Spider's Castle

by Albert Kinross

 

SPIDER'S CASTLE

By Albert Kinross

SHE worked in a London office amid a maddening rattle of typewriters, and because she knew French and shorthand as well as the ways of her machine, her weekly wage was two pounds ten, which is high for a shorthand typist. Hester Ling was her name, and any ordinary day, if you stood on the kerb of Bedford Street and looked up to a first-floor window, there you might see her stooping over her machine, and, when she paused, as pretty a face as was ever immured within an office. This is a picture of Hester on week-days and at her work. Towards six o'clock it ended, and out she would come, marching with that long stride of hers into the Strand, and if you followed her—which I hope you wouldn't—you might see her pass under the new Admiralty Arch, and so through St. James's Park and past Victoria to Chelsea. St. James's Park always attracted her, because of its lake, its waterfowl, and its sunsets. There she could forget all about typewriting, and be the self that came back to her over the week-end. In spite of her urban occupations, it was a country self. Her father had been a doctor in rural Norfolk. Years ago he had died, leaving very little money, so Hester had to turn to and earn her living. Yet, though tied to the little Chelsea flat and the big office in Bedford Street, she never forgot the country, and gave it every week-end she could spare; and if a Bank Holiday were attached to that week-end, she had Saturday afternoon and Sunday and Monday—long enough to forget London, and the feel of pavements, and the loss of her beloved stars.

It was the Saturday afternoon before Whit Monday, and Hester had indulged herself, perhaps because the tickets were cheaper over the Whitsuntide, or perhaps because there was the extra day. She had gone some sixty odd miles out of London this time, with no luggage but her hand-bag. She did not quite know where she was going to sleep, nor did she care. Everything must be clean and simple and cheap; that was the one rule she obeyed. The rest she left to chance and her own good fortune. Usually she hit on some remote farmhouse where the woman was only too glad to have her. A new face was a new face, and eighteenpence for bed and breakfast was money found. And Hester gave no trouble, and was quite ready to help with the extra work she made. She knew farmhouses and farm-wives all round London, and especially a Mrs. Fukes, of Cherry Corner, where she had already stayed more than a dozen times. From Cherry Corner you could reach woodland, downland, and most other kind of land afoot, and even the sea, if you borrowed Mrs. Fukes's bicycle, which she was always willing to lend Hester, and make no extra charge.

To-day, however, Miss Ling had gone far beyond the radius of Mrs. Fukes and Cherry Corner. At four o'clock she had stepped out of the train and found herself in a cathedral city she had long meant to explore. She loved these old places as much as the open country; like natural objects, they had grown and spread, and might pass into decay. Delightful to the eye was this old city, and Hester asked no more. She could people it and give it life; the natives did not matter, nor even the Dean and Chapter. She had dreamt the late afternoon away in a delicious solitude. And then she had marched off into the sunset, watching the silhouettes of trees against the glow—the firs were wonderful—and a sky of which the edge was one long rhapsody of colour. It had moved her more than evensong heard in the cathedral, though the screen had dimmed from stone to silver, a carven masterwork that left her breathless, though the organ had brooded and become a voice, and through clerestory and nave the broken lights had joined with the stained glass to make a miracle.

"The cathedral is the greatest thing in the world, and yet the world is greater far than the cathedral; and I suppose I'm a heathen, anyhow," soliloquised Hester. And then she stopped, for here was a board that said "Apartments," and a lesser board that said "Milk: 1d. a glass." They were nailed to a tree, and the tree stood in a little garden fronting the high-road. Back of it lay the house, a red-brick structure, mellow and with lichened roof. It was possibly a small farmhouse. Hester gathered this from its outbuildings, which were more extensive than would have been the case with an ordinary dwelling; and, of course, "Milk: 1d, a glass," meant cows, or, at least, a cow. It was the very place she wanted—cheap and simple, plain and rural. She would stay here overnight.

A bustling woman answered her knock.

"Bed and supper and breakfast?" said she. "That's what we're here for." She was as cheery as a farm wife in a play.

"And the price?"

"Don't you trouble, miss—that'll be all right. We get lots of visitors, and they never complain."

Hester let it go at that. She knew the usual charge for similar accommodation—next to nothing at all. And, besides, it was the dead season of the year, before the summer holidays, and Whitsun never made much difference except in the towns. These people would be only too glad to have her. She followed the other indoors and up to her room.

"Real farmhouse quarters!" she laughed, punching the feather bed and examining the china ornaments on the dressing-table, which was fitted with skirts and frills and ribbons, just like a Victorian débutante. And the walls of the room were decorated with real farmhouse texts, all of a pious and exalted character, though rather depressing if met on a wet day.

Hester learnt that her hostess was a Miss Hammon, and that Carrie Hammon was her name in full.

Miss Hammon lingered by the door, and a cat came out of one of the two closets. "We've heaps of cats," said Miss Hammon; "you mustn't mind them."

"I like cats," replied Hester. "We used to have two at home—Fluffles and Toots, such dears."

"You'll be down for supper; mother's getting it ready. We're plain folk here, Miss Ling; it's what you'd expect."

Hester was plain herself, she answered, and then was left to go her way alone.

She peered into the two closets. They were almost as big as rooms, with shelves against the walls and hooks to hang up clothes. Outside her window spread the vast level of Oxney Marsh. She had walked towards it, and this house overlooked its nearer dykes and pasturages. She had often heard about it and read about it, and wanted to see it, and there it was. Endlessly, beyond her vision, it reached, and she knew that it swept on to the sea—indeed, had once been sea-bed, and the stranded inland towns its flourishing ports. Distant, or, seeming distant, in the growing dusk, she made out humps upon its surface, islands and promontories—they rose out of that level. On one of these stood Oxney Town, a city untouched for close upon four centuries. To-morrow she would visit it. Just now she must go down and have her supper.

She met a cat on the stairway, and three more were in the parlour, a room rather overcrowded with solid farmhouse furniture—horsehair sofas, massive sideboard, table, chairs, and battered oak bureau. The assembled company consisted of Carrie Hammon, old Mrs. Hammon, and a bald-headed permanent guest, who was deaf and dumb, Mr. Taylor by name, and very quick with his hands and fingers. Hester was properly introduced, and the bald-headed gentleman at once started a digital conversation; but Hester being unable to follow him or answer, he deftly produced a block of scribbling paper and a pencil. "Fine day," he wrote, and Hester nodded.

Mrs. Hammon was white-haired, thin, and dignified. She stood very straight in her black dress and long gold chain, and looked her visitor up and down as though deciding that here had arrived a person of no consequence, and that Mrs. Hammon was the proper party to keep such an individual in her place. "Not know the Marsh?" she cackled. A person who had never seen the Marsh before was self-confessed an ignoramus and a dunce. To old Mrs. Hammon her own little corner was the whole wide world. "But I've seen lots of other places," protested Hester; and the old lady repeated "other places" as though there weren't any other places, and, if there were, they didn't matter. Miss Carrie was less distant, and served the victuals. These consisted mainly of a mysterious stew which suggested game; but the month being a summer month, and game therefore out of season—— Well, Hester thought it best to ask no questions. "Perhaps it's one of those old cats," was her inward comment, though it certainly didn't taste like cat, or, at least, like what Hester fancied would be the taste. It was more like a bird or birds.

She replied to the bald-headed gentleman's remarks. He kept up a constant fire with his pad and pencil. She was patronised and kept in her proper place by old Mrs. Hammon, who, it turned out, had once been a prosperous farmer's wife and on easy terms with all the neighbouring gentry. Her husband, however, had over-speculated in turnip-seed, for which in those days the Marsh was famous, and they had come down to this place—Spider's Castle, it was called, for some queer, old, forgotten reason. The times were not what they used to be, she quavered, implying that it was a humiliation for the likes of her to have to house and entertain so poor a creature as Hester Ling.

Carrie Hammon, a more practical and modern character, accepted the situation and cheerfully inaugurated a discussion of the near-by show places and the cathedral. Many tourists came that way in the summer, she said, especially artists and such folk. She called them "Radicals"—it seemed to be her term for anything wild—but what beat her was that there were people who gave them a lot of money for their pictures. She couldn't understand it—no, not she! She might go as far as ten shillings, if it was a big one and had a good gilt frame to it, but they asked pounds and pounds. Well, it was a queer world, concluded Miss Carrie Hammon, and certainly Hester agreed with her.

The bald-headed gentleman eyed the new-comer hungrily the while, as though he had heaps and heaps to say for himself, and would have given anything to speak; but all he could do was to jot down some obvious remark upon his pad and hand it and the pencil over to poor Hester.

"Making a long stay? " he asked.

"Only a day or two," she wrote.

Mr. Taylor seemed bitterly disappointed.

Hester said good-night to them all as soon as was anyway decent. She had rarely been so thoroughly bored by people in her life before. She read for an hour upstairs by candle-light, and turned in early and lay awake in the dark.

It was not so very dark, for a big moon silvered the Marsh and all its waters. Presently she heard somebody leave the house and step into the garden. And then, "My lamb, my blessing," said a voice, "run out and find her." It was a new voice, a quite different voice from any she had heard at table.

She sat upright and listened.

"My lamb, my little lamb, Carrie's own little blessing!" mewed the voice.

Hester could resist no longer. She stole out of bed and tip-toed to the window; she raised a tiny corner of the blind and peeped outdoors. There, in the moonlight—yes, it was Miss Hammon talking to and caressing one of her band of cats.

"My lamb, Carrie's own little lambkin," she mewed, "go out and find her." Her voice was quite changed from the cheery note she had struck at table. She whined now, she miaued, she nasalled. "Her own little blessing!" she crooned; then let the cat go off and picked up another one. There was something cat-like in Miss Hammon herself.

The same thing occurred with the next cat. It, too, was Miss Hammon's lambkin and her blessing, and it, too, was told to "go out and find her." And presently away it stole, disappearing into the night.

"Find whom?" wondered Hester. Those two women were like two witches, she thought, and, years ago, people would have burnt them. The old one had been very proud and stuck-up with her, treating her like a stray, although she would take her money. "Pooh!" she ended. "To-morrow I'm going to Oxney." She crept back to her bed again, and very soon was sound asleep.

II.

It was dawn, and her room neither in light nor in darkness, when Hester was awakened by someone tapping at her door, and she was thankful that she had slid the bolt and turned the key.

The tapping continued.

"Who is it?" she cried; but there came no answer.

The tapping began anew.

"I'm not going to open unless you tell me who you are," she called out. Yet all the response she met was the ghostly tapping that had first disturbed her.

She lay quite still in her bed with beating heart, and the room grew gradually lighter.

There was someone breathing up against her door—it sounded like a large animal. Hester was wide awake now. There was no more sleep for her. And, to add to her perplexity, she heard a gentle miauing in the garden, and then a window opening and a something happening—she could not quite tell what.

Again she crept out of bed and raised a corner of the blind. There was a cat in the garden, and it was standing over a dead bird the size and colour of a partridge. Perhaps it was a partridge. A basket on a string had descended from the house. The cat picked up its bird and stepped into the basket. It was hoisted up and up and up. Then an arm reached out of a window and drew cat, basket, and bird indoors.

Hester stole back to bed, forming her own conclusions, and next she heard a groping and a rustling. The mysterious creature outside her door was trying to push something underneath it—a piece of paper. And then a light broke on Hester. She found a pencil, drew out the piece of paper, and, as she had guessed, "It's me, John Taylor. Can I speak to you?" was scribbled at the top of it. "GO AWAY," she answered in capitals, and pushed the paper back whence it had come. A moment later she heard someone creeping silently down the passage, and then the stealthy closing of a door.

She was prepared to renew her interrupted slumbers when a second cat started miauing below. It was a little cry, almost like a signal, and the first cat had struck up just the same—hardly loud enough to wake a sound sleeper. But Hester was thoroughly awake. Unable to resist, and very curious, she returned once more to her post.

The second cat, a tabby, had brought back a rabbit. Again a basket was lowered. The cat jumped in, carrying its prey, and was duly hoisted up to the window where someone was waiting to draw it indoors and pet it.

"I'm sure it's Carrie Hammon!" now laughed Hester. "That accounts for the stew! She's trained those cats of hers to get her a living."

After that nothing more happened to disturb the visitor. The deaf and dumb man's incursion she put down to the eccentricity of an individual who appeared to be half-witted. That could be the only explanation. She didn't feel at all frightened. This was a peculiar household, she concluded; and now, with the room all light and the day come, it made her smile.

She stayed to watch the sun rising over the Marsh before attempting further slumbers. As soon as she had breakfasted, she would tramp it to Oxney Town and bask in the sixteenth century.

Miss Carrie was downstairs before her.

"Had a good night?" asked Miss Carrie, with just an undernote of anxiety behind her invariable cheeriness.

"Never slept better," replied Miss Ling, who had resolved not to say anything, but to mind her own business and let these people do as they pleased. Another day and she would be quit of them, and never see them in her life again. They would prove a laughable memory. "You old poacher," she thought inwardly—"you and your cats!"

"Nobody disturbed you?" Miss Carrie's narrow eyes were fixed upon Hester's.

"Well, somebody does go sleep-walking," Hester confessed. "I believe it's Mr. Taylor."

"So he's been at it again?" And Miss Carrie sucked at a hollow tooth. She put her forefinger to her lined forehead. "He's not quite right," she said; "you mustn't mind him."

"I don't," replied Hester. And then they breakfasted, and she set oat for Oxney Town.

The ancient city was a delightful experience of cobbled streets, grass-grown and narrow, with strange little houses, each one differing from its neighbour. Everything seemed to have been made by hand, instead of by machinery, as was, of course, the case, and, in Hester's eyes, a great improvement. And there were two stone gateways by which one could enter or depart, with towers and portcullis and a platform for archers. These belonged to an earlier period still, or, at least, so the man said who was there to sweep and cherish them. He was like an old poll parrot, and knew his story off by heart. He told her that it was his birthday, and, though she suspected him, she gave him what he called "a birthday present." And later she discovered that he was an old soldier, who had fought in the Mutiny and in the American Civil War, and still drew an American pension, which was paid him by a Consul, and Lawyer Knight had got it for him. He showed her the way to the tavern where she took her luncheon. It was a sixteenth-century house, dark with ancient panelling, or light with clear-washed plaster. It was low-ceilinged, yet somehow spacious, with two hidden little gardens, enclosed and almost secret, and on top was a dormer window, with a wonderful look-out over the Marsh. The afternoon lengthened, and she had seen the inside of six houses, as well as revelled in those grass-grown, cobbled streets.

On the road home she came face to face with Mr. Taylor. He had been sitting on a milestone, evidently awaiting her return. When she appeared, he left his seat and intimated that he wanted to have a word with her.

Hester was willing. It was different from coming and rapping at her door in the grey of early morning. He produced his pad excitedly and showed her a long statement. She read it through. Mr. Taylor, so it seemed, wanted to escape.

"But why can't you? Aren't you free?" inquired Hester, who had drawn out her fountain pen and was ready for the worst.

"Those two women," he replied, "they'd never let me. That's why I knocked at your door. I never get a chance of seeing anybody—not with them about." He was quite coherent and rational, and seemed to know the quickest and most effective way of stating his business.

"I gave them the slip this afternoon," he explained. "They think I've gone fishing. I knew you'd be coming back from Oxney. I've tried to get at other lodgers, but they all come at once, and nobody would listen."

"Why can't you go in the usual way?" replied Hester.

"Where?" he wrote, and indicated his infirmities. And then he produced a single guttural sound that made Hester jump. She gathered that even if he had the courage and the will-power—and he hadn't very much of either—it would be difficult for a deaf and dumb man to find a new home unaided.

"Have you any money?" she asked.

"Two pounds a week regular. It comes from house property. Miss Hammon takes it, though it's sent by post to me."

He was, it appeared, one of those weak and afflicted mortals, without friends or near relations, who are dependent on people outside, and almost at their mercy. The two Hammon women had got hold of him—Heaven alone knew how—and were resolved to keep him. No doubt they bullied him, bled him, and terrorised him. Still, it was no concern of Hester's, unless—— "I know what," she thought. "Perhaps——" And she hesitated.

"I'll tell you to-morrow," she wrote. "If you behave yourself until to-morrow morning, perhaps I'll do something."

"Thank you," he answered. "We must go back separately; they mustn't know."

III.

To-morrow came. There had been another mysterious stew at supper, and Hester had again been aware of Miss Carrie's goings on overnight. But it was Miss Carrie in the morning who directly affected Hester. She had asked for her bill. When it came, she looked up aghast. The charges were terrible, about three times what they ought to have been, with all sorts of extras, such as light, cruet, and attendance. If she had gone to the most seasonal and sophisticated of hotels, it could not have been worse.

Miss Carrie had delivered her bombshell and promptly disappeared, leaving the victim alone with Mrs. Hammon; and it looked as though the two women had arranged it thus, with a view to making matters harder for Hester. For how could a young person from nowhere accuse this dignified old party of being a cheat?

Mrs. Hammon hovered about expectant, a cold light in her grey eye.

"I'm not afraid of you, and I'm not going to be," whispered Hester; and then aloud and holding up that preposterous bill: "You don't expect me to pay all this?"

"These are our charges," responded the old lady. "If you come here, you have to pay."

"But Miss Hammon said hers were the usual rates, and she looked honest."

"These are our charges. If you come here, you've got to pay." And no other answer could be extracted from that obstinate old woman, except that all her air and manner indicated she had conferred an undeserved honour on Hester, who was behaving just as she had expected she would behave, and not at all like a lady bred and born.

"But I've had nothing, and this is just a plain farmhouse," expostulated Hester.

"These are our charges. If you come here, you have to pay. We didn't ask you," cackled the old lady. "If you come here, you've got to pay."

"Humph! " replied Hester. "Where's Miss Hammon?"

"Oh, you can't see her—she's busy."

"I will see her. She's not too busy to overcharge me. This bill's in her handwriting, isn't it?" And before the old lady could interpose, Hester had flown out in quest of Carrie Hammon.

She found her feeding cats in the wash-house, which was practically an outbuilding attached to the kitchen, and entered by a further door and three stone steps. From the roof dangled four red-legged partridges, one plover, and a brace of rabbits.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you," remarked Hester, "but I'm not going to pay more than a third part of this bill."

Miss Hammon looked up in sheer ingenuous astonishment. If ever a woman seemed innocent, it was surely she.

"Why, if you go into any hotel," she began, "it's half-a-crown for breakfast, and then there's tips and the waiter, and it's five shillings for a bedroom, and three-and-six for dinner."

She mentioned the charges at the Swan Hotel in the county town. She knew, and all about the extras, and what the chambermaid expected, and then there was the boots. When she was done, Hester repeated that she wasn't going to pay more than a third.

"Come, now," persisted Carrie Hammon, "I'll take a shilling off, if that will suit you."

A voice cackled in the doorway—

"I've laid hold of her hand-bag and her boots." It was old Mrs. Hammon, flourishing a key. "I knew what would come of taking in anybody like her."

"Then you'll be had up for stealing as well as for cheating. That's all there is to it." Hester had faced round and delivered this counter-thrust.

"Hear her!" returned the old lady, undaunted. And then Hester's eyes again fell on the four partridges, the plover, and the brace of rabbits.

"I know all about them," she said, indicating the birds, "and about the cats, and 'Go out and find her.'" She mimicked Miss Carrie's caterwauling in the night, and added, "My lamb, my little blessing!"

Carrie Hammon's sun-tanned face had turned a bilious yellow; and, as for Mrs. Hammon, that old lady had swung from pink to a furious purple. "I told you what it would be, taking in the likes of her," she quavered. And then Hester smiled, for she knew that she had won, and that these two women, with all their cunning, lay at her mercy.

"You've been poaching," she said, "and you've been taking birds in the close season. You've broken the law both ways, and, if the right people heard of it, you'd go to prison. Now let me have my bag." She waited, and would not say another word till Carrie herself released the bag and boots, returning abjectly with both hands full.

"You're not going to give us away?" pleaded innocent Carrie.

"'Tain't true!" cried old Mrs. Hammon. "She can't prove it; and who'd believe her?"

"We're two to one," added Carrie, plucking up a bit.

"Now take two-thirds off the bill and receipt it properly. I'll pay that much," replied Hester.

Carrie Hammon flashed a wordless signal over to her mother, then did as she was told.

"I won't give you away this time," Hester pursued, "though you deserve it, both of you. I dare say you are poor, but that's no reason why you should cheat people and steal."

"Now you get out of my house!" It was the old lady again, quite impenitent and quite undaunted. Hester could not help smiling at the perverted pride which burnt within that frail and stubborn personality.

"Oh, leave her alone and let her go!" protested Carrie Hammon. "You know, mother, we've been warned." And whether that peculiar woman was really sick of it all or only pretending, Hester never discovered, nor ever will. She retired upstairs, packed her bag properly, and laced the captured boots.

Once outside the house she breathed relief. A hundred yards or so further on she discovered the deaf and dumb man, watching for her and preternaturally excited. Hester stopped and would have said good-bye. But "You told me to wait till to-day," he wrote eagerly on his pad. "Are you going to help me?"

She remembered now. She burst out laughing; but Mr. Taylor looked very serious, and wasn't at all amused. And then Hester's forehead wrinkled. Yes, those two women deserved some punishment.

"Come along with me," she wrote, producing her fountain pen.

"Where?" answered the pencil.

"I'll find you a new home if you promise to obey me."

The poor fellow smiled and nodded and stuck out his thumb—he always did that when he was very pleased.

She took him as far as Oxney Town, and, arrived there, be had to sit quite still while she composed a letter for honest Mrs. Fukes of Cherry Corner.

"I'm sending you a permanent lodger," she wrote—"one who will pay and stay instead of a poor week-ender. He's deaf and dumb, and most people would take advantage of him; but I know you won't, so here he goes. He'll pay you a pound a week for everything. He's got more than that coming in quite regularly, only the people here take it away from him and cheat him. Please make your Vicar see to the money part of the business, and also about getting the poor man's things away from his present quarters. The Vicar is a Christian—you've often told me so—and I know that he'll enjoy it. I'm sending him—I mean John Taylor, and not the Vicar—I'm sending him to your station by rail. There will be two luggage labels with full particulars attached to his coat, so he can't go far astray. He will bring this letter with him, so you will know what it all means. In great haste and with greetings to all of you, including Mr. Fukes and Polly,

"Hester Ling."

"P.S.—Do be kind to this poor man. I'm sure he'll be grateful."

Hester made out an envelope and handed her letter across to the expectant Mr. Taylor. He read it joyously and nodded and stuck out his thumb, and behaved altogether like the chief character in a cinema play. He had been docile and trustful as a child.

Her next step was to procure the luggage labels. She addressed them, she tied them on, and led Mr. Taylor to Oxney station. She bought him his ticket and waited for the train that was to take him inland to Mrs. Fukes and his new home. She spoke to the guard about him when the train came in, and she watched him go in safety as the train drew out of the little station.

Next morning she sat as usual over her machine at the window which opens on Bedford Street.

"What are you chuckling about?" asked the next young lady, who had stopped in London, and spent her Bank Holiday at the White City, and half her Sunday lying in bed. But Hester couldn't explain—it was too long a story. She was back with the two Hammon women and Mr. Taylor, and, instead of Bedford Street, she saw a golden sun rising above the grey and gold of Oxney Marsh.