The Castle by the Sea/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE GODDESS IN THE CAR
OF course the death-watch solution of the riddle did not prevail in the light of morning. In what small proportions do the phenomena of the night appear when viewed in the life of the day! No sound was audible in the wall when I awoke, and the perplexities it had engendered stole away like the Arabs with their folded tents when the sun was up. To breathe that air infected the blood with gayety; the sea laughed now upon the shingle, and the full chorus of the vernal birds occupied the garden stalls. I could distinguish them all, thrush and robin and blackbird, the tits and the warblers, and afar that ghost of a voice, the cuckoo's, plaintive amid the elms. I bathed and dressed and breakfasted, and wandered on the sward by the tangled orchard, now full of white and pink apple blossoms, only to be interrupted by Jackman's report of a visitor. I ejaculated.
"What sort of man?" I asked, looking at the card, which registered the name of "Mr. Peter Toosey."
Jackman hesitated. "A gentleman about forty," he said.
He would commit himself to nothing else, beyond, "He looks something like an artist, sir."
Very well; I would see him, though I cursed him for the interruption of a pleasant train of thought. The man was, as Jackman said, of forty years or so, had a short oval face, with high cheek-bones, a mass of rather long hair, a drooping moustache, and a watchful, modest eye. His voice was of a pleasant timbre, and his manner was at once shy and furtive, as though he feared a rebuff. I dare say my own demeanor suggested a rebuff. His business was put with some awkwardness, but amounted to a request for permission to copy some of the pictures in the gallery.
Now I will confess at once that this gallery had rather got on my nerves. Everything seemed to centre round the gallery. The burglar had exploited the gallery; I had picked up the note-book there; the man in the Homburg hat had stayed in the gallery to view the pictures long after the light had faded. And here was another man with a desire to enter the gallery. It might be an accident that the gallery gave access to the jewel-room, but I did not think so. I put some sharp questions to him. Which pictures did he want to paint?
He hesitated, stammered over his answer, and finally admitted that he did not quite know yet.
That raised my growing suspicions into a bristling crop. Had he ever seen the pictures?
With what appeared a singular cynicism, he laughed and admitted that he had not. I turned from him in impatience.
"I am only a tenant here," I said. "If you want permission, get it from the owner."
At the same time I resolved to write forthwith to the solicitors a word of caution. He appeared to be downcast and humiliated, but once he had left me, walked briskly enough away, as if relieved to be out of my presence.
But that was not the last I was to hear of the gallery that day. I passed a pleasant time out of doors, and in the afternoon made a second excursion on the inlet, resolving to settle to work in good earnest on the morrow. As it chanced, I went farther than I anticipated, visited a delightful wood across the water, and basked over a book in the sunshine. I got back about six o'clock and found a handsome motor-car before the door. It was in my mind for a moment that some friendly, or curious, neighbor had called to see if the new tenant of the Castle were respectable; but the thought had hardly flashed through my head when, entering the hall, I became aware of a magnificent vision in spring colors talking with Jackman. She turned as the sound of my entrance reached her, and presented me a full, pale face, surmounted by a glory of dark hair, a picture hat, and underneath these, moving, capable and meaning eyes. She swept towards me in a little rush that was impetuous and almost proprietary.
"Is this—Mr.—" she hesitated.
"Brabazon," I assisted her.
"Oh, Mr. Brabazon, I was just telling your servant," she went on with easy fluency, "that I wanted to look over your Castle and see your ancient rooms and the pictures. He was n't much inclined to let me, but I'm going to appeal to the first authority."
Her voice, ringing, sure of itself, with less variation and more intonation, than English voices, indicated her nationality. I bowed. The gallery again! But this was clearly one of those tourists, who, according to Jackman, occasionally honored us with a visit.
"Most certainly," I said, wondering why on earth he who had admitted Mr. Naylor without a qualm, should boggle at this charming woman.
"That's nice of you," said she, showing her teeth in a smile. "I've driven over from Two Bridges, on Dartmoor, you know, and they told me of this. It was in a guide-book I had and they said it was a queer, antique place, very lonely, and that's my taste. So I drove over in my car."
She was so gracious, so handsome, and so frank, that I thawed like a frost in the warmth of the sun. In point of fact, I loathe a frosty manner, and can only maintain one in self-defence for a short time. I know I beamed on her and the breath of a faint fragrance, stirred by the movement of her dress, came to me. I thought of the brow that
"Looked like marble and smelt like myrrh."
In a sweet embarrassment, I myself ushered her up the stairway to the landing and through the corridor to the gallery. She had the effect of occupying the room, of its belonging to her, and incidentally of my personal intrusion. I could not keep up the air of ownership in that dominating presence. Her very graciousness had the significance of one stooping to confer favors or deal indulgent smiles. She chattered gayly, with many questions, and in every movement of her body one was conscious alike of her sex and of her imperial claims. It did not flow unobtrusively and silently as did Perdita's, but rather demanded your attention, perhaps unconsciously, or rather only instinctively. It had no incertitude as to its rights, which one would not have dared dispute. Such a thing of magnificence challenged admiration, defied appraisement, and almost silenced criticism.
I learned some interesting facts in my round of the gallery, most of which concerned my guest's personal affairs. She and her mother were spending the year, perhaps two years in Europe, and she did not know if that was to be the limit of their exile. It would depend upon their enjoyment. The matter of money never came into the conversation, and I think it was not considered. She was enthusiastic over old places and historic cities, had revelled in Plymouth, as the starting-point of her adventurous forefathers, and was proceed-ing to eat up the traditions of Devon. She believed they had bigger spaces than Dartmoor in America, but concluded that they had n't back pages behind them to any extent. "They 're just the new magazines," she volunteered. "You 've got all the back numbers bound and put away."
I mused over this apt description, while I indicated a back number in the portrait of Lady Claire Norroy. She was a handsome woman with a pert mouth and a clever, mundane air. Perhaps she somehow accounted for Sir Edmund, apparently the only member of the house who had broken with the dull traditions of the squirearchs.
My fair visitor expressed the opinion that Lady Claire had a temper, which was possible; but I somehow did not think she was interested, for I noticed her eyes sliding off down the gallery. She made a show of interest with the next picture, but again her head was diverted, and the shafts of her eyes slipped past me, as it were, to some distant object. And thus we made our itinerary, with a sufficient exchange of talk, until we approached the bottom of the gallery.
"What lovely old books! I should just delight to explore among them," she exclaimed, and now once and for all her eyes jumped me so markedly that I felt no rudeness in turning to follow their direction. We had all but reached the bays of bookcases of which I have already spoken; and in the twilight of their shadows I saw, to my surprise, the figure of a woman.
My visitor gazed, and so did I.
I knew her at once, though her back was towards me, from something in the lift of that delicately poised neck, as it rose from the shoulders; and then I saw that she stood in a reverie, as if unmindful of us, and that her gaze appeared to be fixed on the oaken door that opened in the centre of the book-shelves into the jewel-room. My companion frankly went forward and stood by her with her native sang-froid, and Perdita started. The girls exchanged glances, and Perdita turned.
"Would n't you like this old room just set down in your house?" asked my American visitor genially.
Perdita hesitated. "Yes," she said with a little smile on her lips, and then gave me a decided but formal bow.
The American took it for granted that we should now move on in company. I think that remark of hers was, in her eyes, quite as much introduction as was necessary. Royalty has its prerogatives. She kept up a flow of conversation, partly addressed to me, and though the English girl said little, she did accompany us.
We made the round, and I offered tea, which was accepted by the one, and declined by the other. But the refusal changed the American girl's decision, not in the least, I gathered, out of any ridiculous prudery, but merely because a new thought cut across the proposal and her acceptance.
"Oh, let me take you along, if you 're going my way," she exclaimed to Perdita. "I 've got a car outside."
Perdita made her characteristic little pause. "It is kind of you," she said, by way of acquiescence.
It was not till then, and as I was on the point of losing them both, that I recollected I did not know the names of either. I took a bold leap.
"The master of this ancient domain has provided a book which he begs his visitors to honor with their names," I said elaborately. "As I am his temporary custodian, will you be so good—"
Perdita cast a quick glance at my face, and the American smiled affably.
"I should love to," she said indulgently.
I bolted into my own private room, and rummaged among my papers. But nothing like a book could I discover. Feverishly I scrambled my fingers along a shelf, hunting in dismay, and was giving up the search in despair, when I brushed something on to the floor with a clap. I opened it, saw it was scribbled in, but waited no longer and ran to the hall, turning the pages as I ran till I came to a blank space.
"Now," I cried triumphantly, as I set my capture down upon the table in the hall. "Sorry to keep you, but I'm not familiar with my new possessions." I had taken a pencil from my pocket and handed it to the nearest of the two girls with interrogation in my eye. It was the American.
She sat down and wrote in a bold hand on the page I held open, and rose. Perdita followed, but hesitated, pencil in hand, as if reluctant. She began, stared at the page, pondered, and continued; and when she rose her face was softly flushed.
"My!" said the American beauty, who had been examining the book, "what a funny book!"
"It's—it's very old," I said hastily, clutching it up.
Her full eyes regarded it with a twinkling smile of demure amusement.
"The proprietor could afford to buy another, I should guess," she said.
They turned to go and the American put out her hand.
"It was good of you to see me through," she remarked. "I'd like to come again. We're only at Two Bridges."
I told her how charmed I should be, and watched them drive off in the panting, luxurious car. Then I looked at my book and read:
Christobel Harvey, New York,
P. Forrest, London.
That initial annoyed me. Why not Perdita, with the unself-conscious frankness of Miss Harvey? And why that false pride and shrinking from a trivial performance? Oh, well, I considered, girls were a puzzle from their earliest years. How much did they know and how little? And a woman has an amazing gift of ignorance. She can stare facts in the face and walk by without noticing them. She "cuts" facts that are unpleasant as she would acquaintances. She has no intellectual honesty, which helps to keep her happy. And her knowledge of life, if she have so much, is never realization; it is about on the level with a parrot swearing, or a child gabbling poetry. The significance, the real meaning, wholly escapes her.
I don't know why I indulged in these caustic reflections on women as I watched the tail of the car vanish; and equally I do not know why I was suddenly arrested in those reflections, by being shunted irresponsibly on to another and most discomforting track. Like a flash I began to piece fragments of events together. Two more visitors to the gallery, and I had not so far remembered to be suspicious. But I was. Suspicion leaped into flame. What was Miss Forrest doing by the jewel door, and why did Miss Harvey display so much interest in an insignificant country picture-gallery? Allowing for transatlantic unconventionality, there was stUl something, startling in the abrupt way she had made friends with the English girl. What, my suspicious soul panted, what if they were not strangers to each other?
They had gone off together. I would have given a great deal to be able to follow them, as I had followed Mr. Naylor and Mr. Joyce the day before. I gazed hopelessly at the book I held in my hand, and I do not think I was even amused when I saw it to be a washing book of Mrs. Jackman's. At least I was not diverted then, for I was thinking of various threads which united instinctively in my mind. They concerned Naylor and Joyce and the burglar and Miss Forrest and Miss Harvey and the artist and—yes, I threw in Eustace also. I seemed to be the focus of a nefarious and far-reaching plot, and I could not doubt at what it was aimed.
I went straight inside and penned a long letter to Sir Gilbert's solicitors, indicating the nature of my suspicions and mentioning some of the grounds for them. So much I did to relieve my conscience and my indignation; and after it was done and the letter posted, I felt better, and went out to enjoy myself. I renewed my acquaintance with the Southington mariner, and in his company made excursions on the Channel with an inspiriting breeze in my face, dismissing the Castle, the jewels, and the gang of conspirators to the winds of heaven.
During the next two or three days I made a determined assault upon my work. But I will admit at once that it did not progress very rapidly. For one thing, I found I lacked some of the books necessary for reference and I was delayed by having to send to town for them. In the next place I made the mistake of thinking I could work out of doors. It is a delightful experience, but it is not work!
I had a seat under the umbrageous waving pink chestnut and facing the lawn and flower beds, with the entrance to the Castle well in my eye some two hundred yards away, across an intervening shrubbery of rhododendrons. Nothing happened in the meantime and I began to feel a little ashamed of my untoward suspicions. In the distance I caught sight of Miss Forrest on two occasions, but it almost seemed to me as if she made an effort to avoid me. Of Naylor and his friends, I saw nothing whatsoever, and the only person in Southington whom I encountered was Eustace. I should have thought my manner with him was chilling enough to be obvious, but he did not appear to notice it. He was more than common friendly, and pressed himself on my company, despite my coolness. He complained of being bored, and I wondered that he should do so frankly when the obvious retort was—why should he remain? He had nothing to occupy him, and I never saw him reading anything but a paper or a guide to the turf. The one thing he had, oddly enough, was a sense of music, and he played a fiddle with some skill.
But I gave him little encouragement during those days. I was trying to live in an atmosphere of my own suitable for breeding ideas. Yet sun and air and sea and the perfume of the countryside somehow did not render assistance to philosophy; they rather induced vagrant and vagabond and incoherent musings, with no definite relation to my thesis. The sparkle of the water brought no illumination amid my wandering thought on "Studies in Earth." It woke in my heart only wild yearnings, passionate beyond logic, and dreams of enchanted islands and the long swell of Pacific seas. I dozed in a charmed slumber through those lotus afternoons.
On the third morning I heard from Sir Gilbert Norroy's solicitors; it was one of those abominable epistles which one can only receive from so-called business men, conveying nothing of sentiment or atmosphere, or anything but pure, visible, dull, and unimaginative fact. "Thanking you for your communication..." Oh, well... "Our client..." Confound their client... "is not disposed to see cause for alarm..." Well, let his jewels perish... "Our client sees no objections to Mr. Peter Toosey's copying any pictures, provided, of course, his doing so does not interfere in any way with your arrangements."
I threw down the letter impatiently. Very well; let Mr. Peter Toosey come and paint and be— As I live, Mr. Peter Toosey was taking me at the first part of my word at any rate; for out of my mullioned window I saw him approaching the entrance with his slow prudent step, his infernal long-haired head nodding on his breast. He paused a moment to admire the lawns, and then he knocked.
Mr. Toosey showed no signs of triumph in his demeanor; on the contrary, he was more resigned, furtive, and melancholy than I. He received my (or rather Sir Gilbert's) permission with humility, and expressed gratitude.
"Then shall I be in your way if I come this afternoon?" he inquired.
"Sir Gilbert has given you permission," I replied with sarcastic emphasis. "You are at liberty to come and go, provided the formality of knocking is attended to; otherwise, my dear sir, I take no interest in the matter."
I spoke untruthfully in my wrath; I did take interest in the matter, but the way in which my representations had been ignored was galling.
Mr. Toosey arrived and settled down in the gallery like a gypsy. He was there all the afternoon till the light faded. I was glad to see that Jackman paid several visits to him, though I was hardly prepared to endorse his verdict when I questioned him.
"He seems a very nice gentleman, sir?'
At any rate the jewels were not mine. Sir Gilbert might whistle for them directly for all I cared.
This turn of affairs, you may conceive, put me out of humor, but it was nothing to the next event. That night I thrust my window wide ere going to bed, to enjoy the soft light of the half moon in a cloudless sky. Instantly I was aware of a shadow that fled on the lawn.
I might have thought this was but the trick of passing scud in the heaven, had not the sky, as I say, been notably cloudless; as it was, I knew it at once for a figure. I stood watching the shrubberies for some time. Bathed in a faint light, as they were, they might have veiled anything—any one—a veritable army. "And this," I pondered, "is the first fruits of Mr. Peter Toosey, no doubt."
I closed the window and took my candle. If Sir Gilbert's whole Castle were rifled, I told myself, I cared nothing now. Yet on my way to my room, I experienced a revulsion of feeling. I do not know that I recked a single straw more about Sir Gilbert's jewels, but I imagine the primitive instinct of the chase awoke in me. I went down the passage which led past my chamber and out by the door into the courtyard. From these bowels of the Castle, it was easy to get to the back parts to which the tradesmen had access, and by those channels I reached the garden and the open air. I stole in the shadows past the old orchard on the west and came out on a grass walk that encircled part of the southerly lawns. Shrubberies surrounded me,—laurels and laurustinus, ribes and syringas, and lilacs in a continuous profusion of greenery. I moved noiselessly and suddenly emerged into a breach in the hedge through which the moon shone. It struck whitely upon me, and my dim shadow stalked before me. Simultaneously some one got up on the other side of the shrubbery and darted across the lawn. I flew after him.
The man ran with the speed of a deer and dodged into the shrubberies on the farther side, where I lost him. At the same time I heard a shrill whistle, and this was repeated and echoed for a little distance. Evidently there was more than one of the conspirators at work. I ran a little farther, somewhat blindly in the shrubbery, and then stopped. I could hear nothing, no noise of any one running, nothing save the breaking of the waters below the garden. I had lost the burglar. I hunted in the ghostly spaces of the lower garden and the copse beyond for some time, but I could find no trace of any one, could hear no human sound. Irritably, and somewhat perturbed, I went back to the Castle and rëentered by the back parts.
As I took up my candle, I wondered to myself if one of the gang had gained the house during my absence. But I did not care. I went to bed.
Directly my head was on my pillow, the ticking began in the wall.