The Fall of the House of Heron (Prologue Science Fiction)

by Eden Phillpotts

  “Even if the complete charge had not been cordite, but something else?” asked Sir Hector.

  “No, Father. At any rate, experts know of nothing. Alfred would have told in a minute if the cartridge was abnormally heavy, for example, and we may take it for granted there was nothing to suggest anything could be wrong. I can only suspect some invisible flaw in the rifle itself may have accounted for the accident.”

  On the occasion of this visit, Faraday continued to please and content his father. Sir Hector reminded him of the future and that he must inherit Cliff with all its obligations and succeed to the title; but the younger replied that there was but one distinction he desired.

  “To put F.R.S. after my name would please me,” he said, “because that is the sole honour that could mean anything to me. No doubt I shall achieve it; but to follow you, Father, will be very difficult in any case, though, of course, I shall do so to the best of my power and preserve your traditions and principles if I don’t go first.”

  “I hope you will marry before long,” declared Sir Hector. “I should like to see the future of our meagre clan assured.”

  But his son shook his head.

  “Too busy to fall in love yet awhile I’m afraid,” he answered, “though even that might happen.”

  No mention was made of money, or Faraday’s scientific dreams — a fact which relieved his father on that score and they parted in friendly fashion, the professor promising to visit Cliff again at the end of another college term. Somewhat later came young Balmane for two nights and his visit brought sorrow with it for he arrived laden with Alfred’s trophies: the horns and pelts of beasts that he had slain.

  “We were, of course, rationed in elephants,” explained the hunter, “but Heron had the good fortune to get a magnificent bull, and we were all so jolly glad afterwards that this bit of luck fell to his share. The event of his life you might say. In fact, it would have been the event of anybody’s life. I’ve brought the tusks. People who understand ivory told me they are exceptionally fine, so you will be able to turn them into choice things if you don’t prefer to hang them up somewhere. Same with the skins and antlers and rhino horn.”

  In this guileless fashion he talked, reminding Greta of her brother; and she guessed that the sportsman must similarly bring Alfred to her father’s memory. Indeed, the old man revealed as much when they were alone together, for he was cast down.

  “The lad seemed to bring my boy closer to me,” he admitted to Greta and it was long before he would let them open the big crate that contained trophies of Alfred’s last venture.

  “Regard the spoil as your own, Greta,” he said, “and do what you will with it.”

  But Greta, guessing that these reminders, if displayed, would only bring sorrow with them, made no haste in the matter.

  “Plenty of time for you to decide about that, Father,” she told him.

  Faraday kept his word and came to see them during the following August. He brought a curious story and related the particulars at some length while he sat and smoked with his father and sister in the billiards room on the evening of his arrival.

  “A queer thing happened a month ago,” he said. “It wasn’t in all the newspapers, though some had a brief mention of it; but the authorities didn’t wish it to be published at all really, desiring to create no false rumours. It concerned Dartmoor of all places. There is a big artillery camp on the north side of the moor under a peak known as Yes Tor, and one day — about noon some six weeks ago — two loud and peculiar explosions were heard at the camp. Guns were not firing that day and no reason existed for any such uproar from the central waste. The noises had come out of regions a few miles south of the camp and had not sounded like ordinary gun-fire to experienced ears, but more like thunder. Thunder, however, was impossible as an anti-cyclone reigning over Dartmoor precluded any such thing.”

  “They looked into it, no doubt,” suggested his father.

  “At once. A large party rode out — men and officers — and after a hunt of some hours at last found the scene of the explosions. Within one hundred and fifty yards of each other appeared the evidence: two big pits, one twice as large as the other, gaped on the open moor. The heather was scorched around them and a solid granite boulder of large size had been smashed to fragments. The holes were about ten feet deep in one case, but half as deep again in the other. At one point the heath and sedge still smouldered, but no sign of any projectile appeared and, when they set about digging at the bottom of the pits, nothing to indicate what had caused them could be found, though they noticed that the temperature of the peat was still abnormally high. The breathing of one or two artillery men was affected. They quartered the moor round about till dark and again hunted next day on a big scale, with a hundred soldiers and some locals, who knew the region well. It was a familiar ‘stroll’ for the flocks and herds which frequent these great pasture-lands, but by good chance the explosion had not destroyed any cattle, though one or two dead rabbits appeared.”

  Faraday relighted his pipe and continued.

  “Well, of course, all sorts of theories were set going, but as no evidence to support any of them could be found at the camp, they communicated with the War Office and asked for specialists to examine the place and see if any explanation were possible, or any means of discovering the nature of the explosive employed. Some suspected a small meteor, or two such visitants; others guessed at the action of an unfriendly power; but as we are not at war, that could not explain such an operation. Experts went down and inquired first concerning the flying of the local aeroplanes on that particular day, for an aerodrome exists near the artillery camp and flying on a modest scale is practised. But nothing came of this. No aeroplane had flown over mid-moor on that day and as yet no experiments in bombing had been attempted. Bombs were not carried and if bombs accounted for the trouble, they did not come from any English aeroplane. Yet it was agreed an aeroplane must have dropped the explosive, because no other explanation exists.”

  “Why not a meteoric invasion?” asked his father. “Great meteorites have been known to fall.”

  “Most meteors are burned up long before they reach the earth,” explained Faraday. “Meteor dust is always falling; but, should the mass be not wholly destroyed, it comes to its destination on land, or sea, loses its heat and reveals a mass of mingled stone and metal — the last of the aerolite that is left. No such fragments have been discovered in these two pits on Dartmoor, so the force that dug them remains a mystery. Any bomb of human manufacture might have been expected to leave some remains under or upon the earth. They passed tons of the peat through sieves and brought nothing to light but a few flint arrow-heads fired by neolithic man in the Stone Age.”

  “Has any inquiry been addressed to foreign powers?” asked Sir Hector. “Airplanes fly, I understand, so high nowadays that they travel beyond the sight of naked eyes. But had some accident overtaken a foreign plane, surely those responsible for it would have let the Government know.”

  “Inquiries have been addressed to Europe and answered in the negative,” answered Faraday. “No power confesses to any knowledge and it appears there are, of course, laws controlling flying over neighbour states. That it was an accident of some kind looks clear, for no scientist, or soldier, can learn anything of the least value from the incident. They must have been small bombs, if bombs they were, and to have dropped them on Dartmoor was meaningless as far as one can see.”

  “How do you explain it?” asked Greta.

  “In no way satisfactory to myself,” he replied. “It challenged one’s reasoning powers and flushed a theory or two. At first I thought that a possible future enemy might have been trying some new explosive and had planted friends — tourists, for example — who were holiday-making in Devonshire — at Okehampton, or round about. I imagined that these pretended tourists would visit the scene and judge for themselves what had been accomplished. But a second thought showed the absurdity of such an idea, because every country has plen
ty of moorland and waste ground whereon to make any such experiment. Attempts to learn the destructive value of newly discovered explosives are, of course, being made in England and everywhere else probably, but since we did not make this one, that it can have been such an experiment seems absurd. I cannot hit on any rational explanation, Greta, and yet, at the back of my mind, there is a sort of conviction that it may have been such an experiment and somebody perhaps learned something from it when it was made. I have talked to a good few physicists and they agree that a reason must exist, though only those responsible can say its nature. We learn nothing from it ourselves except that the charges were of different strength and that the sound of the explosions as reported were separated by about a minute or less and suggested something far more tremendous than what actually occurred.”

  Again the speaker lighted his pipe and Sir Hector made an astonishing remark.

  “Strange,” he said, “how ideas, having no connection whatever, will often link themselves and appear to possess some fantastic though unreal affinity. Much that we say, or do, creates this bond and causes us pain or pleasure as the case may be. Naturally, Alfred comes to my mind a thousand times a day summoned by some word or action from the living. And now this has happened again. Your story reminds me of him.”

  Faraday stared.

  “I’m sorry, indeed, Father,” he replied, “but what have I said to remind you of dear Alfred?”

  “The manner of his death, Faraday, and something that young Samuel Balmane said when he was here. He specially told me that, though a very considerable distance from the scene, he and his companions had heard the explosion — a detonation louder than any made by the usual discharge of big rifles. And we know, from the ghastly results, that it must have been also far more violent than the ordinary discharge. Thus, when you speak of this affair as a possible trial of some new destructive agent, my thoughts travelled from your mystery to that other which will always surround my dear boy’s death.”

  “How wonderful, Father!” he answered, “and how deeply interesting. I see the mental operation in a moment now you describe it, but never thought of it myself. There is nothing fantastic about it, though there can exist no real affinity as you say.”

  His son and daughter comforted the old man, whose talk now turned again to Alfred. Sir Hector still liked better to dwell with the dead man’s memory than any subject of the hour.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE nations continued about their civilized business a little longer. England, while working hard enough to make up leeway and face the inevitable, proceeded with her various industries and varied interests, and after the long vacation started, Faraday Heron joined a scientific conference held in Morocco and supported by delegates from Europe and America. In his usual, reticent fashion he made no mention of his plans at home and when suddenly and unexpectedly, a week after his departure, there came urgent need of him on his father’s account, many days elapsed before he heard the fact. Such was the gravity of what he learned, however, that the scientist abandoned his congenial surroundings and returned home as swiftly as it was possible to do so.

  Greta found herself faced with a new and strange experience for, little by little, at this time there crept into her relations with her father a break from their close and friendly collaboration and he revealed an unusual and unexpected attitude to life. She was on the verge of announcing her engagement now and only awaiting a happy moment to do so when the symptoms of a radical change in Sir Hector’s quality made their appearance and she explained her reason to Trensham for the long delay. Nor was she the only one to mark phenomena so unexpected. Comparing notes with Roger Horn, her father’s right hand, she found that the old man shared her bewilderment and felt no more able to explain it than herself. The change could not be referred to Sir Hector’s affliction, for he now faced his loss patiently enough. His faith supported him and the extent of his present work sufficed to keep both mind and energies amply employed; but some new and secret source of concern obviously operated unfavourably upon Sir Hector’s level temper and native, genial spirit. A nervous irritation developed to colour and oppose his customary tolerance and goodwill, and the affliction presently developed into a permanent puzzle for all those intimately concerned with him. Horn was glad to consult Greta, for his master’s altered demeanour became a painful fact not to be discussed with the staff.

  “What the mischief’s biting him, Miss, I couldn’t tell you,” he said, “but it’s almost like as if he’d got an imp of perversity in him to play the mischief with his proper nature.”

  “He never complains about any pain or ache, Roger?” she asked.

  “Not in my hearing. I don’t mark anything amiss with aught but his bad temper,” answered Horn, “and even to use the word ‘bad temper’ in step with master is a monstrous thing. I thought at first it was the after effects of Mister Alfred’s shocking end, but on that sad subject he’s kept his nerve and showed the deep side of his religion. Then, again, I thought he might have plunged too deep into all this mountain of new work and so put a strain on his constitution; but, no: it isn’t that. He rises from his toil refreshed by it and calm and cheerful when he feels all to be going right with the nation. He’s snappy to that young man he’s appointed secretary, but only when the lad’s stupid and don’t take his meaning.”

  “The sad thing to me is that he always knows when he’s been harsh and goes to the pains of saying he’s sorry,” said Greta. “He’s apologized to me dozens of times for a sharp word.”

  “That’s true enough,” agreed the old valet. “He was running all over the house yesterday seeking for John Ford, to tell the man he felt sorry because he’d told him to go to the devil the day before! ‘Tis like as if a poison is slipped into him by fits and starts.”

  “I’ll ask Dr. Winton to drop in for lunch one day and explain we fear father is not too well,” promised Greta. “I suggested a visit some time ago, but he wouldn’t hear of it. If the doctor comes uninvited on an excuse, father won’t see anything suspicious.”

  Meeting their old friend a day or two later, she explained the situation and when Winton appeared presently with a demand for refreshment, Sir Hector, to Greta’s relief, welcomed him in the usual spirit and, indeed, expressed satisfaction at his arrival.

  “Well met,” he said. “I’ve had it in my mind to beg for a sight of you. I want you to tell me something and you can kill two birds with one stone: join us at lunch and come and smoke a cigar with me afterwards.”

  The visitor followed his entertainment with a professional visit and learned some further particulars from his patient.

  “Something wrong and it has taken a disreputable shape,” confessed Sir Hector. Then he proceeded to explain his lack of self-control and a growing impatience and annoyance with those who attended upon him in various capacities.

  “Even Greta suffers sometimes from my abominable temper,” he said, “and at my age this sort of thing is unpardonable. I am acutely conscious of it myself and much cast down, which you would think was the first step to curing it, but the ailment grows upon me.”

  “Apart from this mental disturbance making you so unlike yourself, are you conscious of any physical worry that puts your nerves on edge?” asked the other. “Often some unregarded function of the system that has slipped out of gear may produce disagreeable results with which the lay mind would not connect it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the machine that I am conscious of except a certain, tiresome scalp irritation that has bothered me lately,” replied the other. “Just some little skin trouble. I’ve washed my head with a barber’s lotion once or twice but paid no other attention to it. Better look at it now you’re here.”

  Winto did so and found considerable inflammation beneath his patient’s thick grey hair.

  “Something wrong which I shall soon put right,” he said.

  “A mild eruption, Sir Hector, but probably superficial. Enough, however, to cause you plenty of unconscious
irritation. Have you felt any symptoms?”

  “In a way, yes. A sort of persistent burning which brings my hand up to my head from time to time. Not, however, enough to get one out of one’s stride. I can hardly imagine that even a serious affection of one’s scalp would upset my good manners,” laughed the patient.

  “Nor can I in your case. But I should not pronounce it serious. Though no great dermatologist, I should say the remedy is not far to seek. You shall have it to-night and get Horn to apply it as directed. But I should look for your rasped nerves elsewhere. I doubt not you are working too hard.”

  “Believe me, no. I turn to my work with the old gusto. I would rather work than play now, Winton. My old love of play perished with my boy. I cannot play any more, now that he is not here to share the fun.”

  Time passed, but the remedies suggested failed of any value while the mischief they were designed to remove grew worse. It was apparent within another week that some obstinate ailment had overtaken the patient and, meanwhile, those who watched daily found that growing exasperation overtook Sir Hector and he became less conscious of his own lapses, more self-centred and more concerned with his health. He declared the advent of other symptoms and revealed to Winton an instability of mind that alarmed him and called for a specialist. Physically the inflamed scalp became worse and the hair upon it began to perish.