Soon he stopped, listening – looked around without seeming to do either. A runnel of water trickled down a stony course, partly under the stones; in hot weather it was dry. He moved aside two stones, casually as though thinking of something else. In the solemn silence of the gnarled oak-wood he could see nobody, but it did not follow that nobody could see him.
But —something could —something did. The round, white, eye-like disc, with its five star points, stared up at him – stared with baleful – almost human, or rather demoniacal glance, from its damp bed, where he himself had placed it months before. It should have been red with rust – yet it was not. This too struck him, and he began to feel himself hopelessly enmeshed. That other, its counterpart, who had placed it there? He had been cherishing a faint and utterly unreasonable thought that in a moment of aberration, he himself might have removed it from the original hiding place to which he had consigned it during Helston Varne’s temporary imprisonment. But no. There was the other, in the disused part of his house. He had just put it there, and he had just left it there. He could not get away from that.
The beauties of the glorious woodland were around him as he retraced his steps, the networking of the sunlight through the tree-tops, the cool, moist fragrance of underfoot moss, the tap-tap of a woodpecker coming in chastened echo through the columns of tree trunks, then the gurgling trill of a thrush. Everywhere peace, the sweet English woodland peace of a cloudless late spring or early summer day. Yet John Seward Mervyn went up that woodland path wearing a grey, ashen face, and carrying something very like utter despair in his heart.
As he arrived at the house, the two girls were coming down the path. A clear, laughing hail of welcome greeted him.
“We’ve been in luck, dear,” cried Melian, taking a fishing basket from old Joe, who was walking behind. “Look at this.”
She displayed eight or nine perch – two quite big ones.
“Violet caught those,” she went on. “I’ve never caught any as big. I don’t believe there are any bigger ones in Plane Pond; eh, Joe.”
“They be middlin’ fish, Miss Melun – they be middlin’ fish, sure-ly,” answered the old rustic.
“Why, I’m sure the big ’un must be over a pound,” rattled on the girl joyously. “And didn’t Violet just prick her fingers over his spines.”
Here again Mervyn conjured up another picture as he contemplated the great spiny dorsal fin and black stripes of a really finely conditioned perch. She had pricked her fingers with something very harmless that time, he thought, grimly.
“We have had such a jolly time, Mr Mervyn,” said Violet, animatedly. “I’ve enjoyed it no end.”
He felt that she was looking curiously at him. Her delighted tone seemed to tail off suddenly.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” he said, throwing off his mood and striving to join in theirs.
“Over a pound. I’m certain it is,” went on Melian, who was still wrapped up in contemplation of the “take”. “Come along and let’s weigh him.”
And the two, aglow with life and spirits, headed for the kitchen and the weighing scales.
“Contrast – again?” thought Mervyn, as he followed.
So did another person, who, unseen, had witnessed the whole of the morning’s doings from their very commencement.
Chapter Nineteen
Interim – Quiet
Even as Violet had said, to put such a superhuman strain upon the curiosity of two mere women seemed scarcely fair, and perhaps the hardest strain of all was Mervyn’s injunction not to talk about the matter between themselves even; however, they followed it out with a tolerable show of loyalty; in fact, as great a one as could be expected of their sex.
On Melian, of course, the strain fell the hardest. She was quick to recognise that the finding of that strange object had affected her uncle far more than he would allow to appear. Not only that, but as day followed upon day, there was no lessening of the effect. Then, too, what had he done with the thing when they had gone inside leaving him alone. Buried it – thrown it into the pond, or what? She, too, began to feel as though living under the spell of a fear. Perhaps it had been an error of judgment on her uncle’s part, to enjoin so strict a silence upon them, she more than once thought – and the worst of this was that it precluded her from consulting Helston Varne.
She had been impressed by the promise that he had exacted from her that she would so consult him in the event of finding herself in any difficulty; in fact, under just such a contingency as had occurred; but she was debarred by her subsequent promise. There were other mysterious happenings she had considered the expediency of laying before him; more even than when we last saw her on the point of doing so; for she had since gained more than an inkling as to his real line in life and the discovery increased her interest in him well nigh to the pitch of vividness.
There was another matter as to which she had gained more than an inkling, and that, the ill-repute which was said to surround Heath Hover. She remembered how on her first arrival she had suggested that it looked like a haunted house, and the way in which her uncle had scoffed at the idea and turned away the question, struck her in subsequent lights as a trifle overdoing the part. One circumstance, however, seemed more suspicious still.
She was chatting with old Joe one day, and enjoining upon him the necessity of fixing a board over a pane of glass she had broken in her bedroom window, until it could be properly mended.
“I don’t want any more bats coming in and flicking me in the face, Joe,” she appended, “like that night just after I got here.”
The old man dropped the handles of the barrow which he was just about to trundle, and stared at her queerly.
“What time might that ha’ been, Missie?” he said.
“Why, a few days after I came.”
“That warn’t no flittermaouse,” he said. “Yew won’t see none o’ they for – come weeks and weeks. They be all asleep they be.”
“But it might have been a stray one.”
The old rustic grinned pityingly and shook his head.
“That warn’t no flittermaouse,” he repeated.
Melian’s eyes opened wider.
“What was it, then?” she said.
But the old rustic seemed suddenly to become alive to the fact that he had said too much; in short, had been betrayed into overstepping his employer’s explicitly imposed injunctions.
“What war it? Narthen. You’d been dreamin’, Missie, for sure. That’s what it war.” And old Joe had picked up the wheelbarrow handles and trundled off then and there with an energy which bade fair to put a stop to any further questioning.
But his statement had rendered Melian decidedly uncomfortable. If her acquaintance with natural history was defective, she had had ample opportunity of discovering that that of her uncle was not; in fact, eminently the reverse, and that he of all people should have been so hard put to it as to invent a bat flying about on a mid-winter night, showed something loose somewhere. Should she tax him with it under the form of chaff? But she decided not to. He might not like it, and again, he would almost certainly be angry with old Joe. On the other hand it looked as if he himself were not so sceptical as he made out.
She had also become aware that nobody had been able to inhabit Heath Hover for a long time past until her uncle had come; that is to say, do more than give it a very brief trial, perhaps one of fewer weeks than he had given it months. Well, as to that, he seemed quite comfortable there, and since her arrived, happy. She was letting her imagination run riot too much, she told herself – and certainly, she had never seen anything since her arrival. Strange sounds might be produced by any cause, and as for “influences” – well, imagination might be a factor again.
Helston Varne had not been near them since that visit when they had met unexpectedly on the dusking road, and as a matter of hard fact Melian felt just a little sore with him for not having been. He had sent her a few lines – short, straight, and to the point – reminding her of his willingness to assist her at any time or at any moment, reminding her also of her promise not to be behindhand in claiming such aid. This note she had carefully kept. But he had not been near them again, and she had found herself very much wishing that he would come. There was something so refreshingly out of the ordinary about his personality – about his conversation – and then, too, the high intellectual talent which must go to make him such a success in the line of life he had adopted; the suggestion of mystery blended with power was just the element to appeal strongly to a girl of her character and temperament. The fact is, that during the intervening time – getting on for three months as it was – Melian had been thinking a great deal about Helston Varne.
Everything was favourable to introspection of the sort. The life she led, amid free, open, congenial surroundings, into the charm of which she had entered from the very first, and which had grown upon her more and more with every change of the advancing season – and yet the personality of the man seemed subtly to pervade it all. There were spots they had visited – a casual stroll along a woodland path, or a breezy, uphill climb to this or that point whence rolling views of some of the loveliest rural expanse in England swept away on either hand; and she could remember all that was said, and exactly where it was said, during their exchange of ideas, which were, for the most part, thoroughly in sympathy. And then, too, in her moments of shadowy fears in the mysterious ill-omened old house – small wonder that taking all things together she should have thought a good deal about Helston Varne during that intervening time.
It was the last day of Violet Clinock’s visit, and on the morrow she would be returning to town and work. She was a cheerful contented soul, but the contrast between this glorious early June day, paradisical in its cloudless beauty, the air fragrant with spring flowers and melodious with the song of soaring larks; every meadow a golden sea of buttercups; and soft masses of new leafage on high, irregular hedges, or towering hugely heavenwards from this or that noble wood – the contrast between this and the stuffy air and blackened chimney stacks which formed the sole and shut-in outlook from her own modest dwelling of all the year round was too marked even for her. She felt anything but lighthearted.
“You are in luck, Melian, dear,” she could not restrain herself from saying, wistfully. “Look at all this, and then think of me this time to-morrow.”
Melian was in the mood thoroughly to sympathise. This was one of those days which she appreciated every hour, every minute of – and on which she felt she could not get up too early or see the last of too late.
“Couldn’t you anyway manage to stretch it out even a day or two longer?” she said. “Surely you can?”
But the other shook a desponding head.
“No fear. I’ve pulled it out to its very utmost limits,” she said. “I can’t afford to play cat and banjo with my billet – certainly not yet.”
There was that in the answer which seemed to remind Melian that the speaker had done that very thing on her behalf, what time she had been ill, and friendless, and nearly destitute.
“It’s too bad,” she declared. “Yes, I am lucky, Violet, dear, and I owe my luck entirely to you. But of course, when you have your long holiday – in August or September – you are to put in every day of it here. Just think – all those glorious heather slopes above Plane Pond – right away back – will be blazing with crimson, and – what times we’ll have. It isn’t so far off either, so buck up. It’s of no use talking about week-ends I suppose.”
“You know I can’t run to it, dear.”
“I know you’re altogether too beastly proud,” was the answer. “If we gave you a birthday present of a new hat you wouldn’t be too proud to take that, and a return ticket here runs to far less. It’s an absurd distinction.”
But the other’s head shake was quite decided.
“We’ve hammered all that out before,” she said. “Look, your uncle has finished his siesta. Here he comes.”
The two girls had been picking wild flowers and had wandered away from the spot where they had been picnicking on sandwiches and ginger-beer – and something stronger for the only male of the party. It was a lovely spot, an intermingling of heath and woodland, and the white stems of birches supporting their new feathery foliage, stood out in relief from a background of dark firs. Just glimpsed in the distance beyond stood a venerable wooden windmill raised on piles – one of its sails missing and another falling in half through sheer old age, like teeth. The whole made for that combination of charm and the picturesque so characteristic of, if not unique, as a sample of English rural scenery.
“Well,” said Mervyn, knocking the ashes out of his pipe as he joined them, and looking very placid and contented. “Isn’t it time to saddle up? We’ve come a precious long way, remember, and you have to allow a margin for punctures.”
But Melian overruled him.
“We needn’t hurry, you know, dear,” she urged. “And it’s Violet’s last day.”
“I know it is, worse luck,” he answered, kindly, “I wish it needn’t be. Then again, we must also allow for that inspection of ‘old stones’ you threatened to deflect us from our way to go and adore.”
“Oh, Chiltingford? You must see that, Violet. And there’s a ripping old pair of stocks too. By Jove, but that’s good enough!”
“Don’t know whether the misdemeanants who were clamped up in them thought them good enough?” said her uncle with a laugh, and lighting a fresh pipe. “Well, you shall both do just what you like to-day.”
And they did; and the long, bright golden afternoon went all too quickly by, as they skimmed along the well-kept roads, skirting greenwoods resonant with thrush voices; down long hills between spangled meadows; past cottages nestling in trees – every one a picture in itself – and snug farms bulging with the suggestion of solid comfort; old grey church towers, at which Melian looked wistfully and had to be reminded that the cultus of every pile of “old stones” they saw would not come within the compass of their time limit – and here and there one of those old country seats whose exact counterpart is to be found in no other country in the world. Yes, it was one of those days that would stand out, to elderly and young alike, of those comprising that trio. To two of them at least it might be that it would come back with all the more marked contrast – perchance of deadly peril and fear – but that was within the potentialities of the Future.
The stars were already bright in the summer sky as they descended the last steep and stony hill, the quality of the latter calling forth more than one half stifled malediction from the elderly unit of the trio aforesaid. But to another unit of the said trio, the darkness, the spot, conjured up a recollection, albeit the “tang-tang” of a jubilant nightingale sounded from the dark and now leafy depths of “Broceliande,” and the little brown owls, hawking over the adjoining fields, were sending forth their harsh, fierce cries. Here was where she had accidentally met Helston Varne for the last time, and they had not met since. She was wondering again whether they ever would. And yet – it was of no use to keep on dwelling upon it, she decided.
Chapter Twenty
The Influence
It was a glowing, beautiful summer, and as each radiant day succeeded another, it seemed to Melian a difficult thing to realise her former life, so completely had that passed away. It seemed to have been the life of somebody else. She thought of Violet Clinock with pity and real concern – stewed up in horrible dusty streets, in all the roar and bustle of them – while she herself was revelling in the glory of the unclouded sunlight, and the dim holiness of leafy wood-depths, or the roll of open champaign stretching away softened into far distance; a fresh vista of joy whichever way the eye might turn; breathing the free and fragrant air of Heaven itself. Yet her concern was to a certain extent wasted, so differently are humans constituted; for, as a matter of fact, though thoroughly enjoying every moment of the few days which constituted her visit, the same number of months would have bored Violet Clinock to death. She was temperamentally of the stirring, bustling order, and the very elements of the town life, which to Melian, looking back upon, gained in repulsion, were to her without knowing it, part of the essentials of well being.
For the misgivings which had beset Melian as to whether she was not wasting her life had lulled, if not died, as the joyous spring rushed on into glorious summer, and she noted and appreciated every shade and harmony of such change; the deepening of the leafage, and the blooming of this or that new variety of wild flower life; the song chorus of innumerable thrushes, in all its varying liquid notes, from early morn till late eve; and the “tang-tang” of nightingales through the fast shortening hours of darkness. And then, when the dawn pearled upon the awakening world, what a carolling of sweetness as countless larks sprang upwards and soared higher and higher into the liquid blue.
And then those delightful rambles, whether short or long, by field paths or along leafy hedges where the honeysuckle was beginning to hang its creamy petals, or in shaded woods, the sunlight networking here and there on the feathery tops of the green bracken, a rest at some quaint little roadside inn for tea, then home again in the dewiness of rich meadows, where young lambs skipped and shrilly bleated. Or again, a long round on the bicycle, exploring this or that old ruin, or massive and picturesque ancient church. By this time she knew the whole countryside by heart. And it is doubtful whether this brought more enjoyment to her than to her uncle – her invariable companion on such wanderings.
As for Mervyn himself, it is safe to say perhaps that he had never been so happy in his life. All that appealed to the girl here, appealed to him, but he had not been capable of enjoying it in solitude. Now this was all changed, and at every moment of the day he found himself revelling in her happiness, whether it was watching her gathering wild flowers in a sunbath of greenery and radiance, or seated smoking the pipe of placidity and peace upon some churchyard wall what time she was assimilating the interior of the mouldering structure, to come forth presently, with animated eyes to descant upon the wondrous fret of some grisly old Norman arch which it comprised. And he revelled in it with the deeper intensity because, with the experience of age, he knew that it was not destined to last.
And then, indeed, as though to bear out the soundness of this reasoning, there came a change – a cloud, a shadow – but of this he divined nothing as yet. As the summer drew near its zenith something seemed to come over Melian. Throughout the radiancy of the glowing summer day – or even when clouds from seaward brought some hours of soft warm rain to keep the full sapped leafage from succumbing to a too long unbroken glow of sun heat, she rejoiced with the joy of living. But at night, in the solitude of her room, all her elation would leave her. An influence seemed to creep over her, substituting depression; not depression merely, but conveying a suspicion of fear – of dread. Of dread she knew not of what. Yet it was there. Happy, joyous, in the long hours of light and open, yet when the night shut down, this feeling would come over her – and come over her suddenly – directly she found herself in the solitude of her own room. And it grew upon her more and more until she began to dread the time of retiring for the night – for the life of her she could not have told why. Yet she kept it to herself. It seemed absurd to worry her uncle over what after all was a mere fancy. It would pass. For months now, nothing had occurred to alarm her, as on that other night – and surely in this paradise of a country there could be no room for depression or haunting imaginings. But at such times her thoughts flew unaccountably to Helston Varne.
For by this time she had arrived at the conviction that some influence, sinister and terrifying, was really hanging about Heath Hover. She had even tried drawing old Joe Sayers on the subject again, but that astute rustic, remembering his former slip, had shut up like an oyster. With old Judy she met no better success.
“We be wold folks,” had answered that ancient, when deftly sounded as to why they should not take up their quarters altogether at Heath Hover on the ground of convenience to her – Melian. “We likes our own chimbley corner o’ nights, – Miss Melun. The master, he’s allus been middlin’ cumferble o’ nights without we. And now you’m here and he’s more cumferble nor ever – sure-lye.”
This, with the deft invocation of “the master,” was unanswerable, as old Judy had intended. That these two were not to be drawn was obvious, and Melian had no idea in the world of looking for information outside. Her uncle too, had distinctly discouraged her taking any interest in the surrounding cottages, and there were few enough of these. She began to think she saw through the reason.
But, after all, here she was, and life was happy, she would tell herself; and she had found it so after some experience of it of which this by no means held good. She must make the best of it, and, after all, the best, even by force of contrast, was very good indeed. Yet still, that weird, uncanny oppression – yes, that was the word for it, oppression – came upon her more and more as sure as the hours of darkness set in. And more and more her thoughts reverted to Helston Varne.
Why had he not been again to see them after all this time? It could be through no want of cordiality in repeating their invite either on her uncle’s part or upon hers. He was a skilled clearer-up of mysteries. He had told her – with some earnestness – that if ever she were in a difficulty, and stood in need of a friend – she was to communicate with him at once.
And more than once she had thought of doing so – had been on the point of doing so – when another consideration would obtrude. Would she not, in a way, be working behind her uncle? For instance, the mystery of that queer, shining thing, with several points, the mere sight of which had turned him ashy pale and evoked a peremptory command to her to drop it – at once, and where she stood. That had never been explained. What if in some way it were bound up with the mystery which overhung this eerie, creepy old dwelling? What if in some way it affected him – were in some way, patient of evil results to him? And if Helston Varne were to give his wonderful faculty towards discovery at Heath Hover, he must do so wholly. He would never stop halfway – and then, what about that incident upon which her uncle seemed to set such store of secrecy? No, it wouldn’t do, she decided. It was one thing to let loose that sort of thing, it was another to know where it was going to end. Yet, apart from it, she owned to herself she would be glad, very glad, to see Helston Varne again. And then, all unexpectedly, she obtained her wish.
She was standing in front of the house one morning. The black kitten was on her left shoulder and she was playing with it with a bit of string, which it was striving to seize without falling from its perch. Clad in cool white, she stood erect against a background of Virginia creeper and one of the window frames of the old house; and the gleaming waves of her gold hair changed their lights with every movement of the head. A perfect picture, a most exquisite picture, thought the one spectator, who had arrived on the scene unobserved, such a picture indeed as he would carry in his mind, and which he was wholly loth to disturb all at once. Then a low, lighthearted laugh escaped her as the kitten, missing its stroke, overbalanced and dropped lightly to the ground. Then looking up, she discovered she was not alone.
Helston Varne raised his hat and came down the path from the sluice. She made a step forward to meet him.
“How long were you standing there?” she said, in her bright, quick, animated way, when the first greetings had been exchanged.
“Well, not long – unfortunately. But I hope I have too much of an artistic eye to be in a hurry to break up that picture. Is your uncle in?”
“No. He had to run up to London on business. He wanted to take me, although he always says London is the worst place in the world to take a girl to for the day, unless she’s got a lot of things of her own to attend to – which I haven’t. Says he doesn’t know what to do with her. He more than half wanted me to go – and chance it, but I wouldn’t. I should only have been in the way, of course.”
“That’s a pity. I didn’t want to see him about anything in particular, only as I shall have to be away from England some time, I thought I should just like to see how you were all getting on first.”
If Melian’s face had fallen just a shade over the announcement, the change, it is certain, did not escape the keen perception of the other, nor could he tell why the fact should have afforded him a modicum of gratification.
“I suppose I mustn’t ask, as a matter of innocent and feminine curiosity, what part of the world you are bound for next?” she ventured.
Even that smile as she looked up at him was not sufficient to let down his guard. He shook a deprecating head.
“I’m afraid not. The element of secrecy in my movements is one of the very first essentials.”
“Why, of course. By the way, here am I keeping you standing. Do come inside. But – where’s your bicycle? You didn’t walk?”
“I left my bike up there on the sluice, till I’d found out whether anybody was at home. Save the bother of lugging it up again if nobody was.”
“Oh, do go and fetch it. Some one might bag it.”
“They’d wish they hadn’t – before they had ridden it a hundred yards,” he answered with a laugh. “They’d come about the most complete spill they’d ever come in their lives.”
“Why? How?” she asked, mystified.
“There’s a dodge in it that would produce that result with any other than myself mounting it. Incidentally, there have been two attempts made at annexing it – with the effect described.”
“That’s a very wonderful machine of yours,” she said. “The other day – only it was months ago – you told us it was unpuncturable – now it seems it’s unrideable, for any one but its owner.”
“Yes – it is rather wonderful, isn’t it – Hallo?” as he became alive to the greetings of the kitten, which was rubbing against his legs and purring. “Why, this little beauty is hardly any bigger than it was, and it ought to be nearly full grown by this time.”
“Yes, and aren’t I just glad too, that it’s always going to stay small. I was afraid it wouldn’t,” she answered, picking it up and replacing it upon her shoulder. “But you’re not pressed for time, are you? Uncle Seward will be back by quite an early afternoon train, and he’d he awfully disgusted if he missed you – especially as you’re going away.”
To Helston Varne this invitation was wholly alluring – he wondered that it should prove so much so. And what a strange turn the situation had taken. He had originally come to these parts with – professionally – hostile intent towards the occupier of Heath Hover; now, any discoveries that he might make – whatever their nature – and this he would repeat to himself with emphasis, he would certainly use to the aid and advantage of that individual, if possible. He would have been only too glad to arrive at a solution, as a matter of purely professional interest only – but with no intention of using it by a hair’s breadth against his new-found friend, as to which he had already begun to put Nashby off the scent by such modicum of suspicion as we heard him express to that painstaking officer. Now he answered:
“If you can do with me for all that time, Miss Seward, I shall be only too delighted. What a lovely day it is. Won’t you get on your bicycle and show me some of the country I haven’t seen? We could pick up lunch at some wayside inn, and get back in time to meet your uncle.”
“I’d be delighted, but my bike happens to be out of commission. It wants a thorough overhauling in fact. Let’s have a walk instead. It’s no end jolly just meandering on, winding in and out, now in a jolly wood – now through a field, or by a pond – in fact, just anywhere you like to go. We can get back here by lunch-time. Yes, that’ll be the very thing. I’ll go up and get a hat – I won’t be a sec.”
She vanished upstairs, and Helston Varne, left momentarily alone, was conscious of a mixed train of thought. First of all was the certainty of a very delightful day before him: then, as he sat opposite the creeper-shaded window, his glance fell upon the couch which stood beneath it. There, then, was where the stranger had been found dead. Instinctively he rose from his seat and went over to the couch. It was the first time he had been alone in the room, and now his professional instincts moved him in that direction. Yet there was nothing on earth to reward them in the aspect of this very plain and innocent looking article of furniture. He looked at it long and earnestly – up and down, but no. It suggested nothing. Then the sound of Melian’s footsteps, coming down the stairs recalled him to the ordinary ways of life, and he simply stood where he was – looking out of the window.
“Which way shall we go?” she said. “I know. We’ll go up through Broceliande and out on to the heath, then we’ll wander round the wood on the other side, and down again by the head of Plane Pond.”
“Anywhere you like,” he said. “And your programme sounds delightful.”