next address."
Leonard took this good counsel, carried the old man off for forty-eight hours of happy mooning through Pompeii, shook hands, parted, and climbed into a north-bound train. He was now quite alone in the world, with time to waste and nothing to do. During some years of hard work, he had cherished the dream of another Italian holiday; but now that it came true, he found the thing less free and glorious than what his fancy had painted. Moving from one set of obscure lodgings to another—to make his money go as far as possible—he learned that bed was the only warm place for him in Italy. But then, fleas loved this haven also. Thanks to a Chinese boy in Hong Kong, Leonard's only greatcoat was traveling round by sea to London. He made light of such trifles, and persevered; yet even his long walks by day, pilgrimages on foot to the most lovely sights, became little by little overcast and saddened. He had too much of his own company, was always cold.
One evening in Santa Maria Novella he sat as long as he could sit with a dark, hushed, humped little crowd, looking out from mysterious gloom to where the altar floated in a haze of candlelight and of young voices singing. The contrast moved him, touched him within like an allegory of our poor humankind. He would have stayed there, but the mortal chill of the church had crept into his bones and drove him away. As he went quietly out through the vast empty rear of the darkness, a man, a shadow leaning on a pillar, turned to look at him. Leonard caught only a passing impression that the movement was quick and stiff. He thought no more of it.
"Well? To bed with the fleas again?" he asked himself, outdoors. "No, by gum! This is bad!"
His body shook, his teeth chattered. Slapping himself like a teamster, he crossed the piazza by starlight, and hurried down a narrow street, to find some refuge, osteria, trattoria, wine shop or eating den—whatever might first appear. For some time he found nothing. The way was empty, dark, a rift among medieval shadows. When at last a pair of windows gave light ahead, their panes all steamy with warmth inside, he turned toward them, opened the door between, and entered.
It was a dingy little old restaurant, a narrow room which in those days before the war ran through catercornered from Sword Street to Sun Street. A dingy little old waiter leaned against the wall as though put there and abandoned like a worn-out umbrella. If alive, he was the only living creature to be seen. Leonard had chosen a table nearest the source of heat—a cavern mouth that breathed out greasy kitchen odors—and had settled himself on a bench, before the old solitary moved or so much as blinked.
"Good evening," said Leonard. "Something hot, if you please."
The waiter slowly detached his back from the wall, and came forward mumbling excuses:
"The cook has gone home in rage, sir. A maledicted cook, who made asseverations" Then, as he became aware that his guest sat shuddering his aged eyes grew bright, shrewd, kindly. He stopped his apology to cry one compassionate word—"Freddo!"
With that he darted into the kitchen, made a great clatter, and quickly burst again from the darkness, running with a tumbler, a black bottle, and a copper kettle that steamed.
"Prompt and intelligent cuss," quoth Leonard. In more polite phrases, he begged the man to get another tumbler and share his toddy.
"Oh, sir, you are too kind," was the reply. "I could not think of doing so."
The poor old chap was both surprised and frightened. Leonard had an easy way with him, however, and soon the pair were hobnobbing over Gorgonzola verde and a good round loaf of bread. Chills vanished; likewise formality. The talk passed from weather and hard times to politics, then to warfare and memories; for this dried little ancient with his nutcracker face and beady eyes, had tramped as a boy soldier of Garibaldi's, and plainly a good one. With all the shop to themselves, they took their ease, found each other excellent company, and held a humble revel.
"You like that story, sir?"
"I do, I do!" cried Corsant, leaning back and wiping his eyes. "But it hurts to laugh so."
"Then, sir, I will tell you a yet more comical. At Orte were three sisters"
Just then the Sword Street door quietly opened. A man came in. The laughing veteran sprang up, drew away and, as though by a trick on the stage, faded, shriveling back into a sad old waiter.
He who caused this transformation paid it no heed, but stepped down into the room and looked about scornfully. He was a lusty blond young man, handsome after a fashion which, thought Leonard, was too professionally male. His English clothes fitted him too well, tighter than need be, and set off a muscular body powerful enough for an athlete's, but not loose enough.
"Good evening to you," he said in English.
Leonard returned the wish.
The stranger paused by Leonard's table. He was smiling, but his eyes remained too pale and cold.
"We always meet in odd places, don't we?" He spoke affably. His bass voice came from the throat and seemed to roughen it. "I shouldn't quite think you'd care for this, though. There are plenty of good beer halls."
Corsant, when ruffled, had a sleepy way of looking at you. When angry—as a friend of his expressed it—his face died. Now he looked no more than sleepy.
"It does well enough, thanks," he said. "I can't recall any other places where we had the pleasure?"
"0h, just as you like!" The stranger laughed. Then, having turned to see that the servant was beyond earshot, he laughed again, and bent across the table. "I do not scrape friendship. But we're off duty, eh? One good turn deserves another, and I thought you might like to know that they are after you."
Leonard had forgotten all plagues of Egypt and all quarantine documents. Now he remembered. This warning seemed freely enough given, and probably true; still he did not like the giver, or the accompanying sneer of condescension.
"Oh! Much obliged," said he. "Let 'em come."
The light-colored eyes flashed down at him balefully.
"Good. We are even. I leave you to—your friend."
Removing his hat stiffly, the man swung round, marched rather than walked past the waiter—whom he ignored as from a height—and so went out by the other door into the darkness of Sun Street.
"Who was he, Gino?"
The waiter thawed, became human again, and flung off a most inimitable farewell with his hands.
"Ah, that brute! Ah, that white-eyed vassal! I never saw him before, sir."
"Nor I," said Leonard.
He was not so sure. That stiff wheel and turn of the back all in a piece reminded him how someone had watched him go out of church.
"For all his garments and his altitude," said Gino, grinning, "he behaved as one in a hurry. No repose. Why fluster so grandly? Why should one hurry, sir? The man cannot consume the time; no, the time consumes the man."
Corsant agreed.
"You speak like Horatius Flaccus. Have we any more hot water? If so—the evening is young—come, sit down, and let us finish that yarn of the three sisters."
II
BEING a young man who took things as they happened and, like John Silver, kept company very easy, Leonard soon forgot these adventures in travel. Nothing came of them, except a long illness after his chill. He spent some weeks abed in France—dreary weeks, exceeding lonesome—and reached England later as a pale, thin convalescent, hollow about the eyes and tottery on the legs.
To get well, he made straight for the country. More than once in childhood his father had told him if ever he should visit England, he must go search out a little old village near the sea.
"Our people came from there, or close by," his father had said. "We'll have to see the Devil's Nose together, and pass through it for luck, my boy. We need to freshen ours. A couple of centuries gone, I daresay, since one of us did it. Some day we'll go there on pilgrimage."
These dark sayings took a child's fancy at the moment, lay in the same storeroom with other memories, bits of old tales, fairy books, things imagined, or facts mysterious because half understood, and so to the young man had sometimes a trace of their faded color and fragrance. Leonard had made of his father a legendary hero, powerful, gentle, with dark blue twinkling eyes—a form surrounded by the bright mist of early adoration. They two had never gone on any pilgrimage. But as a grown man, without living kindred, he had once or twice vaguely meant to do some day what his father proposed, if only as a pagan rite, the pleasing of a shade. Always before in England he had been kept too busy.
"Ready! I like You Better for Showing spunk. But You're Going to Unwrap Me the Whole Rig, Whether We Take to Our Hands, and I Beat it Out of You, or Whether We Just sit Here all Night"
"A sick man," he thought, "has no right to bother his friends. So now's a good time. The little old place, whatever it's like—the duller the better—will do for 'loungin' round and sufferin'.' The inn is called Merle's, I see. Wire for a room, and ask to be met. We'll go down; as father said, for luck."
He went, therefore, alone. The month was May, the journey an afternoon dream of green fields gliding past, lovely to a sick man's eyes, and to his mind one drowsy comfort that promised the return of health. Towards evening, at a tiny station under a hawthorn hedge, he stepped from his compartment into a brisk yet mild air smelling of green grass and the sea, and a light that spread as from vast distances unconfined yet softly tempered and brooding.
An old man peered at his face, nodded without a word, and taking his kitbag, led him behind the hedge, where stood a shaggy moorlandish pony in a cart. Leonard climbed slowly to a seat, the old man hopped up nimbly, the pony jumped and started off trotting with wild and fitful ardor.
Uphill, downhill, by roads or lanes always deep-sunken between hedge-banks, they jogged, rattling. Now and again, sidelong through the gate of a field or forward from some height, Corsant caught brief glimpses of the landscape; rolling hills all patchworked in great squares, rich green, pale green, bright red, and where young wheat had but started, faint rose and green as changeable as taffeta. But chiefly the way wound along in secret, hidden by wildflower banks and hedges, a dusky tunnel under the trees. In one of its darkest hollows, the driver halted his pony. He said nothing, but sat and waited. Corsant did the same. A minute or two passed thus.
On their right hand the tangle of thorns and beech was broken. Two stone pillars with chains hanging between them stood in a gap, through which Leonard saw garden borders, shrubs, and deeper within, half hidden, the windows of a dark stone house. The place seemed empty and neglected. Red valerian ran wild there.
"Well?" said he at last.
Turning, he caught the driver's eye for the first time, and only for an instant. There was an odd look in it, something like respect, sympathy even, mixed with shrewd understanding.
"Why, sir," replied the old man. "The chains are locked, sir."
"Oh? Is this the inn?"
A quick sidelong glance, that began to be a stare, was the driver's answer. Then he corrected himself, and sat as before, watching the pony's ears.
"You wish to go to the inn first then, sir?"
"Yes, of course."
"Beg pardon, sir." The man gathered his reins, and drove on. "I misunderstood, sir."
They jogged in silence down a hill and up another, turned left at a crossroad, turned right where many lanes met, and so went twisting through a green labyrinth where twilight fell. At last, about lamp-lighting time, they descended a short curving street lined with thatched cottages, in the lower end of which their pony halted without command. Here the driver hopped out, unloaded Corsant's bag, and guided him through the gate of a small garden to a lighted doorway. Inside the house, a stout old woman carrying a lamp greeted him kindly.
"Good evening, sir."
Her voice was pleasant, her florid face all a broad smile of welcome. While she added some speech about dinner and bed, an aged white bull terrier coasted round her skirts, approached in purblind fashion, and sniffed the stranger's legs. Afterward, at table, she stood beaming covertly on him as he ate.
"I'm sorry my husband made that blunder, sir," she said. "It was a pity to take you out of your way; but he thought you might wish to"—she stopped, then changing and picking her words carefully, concluded—"might care to look about you a bit."
Being drowsy and tired, Corsant answered at random.
"Oh, it's all right, Mrs. Merle." He stifled a yawn. "An excellent dinner. I foresee this house of yours is the place for a man to get well in."
"I hope so indeed, for you, sir," she replied heartily. "I do indeed, I assure you."
They were very friendly persons, he thought. Going upstairs early, he found his groom of the pony was now groom of the chamber, for by pleasant candle and hearth light, old Merle, with a brass warming pan, stood caressing the sheets in a vast Pickwickian bed. This ancient seemed as wiry and nimble, but silent, indoors as out. To a mild question if the room needed so much stoking, he listened firmly, replied in brief: "The night air was poison, sir"; and so took his leave, with respectful wishes.
"'The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,'" thought Leonard, but he waited till the old man went downstairs before hauling the fire apart and opening his windows. For a while he lay watching the stars through a frame of dark leaves and vines; then, to the hushing voice of the sea behind some hill, and the squeak of a churn-owl weaving nocturnal spells round and round the house, he fell asleep greatly contented and at home.
Not Long Afterward, Through the Glass, Leonard Saw Them Rise and Go, the Tall Man Following Her
The weeks that followed made his content all the deeper. When rain lashed the windows and the elms tossed, and hidden seas rumbled in the distance he lounged by the little parlor fire, reading, smoking, dozing like the Fat Boy of Dingley Dell; while the old white bull terrier snored on the hearth, a coffin of a clock ticked solemnly, blinking its brazen eye at him, and a bullfinch in the kitchen piped a few notes, forlornly sweet, during the pauses of the wind. He was the one guest there, alone like a single passenger at sea. Mrs. Merle and her husband he seldom encountered, for they not only took care that no one else disturbed him, but kept themselves remarkably out of the way. In fine weather—it soon turned fine—he went outdoors so early and returned so late that of the village people he saw, as it happened, little or nothing but a face here and there at a window. His first walks led him toward the sea, along high cliffs, to lie sheltered by the dark spines and gold of gorse, and from a green precipice edge to look down on sparkling water, headlands that slanted away each to its parson-and-clerk pair of outermost crags, and far-curved surf, white streaks that seemed motionless in the distance. Mild air soothed and healed, the sun tanned him like an Indian.
A fortnight of this life saw him well. He began to scour the country, taking walks that grew longer and longer, setting out at sunrise, returning at dusk with a stride that never tired any more, a giant appetite for Mrs. Merle's gooseberries and clotted cream.
One noonday, being far afield, both hungry and thirsty, he entered a quiet little town which sweltered at the bottom of a valley. Its thoroughfare was empty and hot. From glaring cobblestones he stepped into the darkness of an old coaching inn, the White Hart. Here a dismal waiter brought him cold veal pie, strong beer, sweating cheese, and angrily green gherkins.
"Haven't you any—lighter trifle?" asked Leonard.
The man struggled with his grief awhile.
"I'll ascertain, sir," he replied without hope. "It's not likely, but cook might have made trifle."
"Good Lord, no!" said Corsant in haste. "These will do very well."
In that close heat, they were formidable. He made the best of it, however, and attacked them with care. The room was cool, though moldy. He ate alone, but through a glazed partition could look into the aged coffee room, where two persons sat talking. One was a tall, black-haired man with a bass voice; the other, hidden by his broad shoulders, a girl.
"No, miss, that colt was a chestnut. You're thinking of the brown filly. No, another trace altogether. At Newbury in the eighties, before you were born"
"Why, George, what are you saying?" came the girl's voice. "It's not often one catches you in the wrong."
"Not on that point, thank you, miss," replied the bass, quietly stubborn. "Now, go back as far as Ormonde's year"
The girl interrupted again. Leonard caught only a few of their words, but knew that they were discussing horses, and gathered that the girl upheld her end of the argument. Some wild country tomboy, he thought; a type which he had seen before, and disliked; loafing in a dingy bar, smoking with men, talking slang, airing her worldliness.
Presently the man laughed at something, and leaned back. Over his shoulder, the girl's face appeared, smiling. It was not at all the face of a tomboy; mischievous indeed and young, but even in that shadowy den alight with intelligence. Her eyes, large and black, were looking straight in through the dusty window pane.
"Why! There"
She sprang up from her chair, and stood for an instant leaning forward, her face wonderfully brightened, her lips—Corsant had time to mark what a clear red they were—parted in surprise. Next moment she had sat down, hidden again behind her companion.
"That was extraordinary! For half a second, you know, I thought"
The rest Corsant did not hear. But the man, who had neither turned nor moved, presently replied to her:
"No, he won't be here for another week, miss. I'll try to have everything ready as you'd like it."
"It is now, George. You're quite splendid," said the girl's voice. "I was and am delighted."
Soon afterward, through the glass, Leonard saw them rise and go, the tall man following her with unstudied though evident respect. She herself was fairly tall. Both were slender, and in their easy, outdoor way of moving they seemed vaguely alike. When they had vanished, a clack of hoofs and rattle of wheels on cobbles passed down the street and left it sleeping. Leonard continued to stun his appetite with the cold, leaden, pasty and discolored cheese.
"Wonder who she thought I was?" He mused at the dingy window panes, as if behind them something of her brightness lingered. "Shouldn't mind being the right chap."
That afternoon he walked some fifteen miles more, homeward roundabout. He went slowly, for the green sunken lanes held much heat and little stir of air; but their hedgerow banks imprisoned the sight only to enrich it. Wild flowers—campion, violets, snitchwort, herb Robert—filled the grass and lined both sides of the road higher than a man's head. On a hilltop he paused to catch the draft of soft sea breeze and hear a pair of skylarks.
"She was mighty pretty," he thought; and becoming aware that he thought so, was surprised at his own irrelevance. "What? Running in my head, is she? What for?"
He went on downhill. These walks began to be tiresome.
In the Pickwickian bedroom at Mrs. Merle's that evening, he found his wash had come home again. Once before the wrapping had been written on—"For Lieutenant Corsant." Now the inscription ran, "For Captain Corsant," and under the twine someone had stuck a nosegay of wallflowers. "Going up in the world," thought Leonard. "If promotion keeps on, they'll have me the 'very pattern of a modern major general.'"
He put the wallflowers in a glass of water.
"Mighty pretty," said he. "As good in profile as she was full front."
III
CURVED gables of tawny-gray thatch across the street, tree tops behind them where rooks fluttered and cawed, shut off all view of the river. To see it, the nearest way led through a lane past the blacksmith's. A small tidal stream, curving between two broad, low hills, it ran deep with the ebb and bent round a crag into the hidden sea; with the flood, it crept up shallow, pale, spreading inland among green-wooded points and fields whitened by daisies.
Young flood had set in, grown toward half tide, as Corsant went down the lane.
"Good morning, sir," called Peacock the blacksmith from his cavern. A big, swart man, he grinned, and saluted with his hammer between blows. "Fine day!"
In the darkness an old white pony stood half asleep, with a tool box under his heels. Perched on the edge of the water tub, a long-legged man sat and played with a rasp, brooded, or thoughtfully gossiped, while Peacock bent a horseshoe, the soft red iron muffling the ring of his anvil.
"A very fine day," said Leonard.
The bitter smell of burnt hoofs drifted after him, in the sunlight and hawthorn shade. A wall crossed the foot of the lane; a stile mounted the wall; and beyond these a path descended green fields to the river. Near the stream Leonard turned and looked back as though someone called. No one had made a sound; but far uphill by the blacksmith's door two small figures stood watching him—the aproned Peacock and his taller gossip. Though distant, they had somehow the air of men watching long and sharply. It was not Peacock, but the other, who raised one arm overhead and waved a genial flourish.
"Strangers in these parts," thought Leonard, "must be a rare sight."
He answered the flourish, turned and struck into another footpath which rambled along the river bank. Passing behind a screen of branches, he caught his last glimpse of village and lane. The two little figures remained there still, watching him go out of sight.
"This is a good time," he reflected lazily, "to try father's project. We'll walk through the thirls, and freshen our family luck."
But the sea, when he climbed round its barrier crag at the river mouth, did not favor this plan. The lonely curve of yellow sand was narrowed as if drawn taut by incoming tide; a great azure pool, fordable, yet holding infinitely deep reflections of summer cloud, poured smooth across it into the river; and though everywhere alongshore the water line lapped nearer in tiny waves that glittered and sank almost foamless, whitecaps were bursting round the rocks beyond. A hundred yards out, black, ugly, pierced by two fantastic arches, towered the Devil's Nose.
"No walking through that for a while."
The dark surf-worn pinnacle stood ringed with spray, which gleamed as it came surging through the two holes, veiled their shadows halfway up, fell, and spouted landward into sunlight again. The rock sneered at this peaceful shore, thought Leonard, like a reminder of evil fury hidden and disguised.
"You might swim through it." Basking on warm sand, he dallied with the notion. "Why not? Rather fun."
No breath of air stirred, but the waves in the thirls maintained a hissing roar, continuous, like winds tearing through a forest. The longer he heard, the less he liked it.
"Well, by George!" He sat up, angry. "Where's your nerve gone? Turning invalidical, eh? We'll see about that!"
The beach was then, as on all his former visits, deserted. He pulled off his clothes, and ran down naked into the sea.
"Here goes for luck!"
After his first plunge, the water seemed glorious. He shot forth into a region of fresh life, with body and mind rejoicing, the world growing young to eyesight cleared by sea magic. A good swimmer, Corsant put his power into a few strokes, found it all there again ready at call, and then went romping forward, burying his face for mere wantonness, and staring down through the cool green void where sunshine faded into quivering mist and network shadows. A cold streak suddenly checked this play. He roused, and glanced ahead. It was not a streak. He had left the tempered surface water behind, and now swam in a chill ocean current, near the rock. Green hollows round him began to seethe white.
"Roughening up a bit," he said. "Right! Now we come to the pretty part."
Viewed at close range from sea level, the rock drew aloft, magnified itself, and became wonderfully grim. The splintered spire, jagged from top to bottom with lumps and crockets; the two wild arches that dripped, yawned, sucked in wave after wave to fling it out like snow and thunder; the base, carved by ages of storm—all these details and the gloomy color gave Corsant a strange uneasiness while he gathered himself for the tussle and steered cautiously into the foam. No wonder this thing bore the devil's name. It resembled the stump of some Gothic ruin, some unholy church blasted and driven into the sea.
"Well, old man," cried the swimmer, "if this is your belfry, I'm going plumb through like a bat."
It seemed to lurch and rush toward him, roaring an answer. Leonard chose his moment, whirled into the right-hand arch on a retreating slope, was deafened with bestial throaty noises, dove under the next wave, and came up treading water in the sunlight. He caught breath, shook the brine from his eyes, and saw looming above him the seaward front of the rock, uglier than its back. He had performed half his journey; but that swift, violent passage had beaten out of him all the fun, all the high spirits, all desire to boast. He dreaded the return. Those booming, wallowing holes were loathsome.
"Get it over with."
A ridge of surf slapped him across the face, left him blind, choking; and even while he fought for air and light, another ridge heaved him up, coiled round him, and flung him sidelong. As through green glass that suddenly blew up into lather, the central column of the rock rushed by like a prow. It grazed his left side. Then came darkness, a prolonged hissing, the cough and spew of a glutted abyss, in which malignant forces mauled him, churned him round and round; and then a hollow crash, with a flare of soft light inside his head.
"Busted!"
How long he remained half stunned Corsant never knew. He must have gone on swimming, for he woke to find his limbs in motion, the water still and warm, the shore not far away. Water, sands, hilltops, and sky reeled in a colorless glare.
His skull ached.
"Wah! Sounded like the sea serpent gargling!"
He crawled up the beach, to lie by his clothes. Forty winks and a sun bath would restore him. As the pain gradually left his head, he dozed and began to smile.
"Wonder what dad would think of that performance? We've been through, anyhow. First time in a couple of hundred years. Did our part. Now bring on your good fortune."
Sitting up, no worse but for a lump over one ear, Corsant grinned at the Devil's Nose. It looked quite harmless and romantic, refined by distance. The foam in the thirls murmured like a summer breeze.
"Oh, yes, very sweet, my friend! Playing the Cathédrale Engloutie, aren't you? No go, no can do. You're an old gargling gargoyle, and a fraud. Now bring on your luck!"
While thus engaged with fancies, he became aware that he was not alone on the beach. To his right near the inward-flowing river, a tall man led a white pony down to wade. They had come from Peacock's, of course. He watched them idly. The man, stooping, bared his feet and rolled his trousers above the knee. Somehow the movements were very smart, very trim.
"Must be a sailor," thought Leonard.
The pony, having no use for sea water, began to fight and cavort. With the same neatness, quick, devoid of effort, his leader had him in belly-deep.
"No. Must be a groom."
Man and beast waded together along the shallows, their figures—black and slender, white and chunky—in sharp relief against rippling sunshine. Leonard gazed after them dreamily, and when they came ashore, sat watching the reflection of their legs appear and vanish with each wave, now mirrored in a glaze of sky blue, now lost on dark sand. He had fallen half asleep, when footsteps trampled near by.
"Well, sir," called a voice, "I see you went withershins!" It was a deep, rich voice, carrying like a good actor's.
Leonard sat up again—quickly, for it was the same voice that had talked horses with the girl at the White Hart.
"Went where?" he said, blinking.
The tall man stood before him, holding the white pony with one hand, and in the other his boots tied together, crammed full of stockings.
"Withershins—contrary to the sun." He laughed, and swung his footgear toward the Devil's Nose. "'Twas a sight for sore eyes, that. I said to myself, marking how you swam, 'He remembers the lucky way round of it!' Yes, indeed."
Words, laughter, an ardent shining of his bronze face declared the man to be supremely happy, jubilant. In his emotion was a queer trait—namely, that he seemed to regard Leonard as the cause of it all.
"Why, are you bringing me some luck for a change?"
"Give us half a chance to, sir, and you'd see!" The stranger laughed again. He was very dark, with eyes like a sparrow hawk's, humorous lips that curved boldly, and a thin, thoroughbred beak of a nose. Barefoot, he stood about six feet two, clean and springy, in old clothes which he wore as trim as a soldier. His face, his whole frame, contained such energy that while waiting there, quiet enough, the man appeared restless, alive with flickering wildfire.
"Ted Peacock said it was you, passing his door. I'd heard rumors you were at the inn. Didn't believe 'em till now. You surprised us a bit, didn't you?"
He studied Corsant with a keen and cheerful eye, paused, then added: "Can't tell how glad I am, sir. It's good to see you so fit; so much better than—than we might expect, if you don't mind my speaking out."
Leonard stared up at him.
"Look here, my friend. You're mistaking me for somebody else, I believe."
At this reply, the stranger's face underwent a rapid and curious change. A shock, an alarm, spread across it; the welcoming glow died instantly, a tinge of pain troubled the eyes. Then, looking grave, he turned to hang his boots in the crook of his elbow and pat the old white pony's neck, with the air of a man tiding over some embarrassment. When he looked round again, he was smiling, but differently.
"Right if you say so." He spoke with a forced heartiness. "I didn't mean to put my oar in."
So saying, the man shortened his grip on the halter, and began to lead his drowsy beast away.
"Wait! Let's clear this up," said Leonard. "Who did you think I was, please?"
The other looked back, and laughed.
"Anybody you like," he answered cheerily, as though humoring a sick person. "I'll stay mum. You can find me at the Ship on Ways, or a word left there will fetch me." He hesitated. "Of course you have your reasons for it, I know. But Lord, sir, other folks could tell at a glance—'Corsant o' the thrulle hath lockeys crulle'—as the old rime goes; made, I take it, before the sea drilled the second hole clean through out there. And it's true of all the fair ones. You'd need to shave your head or buy a wig, and even then"
He moved off, chuckling.
"How did you know my name?" asked Leonard.
The dark man's face became a study, a droll enigma.
"It was revealed to me in a dream, sir."
With that he and the pony went up the beach toward the river path.
"What a strange meeting! That fellow looked like—somebody. Who was it? I want to hear the rest of this affair."
Leonard, so thinking, rose to follow the stranger, but sat down again. He remembered that he was naked.
IV
LATER in the week, a fine sunny-morning ramble took him through another hamlet near by. A brook ran past it, under a little old gray-stone bridge. The church tower, built of the same stone and weathered to the same aged color, rose from a cluster of cottages; and these, quiet as though deserted, lay snugly in a bower of apple blossoms that brightened the air. Bees hummed. From the pink-tinged clouds of bloom, petals here and there snowed lightly over stone walls into the lane.
Opposite the church a whitewashed front with tiny windows and low doorway bore a sign proclaiming it to be the Ring of Bells, kept by one R. Grayland. This, while Corsant paused to smell the apple blossoms, reminded him of something.
"My washerwoman hangs out round here," he thought. "A heavenly neighborhood. Let's pay her a call, and thank her for the wallflowers."
The Ring of Bells, when he had stooped through its open door, appeared silent. A dark little room contained three or four chairs, a bench, some jugs and bottles behind a counter, and a three-cornered spittoon full of sand. By the window hung an engraving, badly foxed, of some gloomy scene from Captain Johnson's Lives of the Pyrats and Highwaymen. The silence in this room gradually, stirred with faint music, as the humming of bees drifted in. Beyond the counter a passageway and a back door stood open, so that Leonard, looking straight through the house, could see the dapple-green shadows of a garden. He knocked on the counter, and called aloud. No one came or answered. While waiting, however, he heard movements and a voice that muttered as in soliloquy, outside the back door. Stepping through into the garden, he found there a little old broad-hatted woman.
"Good morning!"
She seemed an odd little creature, wiry and bent like a witch; perhaps deaf, for she did not look up at his greeting. A few beehives of the Cheshire pattern stood in rank under a high hedge. The light-green shade of a vast beech covered half the inclosure, mingled with brightness reflected from a neighbor's apple trees; and aloft in the warm, scented air, bees darted to and fro, glinting like crumbs of brass. A tranquil Tityre-tu kind of atmosphere, thought Corsant, brooded over the place.
"The sweet honey bees, some folk do murder 'em with fire and smoke," grumbled the old woman. "I'd never the heart to do so. My pretties, you won't be smothered here. No, no! They make good honey and good mead; they shall have good kindly care at the Ring o' Bells. 'Tis a bargain, dears."
Maundering thus, she looked about her in a vague, downcast way, as though perplexed by the cares of age. She wore her sleeves rolled above the elbows, and what appeared to be long brown gauntlets.
"They do smell angry." Her dull gaze roamed aloft, passing the young man without heed. "So they do, but let 'em alone and they'll come home to their lady queen, never you fear."
Coming closer, Leonard saw that her gauntlets were of living bees. They covered her hands and forearms with a crust of brown scales. On the brim of her hat—a flapping wreck of straw, some laborer's cast-off headgear—bees crawled or hung in clusters like worn-out trimming.
"They know their Mother Grayland. Yes. Good kindly care."
"I'm sure they do, mother," said Leonard.
The old body gave no sign of hearing, though her eyes wandered over him and came down to study the earth again. They were black eyes, dim, smoky, sunken among the wrinkles of a dark and withered face.
"Some folks do let foul brood come in, the sluts." She brushed from her arms the living scales, plucked them off like currants, and scraped them from her fingertips into a box on the ground. "Not I, sir. Not here. The dear honey pets, no, never. Their habitations be sweet as babe's breath."
Corsant watched her operations for a while in silence. They were slow, fumbling, but uncannily wise. Of a sudden she startled him by drawing herself quickly up as if waked from a dream.
"Of course you want to try it, sir." And she bobbed away toward the house, beckoning. "Come in, come in."
Over her bent shoulders and the flapping hat still trimmed with bees he saw as he followed that the Ring of Bells had wallflowers on its roof. They blazed in the sun, a hanging garden upheld by great flags of rock four inches thick.
"Sit down, sir, sit down." In her dusky room, the bee woman slipped behind her counter and bent underneath, rummaging and mumbling.
"'Tis the best mead only, the old ancient mead, to be sure. None of them can make it like Mother Grayland's. No, sir. A secret. Ah, she's lots of secrets in her crazy head, as they miscall it. Yes, yes! A secret—and the white ale, too. Who remembers the proper ancient grout for the white ale, sir? Not them who talks most. No, no! But the mead now. Where is it again? Aha, here 'tis. Here it comes forth from hiding."
Something clinked while the voice ran on; then Mrs. Grayland crept into view, holding a bottle and a goblet. She had merely walked past the counter without unbending her back, but this feat made her appear more than ever like a witch, a dark old crone stealing from some cave to administer a philtre.
"Taste that, sir, do now!"
Filling the goblet carefully, she placed it by him on the bench, and shuffled away.
"Thanks. To the Ring of Bells, and your good health."
The glass, discolored by age or imperfection, had a purple tinge, so that the mead as Corsant held it between his eye and the window shone like amethyst. He took a sip. It was cool, sweet, very mild. He took a pull, and praised it.
"Delicious, mother. Refreshing on such a warm day."
The woman perched on a stool before her shelves doubled over, a gloomy sibyl.
"Any day," she muttered. "Warm or cold. Gentlemen do say 'tis heady."
Corsant lighted a cigarette, and while smoking and resting, drained his goblet. The room seemed very cool and comfortable, quite homelike, as Pickwickian as his bedchamber at the inn. It had really been hot outside. He felt sorry for this old creature, and must do something benevolent.
"The sample was good. Let me try another, Mrs. Grayland."
She came round the counter again, refilled his goblet, and went back to her perch.
"They say 'tis heady," she repeated.
Leonard smiled. This mead was pleasant, nothing more, and his head fairly hard. Her warning somehow called up a droll memory—how Saint Louis gave a temperance lecture to the Sieur de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, and how that valiant worthy boasted of a large head and a cold stomach, not to be overcome. It seemed far-fetched, this bit of the past. He sat wondering why such a thing had drifted through his mind, when suddenly the humor of it surprised him into laughing. At the same moment, he felt a genial, insidious glow within.
"The combs I take, and put to them water from Tobler's Well," droned his hostess, discoursing at vacancy under her hat. "Good fair water, with rose leaves, a little brandy, and cinnamont and secret arts. It comes out sack mead, sir, of the best."
Her words ran on, endless and inconsequent, like the humming of her bees in the garden. This little room had grown too comfortable, too cozy altogether.
"By George, she was right!" thought Leonard. "The sly old drink, it has a wicked recoil."
He had better do his errand and get out into fresh air. Pondering over this inspiration very sagely, he roused with an effort.
"Mrs. Merle, at the inn, said my laundress lived hereabout. Do you know her? She sent me some beautiful wallflowers, like yours on the roof."
He rose, and stood waiting for an answer. It did not come. To his amazement, the old woman slowly turned, climbed down to the floor, and leaning across her counter, peered at him, her eyes wild and sharp as a bird's, her face no longer blank, but crafty, writhing with an almost terrified doubt.
"Is it a dream, sir?" she whispered.
Leonard stared at the transformation.
"I begin to think so," he replied—a truth, for her mead now worked in earnest, turning the whole scene merry and unreal.
Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Gripping the woodwork like a bat, she craned forward to search his face.
"You've never young Mr. Corsant!"
He laughed.
"Yes, that's my name."
"The Lord be good to us!" she cried in a fright, and letting go her hold, shrank backward as though to run from the room. "It is!"
"Why? What of that?" said her visitor.
She remained speechless again, watching him narrowly, edging toward the passageway. But as Leonard, unmoved, quite benevolent in fact, and rather dizzy, gave no sign that he should try to corner her, she gradually took heart.
"You've been abroad, sir?" she ventured in a coaxing whine.
"More or less," he agreed, smiling.
"And come here, and bear me no grudge?"
Uncertain that he caught the words right, Leonard was puzzled.
"Grudge? What? None in the world, mother. Not a bit. Why should I?'
The landlady of the Ring of Bells fixed him with a long stare, then kneading her hands together, began to smile darkly.
"Why should he? Hark!" she mumbled. Her smile had the cunning of dotage, and yet other qualities crept into it—something shrewd, something bitter and regretful, something kindly. "Hark to the grand nature. They all do keep it. Free-handed, all—open-hearted. Why should he, the poor lamb!"
She made a step forward, paused, began some awkward gesture of appeal, broke it off, and stood hesitating. Under the absurd wreck of a hat, her withered face drew into the oddest puckers, and the gleam of her eyes appeared to change. For a moment Leonard thought this queer old body was pitying him.
"I can't bear to think of it!" she cried, and turning suddenly, hobbled away down the passage. "Why shouldn't he, more like!"
What she brushed from her cheek as she went, might have been a tear or a honey bee. At any rate she closed the door behind her, and did not return.
Moderately astonished, Corsant remained for a time waiting. Among the whimsies frolicking in his brain, however, came once more the desire for fresh air.
"'It is my opinion, Brother Tadger,'" he told himself, "'that this meeting is drunk.' Eh? Shocking! Out you go!"
Sunshine, after that gloom in the Ring of Bells, blazed white. It pained his eyes. Yet the world outdoors had grown wondrously gay, filled with charming details all fresh and new, a perfect Vanity Fair of them outbidding one another. He surveyed the street, where nothing moved but a few petals that snowed, as before, lazily down over stone walls. The beauty of it dazzled him. He had never seen or smelled flowers like those. Across the bridge, he fell into another muse before a gatepost, on which a family of snails had gathered to sun themselves. Admirable! The very marking of their shells—that train of thought arrived nowhere. His study was nevertheless profound.
"'In in the merry month of May!'"
He became aware that he was humming rather loudly.
"Oh, that mead!" he groaned. "Plain maudlin! I must walk it off."
He shook himself, and set forward briskly, choosing a pleasant cover of green leaves where a path wandered along the brook. With cool sounds the water accompanied him through thickets dense enough, quiet enough, shadow hidden, to seem the heart of a forest. Birds darted up from bathing and left tiny rings that widened on the pools. He could have gone on with delight, mile after mile. It was all too soon that the brook ran forth into open fields, turned commonplace, and stagnated as a kind of ditch between rounded banks.
Yet the fields were pleasant also in their way, broad green slopes to right and left, streaked with misty white acres of daisies, a notch of sea water sparkling at the far end. Some sheep trotted off before him.
"Not so bad." Corsant followed them and the sunken brook. "They grow plenty of sky round here. The merry month of May."
A rough wooden bridge connected the banks. Beyond it, to his left, a red flag waved limply in the circle of a putting green. A fat ewe stood alone there, and bleated for her child across the water. Past her the landscape ran upward in long hollow curves, to where the top of a church tower peeped over the sky line.
"Miles of it, and nary soul in sight!"
Something whizzed by his head like a bullet. He dodged.
A golf ball hopped on the farther bank, hit the ewe fairly in the ribs, and rebounded. She ran bundling away, while the ball rolled down under the bridge.
Leonard turned to see where this missile had come from. On his right hand, a low but steeply rounded hill rose bare against the sky.
"A good shot," he considered.
For a time nothing happened. Then over the hilltop some bit of metal flashed against the sun, and a man's figure heaved into view.
It was a young man. He came walking rather carefully, with a limp or hobble, and used his golf iron to ease himself down the green slope.
V
THE young man was alone, carried but a single club, and came scanning the ground below him negligently, as if not more than half absorbed in his game. He wore loose old clothes of reddish-brown tweed.
"Good morning," said he, with a casual nod. "I'll swear that was headed straight. Went off clean as a chip."
The golfer had a pleasant voice. He was of about Leonard's height and age, but more slenderly built, or perhaps worn by illness, for his face looked rather pale.
"A beauty! Hole high!" said Corsant, and rehearsed the fate of the ball. "She's under the bridge."
"Oh, thanks. Glad I didn't hit you." The man's keen blue eyes were busy admiring the whole sweep of country. "Good old prospect, isn't it? I'd forgotten how ripping."
He spoke half to himself, moved by, and tossing his iron among daisies, climbed down the bank. Leonard retained an impression that the chap was rather handsome, and that they had met somewhere before. Presently, under the bridge, his voice rang hollow.
"Mucky down here. Dark too."
Reappearing for a moment, he threw his jacket up beside the iron, then stooped and vanished again.
"Quite sure it rolled under, are you?"
Leonard answered this by taking off his own jacket, dropping it near the other, and scrambling below the far side of the bridge. Thus in a dark hole the two men faced each other, bent almost double.
"Your ball should be right here."
It was not or stayed well hidden. For a time they spied about in mud, watercress, footprints of sheep, and cobwebby corners, all confused with joggling sunlight from the brook.
"I can remember round here as a tot," said the stranger. "Ali Baba, Robinson Crusoe, and Ben Gunn used this place by turns. It was Jean Valjean's sewer, one time; and old Macumazahn—what's his name, Quartermain?—met some frightful kind of monsters on this underground river."
"Giant crabs," quoth Leonard. "A dead swan"
"Right, by Jove!" His contemporary laughed. "And the flower of light, and the burnt canoe, and the parboiled nigger! All comes back now. Alph the sacred river. Odd to think—humph!" He went on searching, then added gruffly: "Good deal of water's flowed under these old planks, I fear."
Next moment he spoke again, in a different tone, quickly, as though surprised.
"I say, here's a rum fancy! It strikes me—did we ever do this same thing together before by any chance?"
In the half light, crouching like a pair of conspirators, they eyed each other closely.
"Why, you know," replied Leonard, "it does seem—well, familiar. Can't say how."
The other nodded slantwise, like a man puzzled.
"You felt that too? But—do you live about here, by the way?"
"No," said Corsant, "my first visit."
"Ah, then we haven't," said the stranger lightly. "Curious, though. Some former incarnation. This mud is hopeless. Let's give it up."
"Afraid so," began Leonard. "No, here she is! Have got!"
The golf ball lay drowned at the bottom of a tiny pit, one of the sheep's footprints. He fished it out.
"Never fails," remarked its owner. "Many thanks."
He straightened up, and brought his head sharply against their roof.
"Ouch! Alph the sacred river has shrunk, like everything else. Bumped my stately pleasure dome, eh?"
All this while the mead had exercised a benign though failing power. It made their talk under the bridge seem, to Leonard, an affair of great humor, lawless charm; and now as they crawled forth into sunlight, it moved him to laugh at the man's words more than they demanded.
"Pleased you, did I?"
Conscious of a mild scrutiny, Leonard spoke out. Something easy and frank in this chance acquaintance drew his confession.
"Don't mind me. I took a drink back there, and for some reason it turned out to be an old ancient whopper. Looked tame enough, but stood right up on its hind legs afterward and neighed."
The golfer picked up his iron, dropped the ball over his shoulder, paused, and glanced round with a tolerant smile.
"It will happen to us, won't it?" he said kindly.
"It will," returned Corsant, "when an old woman by the wayside circumvents you with mead."
No sooner had he uttered these words, than the keen blue eyes regarding him flashed once, hardened, and lost all friendliness. Their lids drooped as though weighed down by sleep. The stranger's face turned scornful, then let every sign of emotion whatsoever die.
"Ah?"
He might have been about to answer, but did not. Instead he addressed the ball, stopped, bent down, lifted it, snatched one of the coats from the grass, whirled it over his arm, and without a word marched angrily away, limping. He crossed the bridge, to follow the other bank downstream. The baize-green circle of lawn, where the red flag hung fluttering, he passed as if it were contaminated.
"Now what on earth did I say?" Leonard stared after him. "Temper? Golly, what a temper! And a good chap like that, none better, you can see! What got into him?"
The thing outstripped conjecture. He could only watch that indignant form striding into the distance, conquering its limp, and visibly fretting to be gone out of reach.
"Gave up the hole, too."
He saw the man stop by a green-painted box, tee his ball, shrug himself into the jacket, drive cleanly, mark some invisible flight, and set off to follow up the long field streaked with daisies. His club head twinkled in the sun. He never looked back. Puzzling over this encounter, trying to recall their talk and sift out the offense, Leonard went his own way down the brook. Mother Grayland's liquor ceased its inward prancing: that inordinate cupful of mischief passed from his mind.
"A strange kind of morning altogether," he reflected. "And the wind-up strangest of all."
For coolness, he let the jacket hang down his back, carrying it by one finger hooked through the collar tape. At home again, upstairs, he tossed it upon his bed. That afternoon he spent in Mrs. Merle's honeysuckle bower which, at the far corner of her little garden, afforded a sweet-smelling retirement. Nothing disturbed him here but now and then a whitethroat slipping among the starry flowers, or darting over hedge and wall with a rattle of song. His landlady's pet sheep—once a cosset lamb, now aged and purblind—came to lie down with the old white bull terrier on the grass beside his chair. In their innocent company, like part of an Æsop fable, he was accustomed to write his few letters, doze, read, or take tea. A pocket map of the country engaged him to-day: he measured with his pipestem the scale of miles, and a crotchety line that zigzagged over the green surface.
"Call it twenty-four," he thought. "Weather's too fine for sitting in trains." His pocket money had run low. The nearest bank for his letter of credit was in a large seaport, distant more than two pipestem lengths on the reduced-survey map.
"To-morrow will be Sunday. Twenty-odd miles. I'll walk it—start after church and be there by dinnertime."
Having made so much effort, he lay back and persevered in idleness. Not until evening, half undressed in his room, did he bother with preparations for to-morrow's journey. They were simple.
"Tobacco's out. Must go buy some before the shop closes,"
Dressing again, Leonard caught up the jacket that lay on his bed. He slipped into this garment, opened the door, and suddenly halted.
"What's this? Growing heavier, am I? Surely not since morning."
There could be no doubt about it. The jacket bound him slightly in the armscyes. He returned to the window. By such light as came through vines and elm branches, he found himself wearing ruddy-brown tweed, old but handsome, of an unwonted softness to the touch.
"Wrong one!" said Leonard. "It's the other chap's. What a nuisance! Drat the old woman's mead! How are we to exchange back again, now?"
He could not remember anything in his own coat that would enlighten the golfer. Perhaps these pockets might contain a card or a letter. He felt through them.
"Nothing outside."
Inside, however, his fingers discovered some kind of documents, which he drew out. These were two—the first an old Manila-paper envelope, empty, and bare of writing; the second an ordinary letter, open and addressed. Leonard, scowling in the twilight, read with great surprise his own name—"L. Corsant Esq're."
He stood wondering; then, to make certain, he lighted a candle and read the superscription again. The writing was good commercial hand, the name plainly his own.
"May be an introduction—a chit the man was bringing to look me up."
It was not. The thing contained only a receipted bill showing that in London two days ago L. Corsant Esq're had slept and breakfasted at a little out-of-the-way hotel.
"It's a lie and a pretty cool one," he reflected. "Never heard of the place before. Why, Mr. Hot Temper this morning must have been using my name!"
So he said, but so he did not believe, remembering the stranger's face and manner. Leonard blew out his candle, restored the papers to their pocket, leaned in the window, and thought.
Mrs. Merle's deliberate footsteps moved in her garden below. The sound brought him inspiration.
"Why, of course. Plain as a pikestaff," thought Leonard. "I'll ask her; should have done it long ago. Self-evident!"
He lost no more time, but ran downstairs and greeted Mrs. Merle on the threshold. She was bringing her bullfinch indoors for the night. They stood and chatted for a while.
"Oh, by the way," said he, "is there anybody else of my name living in this part of the world nowadays?"
Florid, round, cheerful and slow, the landlady balanced her birdcage. It resembled her in shape, like the wire model of another Mrs. Merle, doll dressmaker's size, cut off at the waist. She weighed his question.
"Why, no, sir! No, indeed."
Her answer left him disappointed—in the dark again. She could not have understood.
"Are you quite sure of that?" Leonard persisted. "No one else at all? There must be!"
His hostess regarded him with mild bewilderment.
"Well, sir, living here all my life," she said, in a wounded tone, "it's not likely I wouldn't have heard. Anyone else of your name—that there is not."
Leonard thanked her, left her mollified by some general observations, and went out. The evening sky remained bright, a pale-green splendor above the trees. When he had bought his tobacco he lingered in the street to admire that slowly fading hour of stillness; but he could not enjoy it, being puzzled and vexed. Here he went in another man's coat, with a receipt for money which he had never paid, and which involved things he had never done.
"Unless in my sleep," he grumbled. It was enough to create feelings of somnambulism, double existence, crookedness.
"Hold hard! I've got it by one end, now," he decided. "The bee woman was afraid of me. That might be dotage. But then, our tall friend on the beach, with the pony, thought he knew me well. Go find him. At the Ship on Ways, he said. Where the dickens is that?"
Halting, at gaze, Leonard marked how the river, far down beyond fields, curved like a sickle and shone like glass. The hills under which it lay were melting in smoky-brown shadows that promised heat for the morrow. Very broad and solemn the vista appeared, through this peephole of a lane.
"Where's the Ship on Ways?"
One door in the lane stood open. The blacksmith, working late, crouched over something he had carried out to finish while daylight lasted.
"Good! Peacock can tell where that is. And Peacock will know our friend's name."
With that, Corsant drew near and gave the smith good evening.
VI
MR. PEACOCK squatted on the ground, with a vermilion paintbrush in his hand. Against the doorpost leaned one great leaf of an iron gate, beautifully wrought. He was busy dabbing red lead on the hook of the lower hinge.
"Good evening, sir," he replied heartily.
"You keep open late," said Leonard. "What a splendid pattern that is."
The blacksmith paused, and laid brush across pot. Both men admired for a time, without speaking, the firm yet flowerlike scrolls of the gate, clean bars, curves and interlacing tendrils combined by some hand that could lay hold of beauty and strip away entangling prettiness.
"Yes, a noble piece of work, sir."
"Yours?"
"Well, hardly!" Mr. Peacock looked up with slow surprise. Then a grin stole over his broad, good-humored face. "You must know that, sir, if anybody does. Having your bit of fun with me. The hinge was broke, so George he asked me to weld on a fresh pin, you see, which I did." The speaker took his brush, and dabbed on more red lead. "There now—she's done. 'Twill dry to-morrow, ready to hang by Monday morning, and George can put the black on afterwards. I obliged him this far, George having no red handy. I hope it suits. I hope the job is satisfactory?"
Leonard found himself appealed to, as judge. He failed to see why, but answered: "Entirely so, I should think. It matches the upper one. Very neat indeed."
This verdict seemed to delight Mr. Peacock. His grimy countenance beamed.
"Thank you, sir. I did try to match 'em as near as go." He stepped back and considered his work gravely. "All mine, says you, joking just now. Only wish it was. 'Twould be a job to take pride in. George says some old forefather of his fashioned that gate, sir. But then George is more'n half a gypsy, and a terrible liar." The blacksmith paused, then suddenly added: "A terrible liar in his humorous way, o' course I mean; he's a good friend, as we both know, and speaking serious they don't make 'em truthfuler."
Corsant had never heard of their friend.
"What George is that?"
Peacock, turning from his contemplation, began to stare.
"George Grayland, sir."
"Yes? Who is he? I don't seem to"
"Lord love you!" cried the smith. Wonder overcame him. Then, slowly, his eyes grew troubled. On the point of replying, he checked himself, bent down to recover the red lead pot, and set it carefully inside the door. When at last he spoke again, over one shoulder, his voice was persuasive and subdued, his air of apology almost coaxing. "Why, you'll remember George, I'm sure. Him that was here with me, the other morning, to get the old pony shod—as you was passing by."
The manner of this speech, thought Leonard, contained a puzzle. He let it go, to welcome the matter.
"Ah, yes. He's just the boy I want to see. Where's this haunt of his, again, the Ship on Ways?"
"Down below, by the river." Peacock rose and with a chuckle as of relief stood pointing. "It's the ferry house there, where Ashkettle's daughter keeps her boats. The name's failing out o' memory, nowadays. My grandfather used to say they did build three four little dinky ships there, Henry the Eight's time. Bless me, I knew all along you wouldn't have forgot George. You'll find him there—Saturday night."
Corsant helped to carry the iron gate into the shop, and left Mr. Peacock thoughtfully watching him, as before, down the lane. Dusk had fallen, but not thick enough to blur the tips of bracken near by, or quench the yellow embers of gorse on outcropping rocks. The river still gleamed, under shadows now settling hard and black. Lamplight strayed through the open door of the Ship on Ways, too early to shine far, soon lost on the grass-grown slabs bordering the water.
Inside, the first man Leonard saw was his unknown friend George, the terrible liar. He stood near the lamp, a tall handsome figure, laughing. A cloud of tobacco smoke curled along the beams—dark tree-nailed oak, Armada wreckage—close above his head. Beyond in the heart of this cloud sat half a dozen men with their beer. Someone had just cracked a joke.
"Yes, that is so. But you don't count." The tall man beguiled his audience with a wink. "You came from Zennor, where the cow ate the bell rope."
Whatever his retort signified, it took effect like Old Grouse in the Gun Room. Laughter, loud and unanimous, broke out from the conclave. Leonard could not even distinguish the victim. He himself remained in the dusk—unseen, he thought, but before their merriment had fairly begun, the tall man turned as if making a lazy, triumphal exit, slipped outdoors, took him lightly by the arm for a moment, and began at once to walk with him side by side away from the house, up the hill.
"Yes, sir. Good evening. What can I do for you?"
The man's alertness was a marvel.
"You must have eyes in the back of your head," said Corsant.
"Heard you coming." His companion chuckled. "I suppose you want to have a talk with me?"
They passed through leafy darkness in a gap, entered a field, and paused there on open grass. It was owl-and-bat light now, but each could see the other's face dimly.
"Yes. You can answer a question or two for me, if you will," said Leonard.
"At your service."
"I believe your name is George Grayland?"
"A very safe beginning," replied the tall one, and laughed. Yet as he did so, his manner changed. His eyes, that seemed to sparkle even in that gloom, seemed also to take on a cutting edge and grow hostile. Corsant felt them watching him, seeing him all anew, from head to foot. It was an odd impression quickly past; for the man continued as before, with easy good nature: "Yes, I'm George right enough. But look here, we'll probably have a good deal to overhaul. Why not say it in comfort and private? My time's yours, of course, but I did promise to do a fool's errand this evening—up at the church. Suppose we go there? Not far, you know, and questions will keep."
Leonard consented. They climbed the fields together, and went up the lane past Peacock's by early starlight. All the way Grayland talked at random, in his deep and pleasant voice.
"Yes, sir, as you say, that iron gate's a fair wonder. Makes their Jean Lamour grilles and such look silly enough, to my mind." He discoursed on weather, and fishing, and somebody's mare who had foaled; then, as they left the village below and entered a darkness where gravestones leaned, under elm branches and the stars, he explained his errand. "I told my—you see, I promised an old woman to get her some church-bell grease for an ointment. She cures the hives or shingles with it, so they say. We'll have to rob Gabriel."
At the church tower he halted, jingled some keys, unlocked a door, and helped Corsant over a blind step.
"You have the run of the place then," said Leonard.
"No. I'm a damn bad churchgoer," sighed Grayland, in the dark. "But the ringers keep me as a hanger-on, of sorts, because when a boy I lived once with a carillonneur in the low countries."
Corsant heard him groping near by. He swore under his breath.
"Some fool's gone and left the candle upstairs. Never mind, sir. It's plain round and round, if you keep to the broad treads on the outside."
They mounted a winding stair, at the head of which Grayland again jingled his keys and unlocked a door. Boards groaned hollow underfoot on some level place, like a platform. Then a match flared. Grayland lighted a candle, and set it on the floor. They stood in a loft, bare except for two or three stools, a few letters or bulletins framed and glazed on the walls, and bell-ropes running up through the celling.
"Seven of 'em. A real good peal, first-chop." By candle shine the tall man might have been in fact a robber, as he moved softly about, touching the ropes. "Pega, Bega, Tatwin, Turketyl, Betelin—those five are named like the old Crowland bells, burned in the fire—and Gabriel here, and Mary Rosamund."
He drew a pair of stools near the candle, invited Corsant to sit, watched him do so, glided behind him, locked the door, and pocketed the keys.
"Gabriel's our tenor." He sat down, smiling darkly. "Those are the names of the bells. Now what's yours?"
The question sounded of a piece with his talk. He had not raised his voice; but the black eyes over the candle were sharp as a knife, cool and dangerous. At their first flash, Leonard perceived that he sat locked in a tower, alone with a born outlaw who rather welcomed enemies.
"My name's Corsant."
"Drop it. I mean your real name."
"That's all I ever had. You can't change it by blustering."
The man continued to smile.
"Look here," said he, "let's be frank and talk sense. You can't carry it any further.—not with me. You did look the part well enough beforehand, in a way. On the beach, naked, yes—you fooled me good. But now, no: there's not much real likeness, and the game's up. Talk sense."
Leonard began to grow ruffled.
"Better give me a lead, then," he replied. "Talk some yourself, and throw in a dash of civility."
The black eyes glanced what might have been admiration.
"Well done! You have studied for it," said Grayland. "I give you credit, friend. You caught just his old sleepy look. But tell me, what is the good of play acting here? None in the world. So come, out with it! Plump—right out in daddy's hand. Who are you?"
Leonard, shoving the stool back, prepared to get on foot.
"Already told you," he declared quietly. "We don't seem to understand each other very well. If there's going to be trouble—why, let's begin."
The other made no answer for a moment, but stayed at ease, leaning forward, arms across thighs. When he spoke, it was with the same careless mockery.
"Fighting? Well," said he, "as a rule nobody has to ask me twice either. But that can wait. All I have to do, mark you, is to step on the candle. Once dark, and you're the cat in a strange garret, me the dog who knows every corner of it. Not fair, o' course. But your kind don't value fair nor foul a dead herring."
"Go on." Leonard rose. "Blow her out!" Stooping, Grayland lifted the candle, but only to balance it on one knee.
"Ready!" His dark face brightened. "I like you better for showing spunk. It underlay your looks anyhow; that's what puzzled me, and does yet." He paused, frowned, and changing from his even tone, became deadly grim. "But you're going to unwrap me the whole rig, friend, whether we take to our hands and I beat it out of you, or whether we just sit here all night, Sunday, and all next week. Corsant is my best friend. He's the only man in this world could wipe his boots on me if he chose. I've killed for him before now, in the open, free-for-all. Last night he came home. Here you sit wearing his clothes. What have you done with him? I mean to know. He came home on the quiet, a-purpose, and only two people was to have foreknowledge. Well! Instead, you come sneaking down here, call yourself Corsant at the inn, knock his plans whatever they were galley-west buzzing all over the village, and—why? You'll tell me why, if we have to hang you on a bell rope and scorch the flat of your feet black. I'm the boy to do dirtier work than that for Laurence Corsant."
His hearer suddenly laughed and sat down.
"All's well, old man. The fight's off! I never mentioned it."
Grayland's eyes narrowed like a cat's. He seemed poised for action, wary of this quick surrender.
"You never mentioned what?" he drawled.
"The name Laurence. Because why, mine happens to be Leonard."
Across the dark man's countenance there swept conflicting emotions, half hidden like rioters in smoke—anger, disbelief, surprise, and a kind of welcoming wonder.
"By the left hind leg o' the "
He completed some tremendous oath in a whisper, and put his candle on the floor again. "Back from over the water! Leonard! American?"
"Yes."
"Return, ye children o' men! I might have known. What brought you here at this time?"
"Accident—whim," said Leonard. "On the look-see. I'm sorry if it spoiled anyone's plans."
Grayland wagged his head, thoughtfully.
"You didn't swim left-handed through the Nostrils by accident," he rejoined. "Look here, we began wrong to-night. Could feel it in the air. Now let's take a clean start and go with the grain."
By common impulse they shook hands. As they did so, Leonard caught a passing glimpse of his own head and shoulders darkly mirrored in one of the glazed bulletins on the wall. He peered at it, and laughed. Seen thus, crouching forward, the reflection told him why the young man under the bridge had seemed only part stranger.
"Your friend Laurence and I have met," said he. "Perhaps you can help us change our coats back." Describing their encounter that morning, he suddenly remembered how much longer ago and farther away his story began. "Why, of course! This accounts for the girl in Alexandria who signed my name. She seemed a gay and forward hussy at the time."
Grayland, hearkening wisely, nodded.
"Girls always run after Corsant. He has no time for 'em. Yes, he's just home from the East. I was out there with him a while."
The man's eyes declared that he could say much more if he chose. Instead, he waited for Leonard to go on, and then sat listening like a well-disposed but vigilant critic.
"In Florence one night a chap came strutting up to me, Prussian-officer way—tall, stiff beggar, pale eyes"
The critic suddenly took another posture, with elbows on knees, forehead in one spread hand and one fist. He appeared to be staring at the floor, but his face remained hidden. Thus, a brooding visored shape, he heard Leonard's tale of the restaurant in Sword Street and Sun Street, Gino's café. As the candlelight wavered, his shadow, like that of a desponding giant, swayed on the wall among the black rods of the bell-rope shadows. He made no comment.
"Does all this bore you?"
He shook his head impatiently.
"Go on."
Not until the narrative ended with that very day and morning, did Grayland rouse.
"An old woman circumventing you with mead?" He looked up, his bold eyes twinkling. "No wonder your cousin got the hump! Of all chances on earth, his very first walk at home, that old story to fly up in his face. No wonder."
"I don't know any old story about it," said Leonard.
"Of course you don't," Grayland replied. "There's the miracle." He pondered. "Well, there! And your great-something-dad's sword and shooting irons laying rusting on the breakfast table. Humph! All these years!"
He rose and stood there in a brown study.
"Well, I'll exchange your coats to-morrow morning all right," he said at last. "You know, Mr. Corsant, I may ask you to do me a little turn some day."
"Any day you like, Mr. Grayland."
"George, please. The whole thing sounds unnatural enough without that—from you, sir."
They eyed each other with great favor. Their quarrel in this dusky loft seemed to have created a bond.
"Oh, by thunder! Forgot my errand." George swung away, grinning. "You keep the candle. I can see 'em all in the dark."
He took from his pocket something white and round—an old anchovy paste jar.
"For my—for the old woman's holy ointment."
So saying, he unlocked the door by the stairhead, left it open, and with a bound upward seemed to vanish, until Corsant spied his long legs rapidly mounting a ladder. From overhead came his footsteps in the belfry. A moment afterward he dropped lightly into view once more.
"A good gob of grease from Gabriel," he chuckled, tapping the anchovy pot. "Must keep her happy, poor soul, if we have to rob the church."