He cried out sharply, and recoiled several paces, slewing round with upraised arms as he collided with someone behind him.
“Only your host,” said the voice of Peter Hunt, with a chilly suavity from which all trace of friendliness had vanished, “please make yourself quite at home. It is your home, now, you know—that is, until you realize that I'm bound to win in the end, and sign this concession you so smugly discountenanced yesterday.”
He produced an impressive looking document, stiff with seals, and opened it with a flourish, then, seeing that his guest remained tongue-tied, went on bitingly, “Framing a spate of questions, I suppose? What's this place? How did I get here? And so forth. Well, you may save your breath. Where you are I know no better than you. What I do know is, that I have been absolutely monarch of it for many years. Peter Hunt of Park Lane, pillar of Society, political leader, supporter of the Constitution, deferring to the wishes of a dozen pettifogging public bodies—and enjoying the farce because I know that I can, at will, take any man to whose opinion I pretend to bow, and bring him here and rule him as you can rule a dog!” He laughed unpleasantly. “You damned fool! Do you think it's for the money that I want your signature? I can get enough to pay the National Debt by bringing the rich to Lost Keep and stripping them of their wealth. There's one in there,” he muttered, as a despairing moan echoed from behind a barred grating in the stonework, “he's trying to decide whether it's worth while to sign a cheque and write home to say how much he's enjoying his holiday—in Portugal! No, my esteemed and scrupulous partner, one grows weary of ruling over subjects a few at a time in this gloomy place. I want to come out into the open and rule a country—and when this concession goes through I can do it!”
At last Lord Knifton spoke, and in his tones were neither fear not anger. Only an abiding sorrow.
“Peter Hunt,” he replied solemnly, “by some diabolical means which I do not even wish to fathom you wield a power that no man is ready to possess. I can only say: God take that power from you before more evil is done!”
As he spoke a swift shadow blotted out half the sky, and Hunt threw back his head in amazement. In the whole course of his association with this weird retreat he had never known anything to break the canopy of twilight, and his hands fell nervelessly to his sides as there burst on his vision a mass of shining metal, so huge as almost to dwarf the Keep, miraculously suspended in space above it. For a few seconds its great spatulate point hovered over the turrets. Then, it darted down and rushed at them, its lower edge grinding and roaring along the paving stones.
“Uncle, you promised to show me your new microscope. May I see it now?” Pete demanded with a sidelong glance at his mother.
“But it's bedtime, dear,” said Lydia Hunt, “and you can see Uncle Harry's reading. Run upstairs now like a good boy and you shall see it tomorrow.”
Pete drooped a pathetic lower lip. He was a sunny-natured child, though a trifle spoilt.
“Oh, but Uncle did promise. He said to-day, and I've been looking forward to it all school-time. I told the other chaps in our form about it, and they'll want to hear what I've seen with it to-morrow. Won't you show me something to-night please, Uncle Harry?”
Lydia's brother looked up from his evening paper with a whimsical smile. “Well,” he laughed, “I've promised to take it round to Dr. Pruden's to-morrow to check over some of his cultures, so perhaps the boy had better see it to-night. It won't take long. All right, Pete. The ‘mike's’ in Daddy's library, and I believe he's got Lord Knifton there with him, but we'll see if they'll let us have it.”
Pete clutched one of his hands with the enthusiasm of the ten-year-old, and danced across the hall at his side. They came to the library door and knocked, but there was no reply. Pete pushed it open and looked in. “Come on, Uncle Harry,” he cried, “they must have gone out. Where's the microscope?”
His uncle crossed over to a cupboard, lifted out something large and shiny, and stood it on the desk. It was an expensive instrument, covered with exciting little brass knobs, and Pete's eyes gleamed when they saw it. “Coo, what a beauty!” he exclaimed rapturously, “wish I had one!… Oh, and look, Uncle! Here's daddy's model fortress! I've never seen it properly before. Can we look at that through the microscope?”
“No, of course not, you silly kid. They're for examining very tiny things like grains of dust, and you have to put them between the glass plates so as to light them from behind. If you just stood the end of the barrel against a lump of solid stuff you'd see nothing at all. Now then, here's a slide,” he went on, handing the boy two little oblongs of glass, “just get a wee flake of dirt on the tip of that silver paper-knife and park it between these. Then I'll show you how the world looks to an influenza germ.”
Pete giggled, and scraped up a speck of dust from the courtyard of the model fortress, wiped the paperknife on the slide, and obediently passed it across. His uncle fitted it into a frame at the lower end of the barrel, bent down to the eye-piece and began manipulating the brass knobs. Pete watched him, fascinated, and chafed at the time it took to get the adjustment right. He was on the point of asking how soon he might be allowed to have a look when he heard his uncle give a low whistle.
“Pete,” he said, in a funny unsteady voice, and without lifting his head from the eye-piece, “go and ask Mummy to come here, will you. And then hang on in the drawing-room till we call you, there's a good chap. I've got something I want her to see first, and after that you shall have the microscope to yourself till you go to bed.”
Though crestfallen at this further delay, Pete understood from the tone that it was not the time to argue, and presently Mrs. Hunt had taken his place by the desk. Her brother rose, and gave her a strange searching glance.
“Take a look at that, old girl,” he suggested, indicating the microscope, “and tell me if I'm dreaming.” Lydia sat down in the chair. “Why, Harry,” she exclaimed, “they're miniature skeletons! But how on earth can they be modelled so perfectly on such a scale?”
Her brother shook his head. “Pete certainly scraped that bit of dust off the miniature,” he answered.
“But they are not models! Take a grip on yourself and shift the slide from right to left. This is the button that operates it!”
Lydia obeyed the instruction and then broke out again in a tone of astonishment: “But it's unbelievable! A pigmy race no bigger than bacilli, and shaped in the exact pattern of humans!… Why,” she added, “there are even buckles and bits of cloth just like we wear. But they must be models!”
“Move the slide a bit further,” said Harry quietly, and then gipped her by the shoulders as she thrust her chair backwards from the desk with a cry of horror, cheeks blanched and eyes dilated.
“Harry! Harry!” she gasped, “I can't bear it! It's Peter and Lord Knifton! That dressing-gown. There's not another like it in the world!… Oh, that horrible mess of blood… And the limbs were—were still twitching! What does it mean?”
Her brother poured some whiskey into a glass and held it to her lips. “It means, I think, that there was truth in the legend of Lost Keep, and that Peter found the key. It would account for his mysterious disappearances—and other things!” he concluded grimly.
Lydia drained the tumbler and straightened up in the chair. “You mean that the original castle really exists and that, in some beastly fashion, its happenings are mirrored in the model?… Then tell me, Harry. How can we find the real place? There may still be life in them. We must send help. We must!”
Her brother sighed. “There is no journey to make. How such a thing can be, God knows—but that thing is Lost Keep, and there they are locked—multum in parvo—Ugh! It makes me sick!”
Suddenly Lydia was galvanized into action. She began to turn out the drawers of the desk, scattering their contents on the carpet. “The lens, Harry. The lens!” she cried hysterically. “We can go ourselves and find out!”
Harry took her gently by the arm, “No, dear,” he replied with finality, “Peter
has the lens.”
The Slype House
AC Benson
In the town of Garchester, close to St. Peter's Church, and near the river, stood a dark old house called the Slype House, from a narrow passage of that name that ran close to it, down to a bridge over the stream. The house showed a front of mouldering and discoloured stone to the street, pierced by small windows, like a monastery; and indeed, it was formerly inhabited by a college of priests who had served the Church. It abutted at one angle upon the aisle of the church, and there was a casement window that looked out from a room in the house, formerly the infirmary, into the aisle; it had been so built that any priest that was sick might hear the Mass from his bed, without descending into the church. Behind the house lay a little garden, closely grown up with trees and tall weeds, that ran down to the stream. In the wall that gave on the water, was a small door that admitted to an old timbered bridge that crossed the stream, and had a barred gate on the further side, which was rarely seen open; though if a man had watched attentively he might sometimes have seen a small lean person, much bowed and with a halting gait, slip out very quietly about dusk, and walk, with his eyes cast down, among the shadowy byways.
The name of the man who thus dwelt in the Slype House, as it appeared in the roll of burgesses, was Anthony Purvis. He was of an ancient family, and had inherited wealth. A word must be said of his childhood and youth. He was a sickly child, an only son, his father a man of substance, who lived very easily in the country; his mother had died when he was quite a child, and this sorrow had been borne very heavily by his father, who had loved her tenderly, and after her death had become morose and sullen, withdrawing himself from all company and exercise and brooding angrily over his loss, as though God had determined to vex him. He had never cared much for the child, who had been peevish and fretful; and the boy's presence had done little but remind him of the wife he had lost; so that the child had lived alone, nourishing his own fancies, and reading much in a library of curious books that was in the house. The boy's health had been too tender for him to go to school; but when he was eighteen, he seemed stronger, and his father sent him to a university, more for the sake of being relieved of the boy's presence than for his good. And there, being unused to the society of his equals, he had been much flouted and despised for his feeble frame; till a certain bitter ambition sprang up in his mind, like a poisonous flower, to gain power and make himself a name; and he had determined that as he could not be loved he might still be feared; so he bided his time in bitterness, making great progress in his studies; then, when those days were over, he departed eagerly, and sought and obtained his father's leave to betake himself to a university of Italy, where he fell into somewhat evil hands; for he made a friendship with an old doctor of the college, who feared not God and thought ill of man, and spent all his time in dark researches into the evil secrets of nature, the study of poisons that have enmity to the life of man, and many other hidden works of darkness, such as intercourse with spirits of evil, and the black influences that lie in wait for the soul; and he found Anthony an apt pupil. There he lived for some years till he was nearly thirty, seldom visiting his home, and writing but formal letters to his father, who supplied him gladly with a small revenue, so long as he kept apart and troubled him not.
Then his father had died, and Anthony came home to take up his inheritance, which was a plentiful one; he sold his land, and visiting the town of Garchester, by chance, for it lay near his home, he had lighted upon the Slype House, which lay very desolate and gloomy; and as he needed a large place for his instruments and devices, he had bought the house, and had now lived there for twenty years in great loneliness, but not ill-content.
To serve him he had none but a man and his wife, who were quiet and simple people and asked no questions; the wife cooked his meals, and kept the rooms, where he slept and read, clean and neat; the man moved his machines for him and arranged his phials and instruments, having a light touch and a serviceable memory.
The door of the house that gave on the street opened into a hall; to the right was a kitchen, and a pair of rooms where the man and his wife lived. On the left was a large room running through the house; the windows on to the street were walled up, and the windows at the back looked on the garden, the trees of which grew close to the casements, making the room dark, and in a breeze rustling their leaves or leafless branches against the panes. In this room Anthony had a furnace with bellows, the smoke of which discharged itself into the chimney; and here he did much of his work, making mechanical toys, as a clock to measure the speed of wind or water, a little chariot that ran a few yards by itself, a puppet that moved its arms and laughed—and other things that had wiled away his idle hours; the room was filled up with dark lumber, in a sort of order that would have looked to a stranger like disorder, but so that Anthony could lay his hand on all that he needed. From the hall, which was paved with stone, went up the stairs, very strong and broad, of massive oak; under which was a postern that gave on the garden; on the floor above was a room where Anthony slept, which again had its windows to the street boarded up, for he was a light sleeper, and the morning sounds of the awakening city disturbed him.
The room was hung with a dark arras, sprinkled with red flowers; he slept in a great bed with black curtains to shut out all light; the windows looked into the garden; but on the left of the bed, which stood with its head to the street, was an alcove, behind the hangings, containing the window that gave on the church. On the same floor were three other rooms; in one of these, looking on the garden, Anthony had his meals. It was a plain panelled room. Next was a room where he read, filled with books, also looking on the garden; and next to that was a little room of which he alone had the key. This room he kept locked, and no one set foot in it but himself. There was one more room on this floor, set apart for a guest who never came, with a great bed and a press of oak. And that looked on the street. Above, there was a row of plain plastered rooms, in which stood furniture for which Anthony had not use, and many crates in which his machines and phials came to him; this floor was seldom visited, except by the man, who sometimes came to put a box there; and the spiders had it to themselves; except for a little room where stood an optic glass through which on clear nights Anthony sometimes looked at the moon and stars, if there was any odd misadventure among them, such as an eclipse; or when a fiery-tailed comet went his way silently in the heavens, coming from none might say whence and going none knew whither, on some strange errand of God.
Anthony had but two friends who ever came to see him. One was an old physician who had ceased to practise his trade, which indeed was never abundant, and who would sometimes drink a glass of wine with Anthony, and engage in curious talk of men's bodies and diseases, or look at one of Anthony's toys. Anthony had come to know him by having called him in to cure some ailment, which needed a surgical knife; and that had made a kind of friendship between them; but Anthony had little need thereafter to consult him about his health, which indeed was now settled enough, though he had but little vigour; and he knew enough of drugs to cure himself when he was ill. The other friend was a foolish priest of the college, that made belief to be a student but was none, who thought Anthony a very wise and mighty person, and listened with open mouth and eyes to all that he said or showed him. This priest, who was fond of wonders, had introduced himself to Anthony by making believe to borrow a volume of him; and then had grown proud of the acquaintance, and bragged greatly of it to his friends, mixing up much that was fanciful with a little that was true. But the result was that gossip spread wide about Anthony, and he was held in the town to be a very fearful person, who could do strange mischief if he had a mind to; Anthony never cared to walk abroad, for he was of a shy habit, and disliked to meet the eyes of his fellows; but if he did go about, men began to look curiously after him as he went by, shook their heads and talked together with a dark pleasure, while children fled before his face and women feared him; all of which pleased Anthony mightily, if t
he truth were told; for at the bottom of his restless and eager spirit lay a deep vanity unseen, like a lake in woods; he hungered not indeed for fame, but for repute—monstrari digito, as the poet has it; and he cared little in what repute he was held, so long as men thought him great and marvellous; and as he could not win renown by brave deeds and words, he was rejoiced to win it by keeping up a certain darkness and mystery about his ways and doings; and this was very dear to him, so that when the silly priest called him Seer and Wizard, he frowned and looked sideways; but he laughed in his heart and was glad.
Now, when Anthony was near his fiftieth year, there fell on him a heaviness of spirit which daily increased upon him. He began to question of his end and what lay beyond. He had always made pretence to mock at religion, and had grown to believe that in death the soul was extinguished like a burnt-out flame. He began, too, to question of his life and what he had done. He had made a few toys, he had filled vacant hours, and he had gained an ugly kind of fame—and this was all. Was he so certain, he began to think, after all, that death was the end? Were there not, perhaps, in the vast house of God, rooms and chambers beyond that in which he was set for awhile to pace to and fro? About this time he began to read in a Bible that had lain dusty and unopened on a shelf. It was his mother's book, and he found therein many little tokens of her presence. Here was a verse underlined; at some gracious passages the page was much fingered and worn; in one place there were stains that looked like the mark of tears; then again, in one page, there was a small tress of hair, golden hair, tied in a paper with a name across it, that seemed to be the name of a little sister of his mother's that died a child; and again there were a few withered flowers, like little sad ghosts, stuck through a paper on which was written his father's name—the name of the sad, harsh, silent man whom Anthony had feared with all his heart. Had those two, indeed, on some day of summer, walked to and fro, or sate in some woodland corner, whispering sweet words of love together? Anthony felt a sudden hunger of the heart for a woman's love, for tender words to soothe his sadness, for the laughter and kisses of children—and he began to ransack his mind for memories of his mother; he could remember being pressed to her heart one morning when she lay abed, with her fragrant hair falling about him. The worst was that he must bear his sorrow alone, for there were none to whom he could talk of such things, The doctor was as dry as an old bunch of herbs, and as for the priest, Anthony was ashamed to show anything but contempt and pride in his presence. For relief he began to turn to a branch of his studies that he had long disused; this was a fearful commerce with the unseen spirits. Anthony could remember having practised some experiments of this kind with the old Italian doctor; but he remembered them with a kind of disgust, for they seemed to him but a sort of deadly juggling; and such dark things as he had seen seemed like a dangerous sport with unclean and coltish beings, more brute-like than human. Yet now he read in his curious books with care, and studied the tales of necromancers, who had indeed seemed to have some power over the souls of men departed. But the old books gave him but little faith, and a kind of angry disgust at the things attempted. And he began to think that the horror in which such men as made these books abode, was not more than the dark shadow cast on the mirror of the soul by their own desperate imaginings and timorous excursions.
There Is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man Page 6