Scarweather

by Anthony Rolls

  At this point the butler came in to announce Dean Ingleworth. After a careful descent to the level of ordinary polite conversation, we accompanied Macwardle to the south library where his wife and daughters were entertaining the Dean.

  Mrs. Macwardle was ample and motherly, and she was intelligent enough to have no pretensions. Her age was about sixty-five.

  I felt sorry for the daughters, both of whom were reluctantly approaching middle-age. They were nice though ridiculous women, pathetically trying to take an interest in poultry, general knowledge, and the welfare of the poor—a state of things all the more deplorable because neither of them was ill-looking. In view of their father’s income they were, of course, freely admitted to the outer circles of county society, but no one had ever wanted to marry Prudence or Priscilla. For my part, I rather liked them, with all their affectations and futilities. They had been expensively educated, and, perhaps foreseeing their future state, they had never despised education. If they were not highly intelligent, they were at least well informed, and they were able to talk with occasional gleams of real understanding. The worst of it was, they were incurably sentimental (so often the case with those who have been repressed), and they could not help filtering their limited experience through a medium of luscious romance and of brightly-coloured idealism. I speak of them in some detail, because the reader will find them, later, playing their part in a scene of great importance.

  The ladies received us in a most impeccable style, the Misses Macwardle, in particular, looking suitably pained.

  As for the Dean, he was a pattern of Christian gentility, fully realising all the subtle delicacies of the situation.

  “You will carry away with you from Aberleven,” he said, “memories of happiness and of tragedy, mingled, as indeed they are necessarily mingled, in the bewildering tapestry of experience. Yet allow me to hope that you will visit us again. Allow me to hope that your pleasant memories will remain, and that we may be able to add others equally pleasant.”

  To this amiable speech Ellingham made an adequate and equally polished reply. He found it refreshing, after the interview in the study, to meet this courtly and eloquent man.

  But there was a subject of wider importance which quickly engaged our attention—the awful imminence of war.

  Already the lurid shadow was darkening our land and filling every thoughtful mind with fear or melancholy speculation. It was Ellingham’s fervent hope, I know, that England would be able to preserve neutrality with honour.

  “Our navy,” said Macwardle, “can sink the lot of ’em; yes, sir, it can sink the lot of ’em in a fortnight. We need not send a single man across the Channel.”

  “But, Daddy,” said Prudence, “if the Germans invaded France—”

  “We should run round and blow their harbours to pieces, my dear. I have often thought of it. I have often discussed the matter with Ugglesby-Gore, who is a soldier and knows what he’s talking about.”

  “I believe the Germans have got a very good navy of their own,” said Ingleworth drily.

  “There’s only one navy to count, sir,” retorted Macwardle, “and that’s the British navy. Thank God, sir, we can wipe the others off the face of the earth. I have often thought about it, sir, I can assure you. Old England is ready to fight for civilisation, and she can swipe the others off the face of the earth. And, please God, she’ll do it.”

  “I suppose the Germans may also invoke the assistance of God,” observed Ellingham.

  “That, sir,” retorted Macwardle, “would be rank blasphemy.”

  4

  On Sunday, the 2nd of August, things were looking so desperately serious that we decided to pack up at once and catch the midday express at Northport.

  We had no time to say good-bye to the Reisbys. Morgan got the car ready for us soon after breakfast, and we were back in London at half-past ten.

  “We have retired without solving the mystery,” said Ellingham as we shook hands outside King’s Cross station, “for I cannot help regarding the whole thing as a mystery still. There may be an opportunity for continued investigation, but it looks as if you and I will be soldiers of the King before many weeks have passed. And it’s going to be a bloody business, my boy.”

  Part III

  Shadows in the North

  Chapter I

  1

  I have now to pass quickly over a period of more than five years—the whole period of the Great War and the first year of the lamentable aftermath. I shall only relate briefly an episode of 1916.

  Ellingham, who had been for some time a keen Territorial officer, got a commission in the R.F.A. and it was not long before he was over in France with his battery. I myself, after a somewhat accelerated training in a well-known London O.T.C., was gazetted to the Middlesex Fusiliers, and I reached Le Havre—as I well remember!—on the 27th of January 1915.

  I was knocked out at the second battle of Ypres, and although I have not the faintest recollection of what I did in the battle I presently found myself agreeably convalescent in London with a D.S.O. ribbon stitched on my tunic. My friend Ellingham, in the meanwhile, had won the same honourable decoration in a more definite way, and was already assured of promotion. As he did everything well, it goes without saying that he was an admirable soldier. He was, in fact, an acting Brigadier at the time of the Armistice.

  We wrote letters to each other, but we did not meet until 1916, and then in a most unexpected way.

  At the battle of the Somme I was not as fortunate as I had been at Ypres in the previous year. It is true that I was now a captain, but instead of distinguishing myself in that particular series of massacres I fell ingloriously into a shell-hole, and in climbing out of it I got a bit of shrapnel in my leg. A lot of dirty earth was blown into the wound; it was rather a grim business, and I was bundled off to the —rd Stationary Hospital at Rouen.

  The bed on my right was vacant, but I was dimly aware of somebody being put into it during the night. In the morning the first thing I heard (at washing-time) was a sardonic and weary voice:

  “And how are you, Captain Farringdale?”

  It was Ellingham.

  His brigade, he said, had come in for trouble, and he had got a piece of one of his own guns in his right forearm. Not a large piece, but they would probably send him over to London in a few days’ time. At any rate, he was lucky. Fritz had spotted the battery and wiped it out—men, guns and all—before they had time to move. A pretty piece of aeroplane work; they were devilish good at that kind of thing.

  Later in the morning, after the M.O. had come round and patched us up, we had a sustained and interesting conversation, modulated and a little modified by the incidents of the ward.

  First we compared our war experiences. But these comparisons were invariably brief. And then Ellingham—he was Major Ellingham at that time—began to talk about home affairs.

  “You know,” he said, “I often think about that very painful and very perplexing episode at Aberleven. It seems a long time ago, but I have not lost any of the details. And the more I think about it the more convinced I am that old Reisby was involved, no matter how, in the problem of your poor cousin’s death. If we get through this bloody war—which is highly improbable—I should very much like to see that old boy again.”

  “You are still in some doubt as to the nature of the problem?”

  “Yes. But look here. I’ll tell you something which I may as well get off my mind. You remember that big tumulus up there—the Devil’s Hump?”

  “Very clearly.”

  “The Devil’s Hump, like the Professor, is also involved in the problem.”

  “Good Scot, man!—but how—”

  “I tell you, I can’t say definitely. If my nerves were not a little upset I should hesitate before making a declaration so vague and apparently so inane. Actually, however, it is not inane. Do you ever hear from Mrs.
Reisby?”

  In answering this question I felt a certain degree of embarrassment. “Well—she has written to me once or twice.”

  “Keep in touch with them. We may be able… Ah! Thank you, Sister, that’s fine.”

  He settled himself more comfortably in his bed.

  “An unsolved problem, particularly one of such a nature, cannot cease to occupy the mind. I should like to see that old tumulus opened, you know.”

  “But how can you possibly connect such a thing with Eric’s disappearance?”

  “That is a question I cannot answer. Something hidden there… your cousin may have known… I cannot say. Or perhaps I do not dare to say. It is too fantastic! I am talking foolishly. It was not a very nice experience, you see, the way that battery was mopped up. God!—it was like turning a bloody hose on it.” He tried to raise his arm.

  “Major Ellingham,” said the Sister, looking up from her table at the end of the ward, “you mustn’t get excited, please.”

  2

  After this conversation in the hospital I did not see Ellingham until the spring of 1919. We both came through the War without further damage: he was demobilised as a Lieutenant-Colonel, and I had the brevet rank of Major. But neither of us has any wish to revive the memories of that ghastly period, unless to admonish those imbeciles who still pretend that arms are glorious, necessary, and a token of national honour. We have sternly abjured our military titles, and if anyone tries to apply them he is quickly and properly rebuked.

  Very frequently had I reflected upon our curious talk in the hospital, and I came to the conclusion that my friend—though he never admitted it to have been the case—was actually the victim of an intermittent kind of shell-shock.

  Certainly I believed that Reisby had concealed something which he knew about the death of my cousin, but I did not see how this death could be associated with a Bronze Age tumulus. Of course I knew that Ellingham had got something up his sleeve. He had some information about the Professor which he had never imparted to me. Anyhow, I thought, it is all over and done with, and we shall never hear anything more about it. My supposition was entirely wrong.

  Why we should have done so I cannot say, but Mrs. Reisby and I frequently wrote to each other. Of course the War gave a natural stimulus to private correspondence. When you were on active service you got letters from people who would never have written to you in ordinary circumstances, and you were, in most cases, glad to get them and to answer them. Indeed, you regarded such letters as a welcome form of communication between hell and the upper world, a kind of liaison between the tortured existence of the soldier and all the old substantial realities of peace.

  Our letters were not romantic, nor were they even confidential; yet we both attached a good deal of importance to sending and receiving them. Once or twice we had observed a very singular coincidence of thought… But I only mention this correspondence in order to show that I had a reason for wishing to revisit Aberleven.

  By the winter of 1919 I had resumed in earnest the study of the law, again under the admirable direction of Sir Alfred Barlock-Winterslade. My mother and sister were still living at Richmond, but I had moved to bachelor quarters in Upper Cheyne Row. I was now twenty-seven. As for Ellingham, he was back at his old job in Cambridge, with every prospect of a professorship in due course.

  3

  In the spring of 1920—nearly six years after the tragedy of the Yeaverlow Bank—I suggested to Ellingham that we might spend a week or so at Aberleven. To my delight, he said that he would like nothing better. His wife and son were going on a visit to his mother-in-law at Bath, where that venerable lady was decaying in a state of dreary comfort. So he would gladly accompany me to the north.

  I wrote to Mrs. Reisby, telling her of our plans, and she replied that everyone would be delighted to see us, and that both she and her husband wished us to spend as much time as possible at Scarweather. Morgan, having played a gallant part in the defence of East Anglia, was still in charge of the hotel, and would reserve rooms as soon as we could give him a date.

  Pleasing as her reply undoubtedly was, I discerned a note of restraint in the letter, a formalised offer of hospitality, which I attributed to the Professor himself.

  “No doubt you are right,” said Ellingham, to whom I confided this idea, “but I’m sure the old fellow remembers you with affection.”

  “I’m not so sure of it.”

  “Oh, yes, he does! On the other hand, he regards me as one of those inquisitive, unaccommodating people who are so frequently the cause of mischief.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not a scrap! We are going up to enjoy ourselves, to be refreshed by the northern breezes, to view the rude serenity of the northern scene. Am I right?”

  He looked at me in his odd, quizzical way.

  “Yes, rather! But I shall be glad to see them, you know.”

  “Mrs. Reisby in particular, if I may venture to say so without impertinence.”

  “Mrs. Reisby of course. And the Professor too.”

  “Only you are still a bit suspicious—eh?”

  He slid his long forefinger down the side of his nose.

  “Now, look here, Colonel Ellingham!”

  “Really, Major Farringdale!”

  We laughed, and then I felt a kind of a twist in the back of my mind and I said:

  “What is the good of being suspicious, anyway? It all happened six years ago. We can’t do anything now.”

  “And yet there is a kind of dull insistency, is there not?”

  He paused for a moment, and then resumed:

  “The unsolved problem has a way of bobbing up, of ruffling the placid levels of our self-sufficiency. Well, we shall see! I wonder how the monumental work on burials is going on. Monumental is the right word, eh? And I wonder how the trout are running this year. The trout! Ah, my boy! How good it is to be thinking of trout again…”

  We had a great welcome, I might almost say a great reception, at the Aberleven hotel. Mr. Morgan and his wife greeted us with overflowing cordiality. The cook and the two chambermaids, abandoning their duties, insisted upon running into the parlour to have a look at us. Ugglesby-Gore, informed of our arrival, came in for a cheerful round of gin-and-bitters. He had been a recruiting officer, unhonoured by promotion, but that did not prevent him from giving us an original though incoherent summary of the War. After all—he was a professional.

  And then the talk!

  Poor old Macwardle was dead. He had caught a chill when attending a meeting of the local tribunal, at which he had the satisfaction of condemning five notorious poachers to service in the army. Three of the Aberleven lads had been killed in France. Another had gone down in the Goliath. Others had been wounded, and others had returned without a scratch… The usual story.

  But there was one piece of news which affected us more closely.

  “Remember Joe Lloyd?” said Morgan, after handing Ugglesby-Gore his fourth gin-and-bitters.

  “Very well indeed.”

  “Ah!—he turned out a bit of a mystery. The police came to see him in September 1914, and in October he disappeared.”

  “Did he, by Jove!” cried Ellingham. “But how? Do you mean that he simply went away?”

  “No; he disappeared without leaving a trace. Some of the men saw him hauling his boat up the beach—on the 8th of October, I think it was, about three in the afternoon. Then a little maid saw him fastening the gate below his cottage. And after that nobody saw him any more.”

  “Tut!”

  Ellingham slowly nodded his head up and down, as much as to say: “There you are!—another problem!”

  “Most extr’ordinary thing, what?” bubbled Ugglesby-Gore. “Fella vanishes into the atmosphere, what? Absolutely. That’s it—absolutely vanishes. Little girl sees him go into his cottage, and the next morning he isn’t there—
isn’t anywhere. Gone off the face of the earth, absolutely—can you imagine it?”

  “Did the police look for him?” I said, only faintly curious.

  “Oh, yes! Regular hunt. Funny thing—supper on the table, kettle on the fire—no fella to be seen—fella vanished into the blue.”

  “Very odd indeed,” said Ellingham. “Did they find anything remarkable in the cottage?”

  “No, sir, I don’t think so,” replied Morgan. “I heard there was only his clothes, and all the usual things a fisherman would have—”

  “You’re wrong, Buffalo,” said Ugglesby-Gore, “there was a box.”

  “Ah, yes, of course! I had forgot that.”

  “A box?”

  Ellingham was amused though attentive.

  “The fella had a box hidden away somewhere. Police took it. Awfully mysterious. Clever bit of work by the police, what? Trust the old Chief—every time! You remember it, Morgan, don’t you?”

  “I remember something… No, no! It’s my turn now, if you please, Major… Nothing for you, sir?—or you? Well, well! I shall have another opportunity.”

  “So Mr. Lloyd and his box have disappeared?” said Ellingham, “and you know no more of the one than you do of the other?”

  “You’ve got it,” replied Ugglesby-Gore, “absolutely. Fella goes, box goes, nobody hears a thing. But you mark my word, mark my word—think old Uggles is no end of a fool, perhaps—gets a brain-wave now and then—mark my word—that fella was a spy.”

  “That was all the talk, I believe,” said Morgan.

  “It was a sure thing. Never heard a word about the fella; never knew who he was or where he went to. Must have been a spy—couldn’t have been anything else. It’s my belief”—the Major bubbled over in a sudden access of alcoholic solemnity—“it’s my belief the fella was caught signalling to a bloody U-boat.”

  4