Ape's Face

by Marion L. Fox

  The drive continued parallel with the long ridge, the trees falling away on the left-hand side, to group themselves in a thick clump to the right. A few twinkling lights began to make themselves visible low down along the ridge, walls seemed to form themselves upon the broken slope, and in another moment the brougham had drawn up at the door of a house. So mingled was it with the shadow from the slope behind, so planted upon the declining curve, that it seemed as much a natural growth upon the side of the down as any conformation originating from less artificial agencies.

  As Armstrong stood waiting upon the doorstep he felt that pre-historic man might, in just such a fashion, have scooped himself some cave-dwelling under shelter of the protecting hills. The door, opening, disclosed a dark cavity almost as obscure as the subterranean entrance to a cave itself. This somewhat dismal impression, however, soon removed itself from Armstrong’s mind as he followed the man-servant across the polished boards of the hall, to be presently ushered into a room cheerfully lighted by flaring lamps and a blazing fire. The shock of sheer banality which the room afforded was almost a relief after the impressions gathered from outside the place; the focus of vision—mental and conventional—adjusted itself once more to ordinary limits.

  He had scarcely time to realise the presence of a pink-faced, corpulent man of riper middle age, when this worthy hastened from the hearth-rug in a storm of mellifluous welcome—a warm south-westerly breeze rather—that somewhat deprived Armstrong of speech. Personalities fell about him like rain-drops from a shaken bough, irradiated by the glow of superlative adjectives. If he had long got past the age of self-consciousness he might perhaps have winced at the onslaught. However, presently finding himself piloted into the safe haven of a tea-table, at which there sat an old lay, he found time to contemplate the scene.

  The old lady was introduced as ‘my sister Ellen’; but Armstrong had barely time to range her in his mind amongst the Rembrandtesque than ‘my son Godfrey’ was thrust forward, with a less prompt mention of ‘my youngest boy,’ his Christian name omitted. Godfrey advanced from the opposite side of the tea-table at his aunt’s right hand with a welcoming smile, that somehow reminded Armstrong of a girl’s greeting. The young man was so very much too handsome. The youngest boy, on the other hand, who seemed to be supporting himself on one leg against the mantel-piece, though unsuccessfully, made an uncertain effort towards Armstrong, scowled a little, emitted a sound of a sort, and finally produced a hand out of his jacket pocket which he extended in half-hearted fashion. Armstrong recollected the fleeting impression of having entered upon a silence at the first moment, in which this boy had been standing amidst a circle of his relatives. The scowl on the boy’s face redeemed it from being even more beautiful than his brother’s. He appeared to resent Armstrong’s appearance—‘one more of those confounded idiots’, his expression seemed to say. Then he withdrew again to his corner like a dog to its kennel, whilst Godfrey ran around with tea-cups and the sugar-basin.

  ‘Dear Godfrey,’ asked the old lady in a soft voice, ‘pray ask Mr Armstrong if he takes cream.’

  ‘Do you take cream, sir?’ asked Godfrey, obedient to the behest. A cheerful alacrity shone upon his fine forehead and red cheeks, there was a kindness of welcome in his large grey eyes under their finely-arched brows, and benevolence in the modelled curve of his mouth. When he made any movement of his nicely-proportioned body you thought of a well-trained acrobat; his very complexion—for such he really had—was almost as faultless as though it had come out of the ‘make-up’ box.

  ‘No, thanks,’ returned Armstrong.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ said the old lady, smiling up at her nephew, and a kind of heavy sensation of polite thankfulness for nothing seemed immediately to pervade the room. ‘John,’ she continued, turning to her brother, ‘I wonder if Mr Armstrong has any bread and butter?’

  ‘Dear, dear!’ cried Mr Delane-Morton, looking round in every direction for the plate in which it was not to be found, and thus allowing time for the amiable Godfrey to forestall him. ‘Oh, there it is! or won’t you take some cake?’ as his son performed the act of offering the plate by proxy. ‘I expect you know good china when you see it,’ he continued; ‘that is old Worcester, specially designed for the Mortons in the year seventeen hundred and . . .’ he rolled out the date upon his tongue much as if he were reading the text of a sermon from the pulpit, relishing the sound and watching to see its effect upon his audience. ‘It has always been used for honoured guests.’ His fat face smiled, there was too much flesh for any real expression to permeate from within. ‘When Chatham came to visit the Lady Ann Morton she offered her tea in those very cups. “A dish of tay,” I daresay she said,’ and he laughed, rubbing his chubby hands. ‘But really, it is very daring of me to parade my little scraps of knowledge before you. She was a very charming person—Lady Ann; almost too charming, you know. But there! it isn’t fair to give one’s relatives away: except that other people do it for you, if you don’t do it yourself. Still, I must say that there a few things one likes to keep strictly in the family besides china. Eh, don’t you think so?’ and he contemplated Armstrong with his head at an angle. ‘Now you yourself, for instance, how would you like it if I were to say to you—by the way, are you related to the Armstrongs of Gilknockie?’

  Armstrong shook his head.

  ‘What, not the Gilnockie Armstrongs? Oh, well, the collateral branch, I suppose, that crossed the Border in the early seventeenth century and remained on our side in the neighbourhood of Carlisle. Didn’t one of them marry into the Percy family? Yes, now let me see. Ellen!’ here he drew his sister into the 1 0

  discussion and the two together chanted a kind of antiphon upon the theme of the Armstrong cum Percy pedigree. It was really an amazing feat of memory to watch them following innumerable Johns and Georges, Janes, Elizabeths, and Matildas, with offspring or without, down to the tenth generation at the present moment residing in various parts of England at houses named and specified. Aunt Ellen was the champion; for when Mr Delane-Morton came to a full-stop, whether from want of memory or breath, she continued in soliloquy, finally turning her eyes upon Armstrong smilingly.

  A helpless feeling of incompetence at the game assailed him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘but I can’t even claim them as cousins four times removed. I don’t even know where my grandfather came from.’

  The old lady looked still more benign; a something suspicious which had lurked in her dark eyes before now cleared instantly, the lines of reserve in her wrinkled face took on a fresh pattern of protectiveness.

  ‘Never mind,’ she seemed to say, ‘we will not try to think any the worse of you for that. You will feel quite at home presently even with us.’ Aloud she said: ‘Oh, some people are so careless, my dear Mr Armstrong, I believe they would forget their own fathers and mothers if they could. Not that I mean to imply that you would,’ and she laid a little thin brown hand on his arm. If one of Rembrandt’s ancient dames could have stepped out of her picture and touched him, Armstrong would have recognised her as Aunt Ellen. The firelight fell upon the rich folds of her dark dress, caught the thick gold chain on her neck, and reddened the shadows among the white frills of her cap.

  The dark, sunken eyes were still bright and keen, sparkling in that mesh of pale wrinkles which was her face, like jewels in a tangle of dusty cobwebs.

  The rest of her was so placid compared with those active eyes. When she was not dispensing the tea, her hands with their transparent skin and slender fingers lay quietly clasped upon her knee over a delicate handkerchief. She did not even knit, which of all womanly occupations has most the air of rest.

  A few little tight white curls upon her forehead lay there with the same assured promise of repose, almost of watchfulness. You have thought indeed that the encircling silence, into which Armstrong felt that he had stepped upon first entering the room, emanated from her presence: not the silence of peacefulness but of something more subtle and perplexing. Almost that silence whi
ch hangs about woodland places before nightfall, and the white light along the crest of the downs which Armstrong noticed in coming up the drive. No one was ever puzzled by peacefulness: Armstrong was puzzled by the old lady’s air. If the room had been panelled instead of being hung with a modern green paper, if there had been fewer brass lamps in the room, if the curtains had been dark velvet instead of flowered chintz—if, in fact, there had been one shadow in the room Armstrong would have felt reassured.

  Why should the old lady make you feel a sensation of brooding darkness when she was so gentle and the room so bright. Why?

  ‘But, then, Mr Armstrong, you must remember that we old people cling to the past more than you young ones. Now, I’m not trying to find out your age, you know! Some men look boys at fifty.’ And Armstrong, who had completed that age but recently, began to wonder if perhaps his hair really was less grey than he thought. ‘And we have nothing to do but sit and think of all the things we did, and said, and heard, when we were young: until at last we make a world within a world, and think it is the most real of all.’ She sighed a little with a smile. ‘But all the same, when a breath of young life from the world outside does come our way, I trust we know how to welcome it.

  Forgive a prosy old woman, dear Mr Armstrong!’ The little wrinkles about her withered lips made charming shadows, as light and rumpled as butterflies’ wings. The old lady had a delightful voice too that lingered pleasantly upon the ear. ‘You must tell me presently what everyone has been doing and saying since the time when I knew it all.’

  Mr Delane-Morton meanwhile was evidently tiring of his speechless rôle, and began shuffling his feet, putting down his plate and picking it up again, with other restless by-play. It seemed, however, that Aunt Ellen was no easy person to interrupt or that he himself lacked courage in the attempt. At length the boy beside the mantel-piece created a diversion by dropping his tea-spoon into the fender, as the result of trying to balance his cup and saucer in one hand whilst eating cake with the other, standing the while—a feat known only to be achieved by the most hardened of party-maniacs.

  ‘Tut, tut,’ clucked Mr Morton, ‘my dear Arthur, why cannot you sit down like all the rest of us? One would think you were doing your best to appear as much unlike everyone else as possible. What with these purple ties, and spotted socks, and vulgar handkerchiefs hanging out of your pockets like danger-signals!’

  Godfrey smiled indulgently at the boy, who immediately subsided into a chair.

  ‘By the way,’ continued the father, seizing the pause triumphantly, ‘was not Josephine to have arrived about now?’

  ‘Of course, John,’ returned the old lady with dignity, though it was rather apparent that the fact had escaped her notice also.

  ‘Your daughter got out at the lodge,’ said Armstrong, ‘in spite of my remonstrances, and insisted on walking up.’

  ‘So like her!’ rejoined Mr Morton with an aggrieved expression; ‘she has just returned from Italy after an illness. The doctors recommended her to be absent three months, but she has insisted upon returning one month before the time.’ This last reflection seemed to shed gloom upon the entire community for a moment. ‘But I think you would like to see your room?’ he remarked at last, and rising from his chair, Armstrong assented, and as he moved to return his cup to the tea-table, noticed a sudden draught of cold air penetrate the room: someone had opened the door.

  ‘Hullo, Ape’s-Face!’ said Arthur’s voice quickly.

  Armstrong saw a quick contraction work across the lady’s brow; her eyes seemed to sink and darken in a moment. He turned and saw Mr Morton straightening himself from a parental embrace, and Godfrey offering a tepid hand-shake to his late but hitherto unseen companion. She stood silent in the centre of the brightly-lighted room, and looked at them all in turn.

  Armstrong turned his eyes hurriedly away; she was certainly as unprepossessing as her manner—a little dark creature, with a face like that of a monkey (one of the melancholy, hollow-cheeked creatures that sit on barrel organs and stare at passers-by with alien eyes); olive-skinned, with accentuated cheek-bones and projecting brows that made the bright eyes seem all the deeper set. The hair came low upon her square set forehead, cut short at the nape of the neck, falling over her ears in heavy folds. Her hands were thrust deep into the pockets of her heavy coat, and she stood with feet firmly planted an appreciable distance apart.

  ‘Well, I’m back again, you see,’ she said with her curious voice, half soft, half rasping. Her glance went straight past Armstrong to the old lady and their eyes met. He could almost feel the contact, there was something so keen and forceful in their mutual expression. The younger woman threw back her head defiantly, and the shaggy hair quivered over her ears.

  ‘So I see,’ said Aunt Ellen softly, and added, ‘my dear. Welcome home again.’ Josephine came across and roughly took her hand. ‘Kiss me!’ said the old woman, and drew the girl towards her: there was surprising force in the gnarled hands. Armstrong could not help watching them together. The kiss was swiftly given, for the girl raised herself in a moment: but there was a curious look in her eyes as though she had been suddenly surprised and hurt.

  ‘Perhaps you will show Mr Armstrong his room,’ said Mr Morton, turning to Godfrey,

  ‘No, I will,’ interposed Arthur to Armstrong’s surprise, ‘I know which one it is.’ He turned his handsome face on Armstrong, still scowling a little, and they went out together.

  As the door closed behind them Armstrong was aware of Ape’s-face looking after them, her hands thrust deep once more within her pockets.

  II

  The House

  THEY WERE IN THE HALL AGAIN, and Arthur had stopped at the oak table, which extended the entire length of one wall, to light a candle. The only other light in the place came from the log-fire which shone persistently in the panelling as far as it could reach, kindling the gilded lettering of Latin mottoes which ran along the cornice. Two satyrs supported the mantel-piece; the oak of which they were carved glowed lustrous like satin, so that it seemed as if their skin were tanned with the warmth of southern suns. The place shone with a bronzed glow the colour of fallen beech-leaves, that somehow suggested woods and alleys in autumn.

  There was a curious smell too that hung rather more hauntingly than apparent in the air, and which only fell upon the senses in passing, it was so vague: it also was reminiscent of fallen leaves—earthy, with something at once sweet and acrid. Opposite the fireplace a wide staircase of carved balustrades and shallow steps curved in wonderful lines away and up into the darkness, where figured newels, round which strange beasts and birds coiled themselves in a profusion of shape and line, rose like colossal bed-posts. It stood in an angle of the hall.

  As Armstrong went up the polished steps behind the boy a wave of cold air, accumulating from shadowed places above them, seemed to sweep down the spiral with a penetrating force such as a climber might meet ascending Alpine slopes towards the snows—this in diminished values of temperature.

  The boy did not talk, and Armstrong was too interested in the beauty of the carving, together with the luxury of finding himself in so complete an atmosphere of ancient times, to break the silence. It was sheer pleasure to tread step by step upon the mellowed boards which must have sounded to the footfall of so many generations. There is something in that chain of continuity which appeals to a certain sensuousness of memory. The house spoke to him and he knew he should be obliged to listen, whatever it might say.

  At the top of the stairs a carved doorway led on to a landing of pentagonal shape out of which two dark passages stretched long shadows. A round mirror caught the light of Arthur’s candle on its concave surface, so that the figures of the two men appeared in it like tiny spectres of themselves. Arthur turned to the left, looking back at Armstrong over his shoulder with a smile that was a little ironical.

  ‘I’d like to show you something,’ he said.

  ‘I’m ready for anything,’ Armstrong answered, laughing.

/>   The candle-flame wavered in a cold down-draught of air which rushed past them as they turned the corner, the pungent smell coming strongly with it. Then the candle spluttered and went out. That, however, was a matter of small importance, for Armstrong now found himself at the end of a long gallery, on one side of which hung interminable lines of portraits, on the other rows of tall mullioned windows stood full of delicately leaded panes, through which the moonlight and starlight fell, making patterns on the boards like etchings of some strange symbology. Three steps led up to a glass door, the frame work of which was half formed, half supported by two wood creatures whose shaggy legs seemed to bend under the weight.

  ‘I can’t unlock the thing tonight,’ Arthur said, ‘but just you look out through the window one moment.’ They went up the steps together and Armstrong pressed his face close to the glass panes.

  Under the moon and the stars a wide lawn ascended in ever-increasing steepness from their very feet. Away to the right a plantation of trees, vague in the darkness, swept up at an angle from one side of the house and along the slope towards the summit. From the left a white path, cut in the chalk of the downs, met the plantation at a distance of some two hundred yards from the house, passed into the diminishing shelter of the trees, and was seen to curve partly back upon itself elbow-wise—and mount the higher slopes beyond. There was an extraordinary shock of strangeness at thus finding the downs where there might only have been space or a distant view; the idea of stepping on to earth where one might have expected air was almost as startling as stepping over the threshold of a room into a floorless abyss. Coming so into contact with the ground endowed it with an added significance, as of something at once rushing down upon the house and surging up from under its foundation like two opposing motions of one force: and the house itself seemed to lie across the bosom of the down watching for the crest of the wave to break from the summit.