"Well, sir, I won't absolutely say it can't be managed, if you are convinced..."
"I'm convinced that it will be an act of Christian charity, Dunn."
"I would certainly like to spare the ladies and the old gentleman all I can, sir. Then we will leave it like that. … I must be off at once. You too, I suppose?"
"Soon. Let them get their lunch over in peace."
"Follow me upstairs, then, sir, and I'll show you your rooms before I go. Or a small tonic to steady you, first!"
"Send me up a bottle of any whisky, with a siphon."
The sitting-room was a rather cheerless apartment on the first floor, overlooking the village street. Saltfleet identified it at once as his prison of unutterable boredom for the next couple of days. He wondered if he should send for Arsinal, to hear by word of mouth his account of their extraordinary escape from an unexpected bog; but would not trust the public wires from a place about to be so suddenly full of ears, eyes, and tongues, and believed that later in the day he might be able to slip down to Plymouth for an hour, and dispatch his news from there. He drank some whisky, looked repeatedly at his watch, once or twice drew out for inspection the stone he had recovered from the dead man's hand, and at last, for sheer want of occupation, went to his other room to lay out the few necessaries he had brought down in case of detention.
At two o'clock Dunn was still not returned to report. Saltfleet hastily swallowed some more whisky, put on his hat, and left the room and the hotel. The life of the street was quiet and normal. Intelligence of the tragedy could not as yet be generally abroad.
It simplified matters that the same servant opened the door to him as last time. Without delay she brought him to the room where he had been before. In less than a minute the mistress of the house came in to him.
Her manner was of controlled agitation, and her eyes fastened themselves on his face searchingly and anxiously. Ingrid's apparition had been strange and ghastly, while Hugh had not returned to lunch. Peter was no more than fifteen minutes out of the house; by Ingrid's urgent request, to seek him on the moor as far as Devil's Tor. Now he, Saltfleet, was back so unexpectedly, and it could surely only mean that he had bad news of Hugh! ...
Something stony and inaccessible in the caller's look sent her heart down in the certainty that he was here as an evil guest.
"Have you seen Hugh?" she asked, in a hissing whisper, that sounded unreal to herself.
Saltfleet glanced at the door, to make sure it was shut. "Please sit down!" But Helga continued standing.
"What's the matter?"
"I am sorry to have to report that Drapier has met with an accident on Devil's Tor."
An involuntary cry escaped from her. "Oh dear! Then it has happened!... What—"
"You will be better sitting."
"No, no!—I am not to be foolish. But please tell me quickly! ..."
"I got to the hill, and half-way up it. It was very obscured by fog. Apparently, one of the loose blocks thrown down the other day started moving again, and caught him from behind unawares."
Helga put a hand on her heart.
"He is dead?"
"I fear so," was his low answer.
"He is certainly dead?"
Saltfleet bowed. She turned away, and covered her face with her two hands, but not to weep. Then, when she came back, its expression was markedly harder and sharper for him.
"Who has been told? Has a doctor certified death?"
"One should be on his way up there now from the village. I have handed everything over to Dunn, of the 'Bell'."
"He was so when you got there?"
"Yes; I found him lying."
"Still living?"
"No, life was gone already—I should say, not many minutes before."
"Was the death from injury, or shock?"
"He was badly hurt. On the other hand, I would imagine his heart was sound enough."
"Would it have been instantaneous?"
"I cannot quite decide that, but his sufferings must at least have been very short."
"What is the nature of the injury?"
"The spine, and no doubt some of the internal organs."
"Was no one else up there?"
"No; I should have been the first and only one to discover him."
"Your evidence, of course, will be required at the inquest."
"Of course," said Saltfleet. "And I have already made arrangements to stop at the 'Bell' in order to be in readiness. … For the rest, Mrs. Fleming, I am entirely at your service, in case you wish to send for me at any time. I have taken it on myself to have Drapier temporarily lodged at an annex of the 'Bell'. I fancied you would wish it. You need not discuss that now with me, but as soon as Dunn is free, I shall send him round to you."
"If you please. It is quite essential that I should have an immediate talk with him."
The flint was not mentioned between them. Saltfleet, in the assurance that it was already securely in his possession, had nothing more to gain by declaring the fact, whereas the moment was inappropriate; but Helga could not trust herself to address this suddenly fearful man except shortly, to learn from him what she had to learn, and then at once dismiss him.
All her efforts were towards maintaining her outward composure. She felt as if the flesh of her face were being flayed from her soul, leaving her appalling, wicked, indefensible thoughts exposed to the cold glare of his eye. … Hugh's presentiment of death, Ingrid's vision of his ghostly return, her own unreasoning fear of this man from the first, they were all parts of one supernatural predetermined event; and therefore her thoughts were justified; and the times would correspond so terribly. It would be about forty minutes, or little less, from Saltfleet's leaving the house to her daughter's vision; his legs were long, and the distance was three miles. She dared not, while he was still in the room, go on blindly wrestling with these diabolical imaginations. She must push them away from her wholly, wholly! ...
And always the same things were to happen to her in her life. Like a very far-off scene, but oh! so vividly dark and clear, was that time when, still with years and years before her, one had come to break the news to her of poor Dick's hunting crash; and now this was the same. … But that had left her poor, and this, rich. So grimly ironical was fortune! She did not want his money, and Ingrid had been right to say so. …
Why wasn't Saltfleet demanding his property? It must be always in his head, and now that there was to be no more obstruction... could the deliberate refraining be from delicacy?—or was he fearing to put it to the test, fearing to be confronted? ... And she—if she could have spoken of it now, still Ingrid held the stone, and she too must first be prepared. Surely, she would not break in on them in the room, as she had done before. He must go—yes, he must go! ...
"Then there is nothing more that I can do for you till then?" asked Saltfleet gravely. He sensed her new antipathy to him, and could even suspect its monstrous cause, but at such a time a woman's head would naturally be flooded with wildness and confusion, that must presently subside; and the facts were on their way. He was sorrier for her distress than indignant with her folly.
"No, nothing," was her faint answer. But the faintness was still hard, while her eyes continued to wander, with a hunted look, everywhere except to his person. "I will say what else I have to say to Mr. Dunn. Will you please ask him to see me personally? My uncle is old, and I do not wish him to be troubled. … There is only one more thing I would like to know, before you go. You say this dreadful accident has happened on Devil's Tor. How can you be so sure?"
"I am going in part upon your daughter's instruction to me of the way, and in part upon the number of recently-lodged rocks down the hillside."
She detained him no longer. But on his way back to the inn, Saltfleet conceived an inspiration concerning Drapier's unnaturally-closed fist. Had he been examining Arsinal's flint while slowly descending the hill, his palm would have been open; while his preoccupation would also have made him unaware of the gr
eat block bounding towards him from the rear, until there was no more time to get clear. Then, at the instant before the fatal impact, Drapier's unreflecting instinct would have been to secure his treasure by closing his fingers over it.
A fascinating talisman, since he was unable to leave it even when walking on the moor! And his determination to try to keep it for himself; and Arsinal's more considered valuation of it. God knew he had spent enough of his life and money to get it. The inherent enchantment must be there, so to magnetise two adult men, unconnected, of quite different natures and avocations. Arsinal must have heard of its strangeness beforehand; he would not have excited himself thus over a mere souvenir of a dead creed. … Then if others could discover its magic, why not himself? At the "Bell" he would have more than enough leisure. …
But at Whitestone, alone in the refuge of her own room, Helga was wrestling with her womanishness, that she was apprised once more by this blow was always to rise against her fancied strength of character and calmness in the hour of black crisis. She only of those in the house knew of this awful shell about to explode within it; while up on the moor Hugh was lying crushed, bloody, neglected... and the room's walls seemed to crush her too! ... She had hated that Saltfleet should be with her, and facing her, but now that he was gone she realised the support of his vigour. He had at least been a man, while she was the weakest of weak women. Now she must begin her loathsome peregrination of the house, or some second blundering messenger from the callous practical world would anticipate her. …
As she still attempted to drag her feet from the room, Ingrid entered to her; and appeared, by an indefinable change in her face, to be preinformed of the tragedy. She regarded her mother in silence, and Helga could not speak.
"Mr. Saltfleet has been here again," the girl at last said, "and he must have brought bad news of Hugh with him. I can see that he has. Won't you tell me, mother?"
"Yes!"... Helga mastered her sensation of choking, and proceeded: "Yes, my dear—he has brought bad news; and your apparition was a true one..."
"Hugh has died!"
"He has met with a fatal accident on Devil's Tor."
The girl embraced and kissed her mother. There was no more said for a minute.
"He was killed by a rolling boulder," began Helga again then. "One of those that composed the overthrown stack. His death was either instantaneous, or nearly so. Mr. Saltfleet claims to have arrived on the scene soon after. … He was the first to find Hugh."
"Claims, mother!" The two were apart again.
"There must be an inquest, and he is staying on at the 'Bell' to attend it. It will all come out then. … A party is on its way to the Tor. Poor Hugh will be taken to the 'Bell'."
"Is that right?"
"We must give the first consideration to Uncle Magnus. And I must break the news to him now..."
"Mother..."
"Yes, dear?"
"You must not go by the clock. You must not think horrible things. …"
"I am not thinking them—I am trying not to think them."
"You mustn't. There would be no sense."
"I shall send Hugh's stone round to him this evening, and then I wish never to see or have anything to do with him again."
Ingrid could not yet realise the stroke, its shock was too numbing. She wanted Peter to come back quickly. He must already know; he must have met them. She wanted to get hold of Mr. Saltfleet. She felt that a vast piled lake of consequences was being dammed within her head by her present ice-barrage of paralysed thought. She had the instinct to escape suddenly—out-of-doors, or to her bedroom. …
"What can I do, mother?"
"You? You can do nothing. You had better wait for Peter. He should be back soon, with the confirmation... and I am also expecting Mr. Dunn. You might watch for him, and see that he does not get to your uncle first. I am going to your uncle now. I wish Mr. Dunn shown into this room."
Old Colborne received the bolt more composedly than Helga had dared to expect. He asked few questions, made little comment, and even screwed his features to the shadow of a sardonic contempt, though this, she knew, could not be his feeling, but a disguise. He seemed content that his nephew was not to be brought back to the house. It was only as, relieved in heart, she was quitting him again, that he prevented her with a dour half-grin.
"The danger-notice was needed after all, it appears! It would not, however, have saved your cousin, who suggested it and was therefore alive to the risk. One concludes that he was dreaming; and the Drapiers have always had that vein of absent-mindedness, which has still consorted well enough with their holdfast temper. But I am not to disparage a man of my own blood, lying unburied. I wish to say this only. Your cousin I have never liked. I had excellent cause intensely to detest his father while he lived, and I have strained not one point, but many, to receive the son in this house at all. He constantly angered me. So I shall observe the customary decencies, Helga, since I can do no less; but I shall not pretend to grieve at heart, and in this respect I beg of you others to spare me. Being women, you will or will not put on mourning garments for him, as the fashion of the time dictates and I cannot—I ask you, however, to let everything else in the house go on as usual.
"I shall be too soon dead myself. There is little enough in death, that we should make so lamentable a disaster of it. I am to understand that this is the third attempt on Hugh Drapier's life on Devil's Tor within the compass of a few days; successful at last. If you are superstitious, you will put the circumstance to its best use, and in fact I have already told you that the hill is not as other hills. But on that account to pronounce it a doom, is to assume a wisdom that we do not possess. Supposing that death be the best for us, as easily it may be, then this imagined deliberate aiming at your cousin may just as well represent his reward. He himself has been the fittest judge of whether he has kept alive the spark that can alone seem to go through to another life. The life of the self is for the self only. It must go out."
Far too distracted was Helga to follow him to such regions. She kept silence for a space; then found words to assure him quietly that the house's routine would continue as nearly as possible without change. But when for the second time she was on the point of leaving him, she remembered that there was still something he must know at once.
"I am not sure if Hugh told you, uncle, that his estate passes to Ingrid and myself. I am executrix. I wouldn't mention it at such a moment, except that there is the question of the arrangements, with which I now want you not to be bothered."
Her uncle stared at her; and the stare fell into a scowl.
"How much are you to get between you?"
"I have only his own rough estimate of nineteen thousand pounds."
"It will secure your independence."
"We don't want independence, uncle. Nothing is to be altered."
"I am very glad to hear it. Ingratitude is the commonest, but also the meanest, of vices. I have no doubt, however, that Ingrid will soon be thinking of her marriage.''
"It seems fitting in this time of cruel trouble that I should hear your wishes about that, once for all. You know she is very fond of Peter."
"If she desires to marry Peter, I have only to say that I shall raise no obstacle. The youngsters may live here, if they please, in rooms of their own; or she may leave home when she likes. If they have still not enough money for an establishment, let Peter come to me, to talk it over."
"It can't be gone into now, uncle dear! ..." She kissed his forehead. "I am expecting Mr. Dunn, and I must go."
"Send Dunn along before he leaves the house," replied her uncle. "I wish to speak to him too."
At half-past three Peter returned. He was breathless with fast walking, pale and agitated. He had been all the way to the Tor, having reached the scene of death upon the very heels of the village party headed by the doctor. Not waiting for their slower return, he had viewed the preliminary proceedings in dumbness, heard the doctor's pronouncement, and started back at once. He saw
Ingrid the first, and a single glance by each at the other's face informed them that there was nothing to be told. She took him to her mother, who was again in her room.
Peter made his superfluous report, and accepted a whisky-and-soda. His upset condition was very natural, yet Ingrid felt a slight involuntary resentment and scorn on account of it. It was as if, in spite of his accepted high idealism and wildness of genius, he were being shocked from his manhood by this ugly interruption of the domestic course of things. Death, surely, was fearful enough; but not so fearful. For herself, it was the day's grim reality, scarcely its human tragedy, that already began to raise her bewildered spirits to grandeur and amazement. Hugh was dead; and now it was no longer a play or fantasy, but the true working of that which lay behind and moved the practical world. So her soul was confirmed. Its long littleness, perhaps, was being cast at last...
The instinct was with her that she must now very soon be summoned to make her own sacrifice. Hugh's death stood for that. Together they had stood on the Tor but two evenings ago, and together the supernatural had spoken to them. She could never forget her vision on the Tor. Was she too to die? Her sensations should be different—far more complicated. Her death, she felt, would be too simple a solution. …
They were all sitting, and her mother was speaking of Hugh's stone, that Mr. Saltfleet had called for. She was addressing Peter.
"There is one thing you can do for me, Peter—or perhaps I had first better have both your opinions. The Mr. Saltfleet who was the earliest to find poor Hugh, and whom you were inquiring about this morning... I will tell you under what circumstances they met. When Hugh was in Tibet this spring, as he was coming out of the country again towards civilisation, his caravan encountered that of a pair of Englishmen, one of whom was Mr. Saltfleet; the other, a Mr. Arsinal. They were moving further into the land, with the definite idea of robbing a certain native monastery of a certain rarity. They parted; and when Hugh was close upon the frontier, he was overtaken by a runner from the two, who put in his hands the prize they had been going after. They had got it, but the theft had been discovered, and they were in imminent danger of being captured by an overwhelming body, so this was the expedient they adopted for its safeguarding.
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