The truth came out now. Stella Croyle had given the letter to Jenny, and Jenny herself had taken it to the garage and sent the chauffeur off upon his journey. She had no idea of what the letter contained. Stella was in the habit of inhaling chloroform; she carried a bottle of it in her dressing-case — a bottle which Jenny had taken secretly from the room and smashed into atoms after Doctor McKerrel’s departure. She had already conceived her plan to involve Joan in so much suspicion that she must needs openly confess that she had returned from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in the empty house.
“Mario Escobar!” Millie Splay exclaimed. “It was he.” She turned pale. Sir Charles Hardiman had spoken frankly to her of Escobar. A creature of the shadows — it was rumored that he lived on the blackmailing of women. Joan was not out of the wood then! Martin Hillyard was quick to appease her fears.
“He will not trouble you,” and when Jenny had gone from the room he added, “Mario Escobar was arrested this morning. He will be interned till the end of the war and deported afterwards.”
Lady Splay rose, her face bright with relief.
“Thank you,” she said warmly to Hillyard. “I am going up to Joan.” At the door she stopped to add, “Now that it’s over, I don’t mind telling you that I admire Jenny Prask. Out-and-out loyalty like hers is not so common that we can think lightly of it.”
Martin Hillyard turned to Sir Chichester.
“And now, if you will allow me, I will open my box of cigarettes.”
Harry Luttrell went back to his depot the next morning, without seeing Joan again. Millicent Splay wrote to him during the next week. The inquest had been confined within its proper limits. Jenny Prask had spoken the truth in the witness box, and from beginning to end there had been no mention of Joan or Mario Escobar. A verdict of temporary insanity had been returned, and Stella now lay in the village churchyard. Harry Luttrell drew a breath of relief and turned to his work. For six weeks his days and nights were full; and then came twenty-four hours’ leave and a swift journey into Sussex. He arrived at Rackham Park in the dusk of the evening. By a good chance he found Joan with Millie Splay and Sir Chichester alone.
Sir Chichester welcomed him with cordiality.
“My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you. You will stay the night, of course.”
“No,” Harry answered. “I must get back to London this evening.”
He took a cup of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to the warning glances of his wife, plunged into an account of the events which had followed his departure.
“I drew out a statement. Nothing could have been more concise, the coroner said. What’s the matter, Millie? Why don’t you leave me alone? Oh — ah — yes,” and he hummed a little and spluttered a little, and then with an air of the subtlest craft he remarked, “There are those plans for the new pig-sties, Millie, which I am anxious to show you.”
He was manœuvred at last from the room. Harry Luttrell and Joan Whitworth were left standing opposite to one another in the room.
“Joan,” Harry Luttrell said, “in ten days I go back to France.”
With a queer little stumble and her hands fluttering out she went towards him blinded by a rush of tears.
CHAPTER XXXII
“But Still a Ruby Kindles in the Vine”
BETWEEN THE NORTH and South Downs in the east of Sussex lies a wide tract of pleasant homely country which, during certain months of those years, was subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still day when the clouds were low, or at night when the birds were all asleep, and you heard a faint, soft thud, so very faint that it was rather a convulsion of the air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as the tap of an enormous muffled drum beaten at a giant’s funeral leagues and leagues away. It was not the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact with a suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and an interval followed; and the blurred sound again. The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and husbands at the war, made up no fancies to explain it. They listened with a sinking of the heart; for what they heard was the roar of the British guns at Ypres.
Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not with the high anticipation of old days. In what spirit would he find his friends? How would Joan meet him? For sorrow had marked her cross upon the door of that house as upon so many others in the land.
Martin had arrived before luncheon.
“Joan is hunting to-day,” said Millie, “on the other side of the county. She will catch a train back.”
“I can fetch her,” Hillyard returned. “She is well?”
“Yes. She was overworked and ordered a rest. She has been with us a fortnight and is better. She was very grateful for your letters. She sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write.”
Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two years — a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was born.
“Joan’s distress was terrible,” said Millie. “At first she refused to believe that Harry was killed. He was reported as ‘missing’ for weeks; and during those weeks Joan, with a confident face — whatever failings of the heart beset her during the night vigils none ever knew — daily sought for news of him at the Red Cross office at Devonshire House. There had been the usual rumours. One officer in one prison camp had heard of Harry Luttrell in another. A sergeant had seen him wounded, not mortally. A bullet had struck him in the foot. Joan lived upon these rumours. Finally proof came — proof irrefutable.
“Joan collapsed then,” said Millie Splay. “We brought her down here and put her to bed. She cried — oh, day and night! — she who never cried! We were afraid for her — afraid for the child that was coming.”
Millie Splay smiled wistfully. “She had just two weeks with Harry. They were married before he left for France in ‘sixteen, and then had another week together in the January of ‘seventeen at his house in the Clayford country. That was all.” Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then she resumed cheerfully:
“But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy” — Millie’s face became radiant— “the boy is splendid. You shall see him.”
Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a prodigy.
“Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman of our Food Committee. You may have seen it in the papers,” said Millie with a smile. “He is back in the papers again, you know.”
“Good. Then he won’t object to me smoking a cigarette,” said Martin.
He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of Sussex where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin stopped the car and looked about him.
“I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come home to it.”
“Yes, but I wish that would stop.”
That was the dull and muffled boom of the great guns across the sea. They sat and listened to it in silence.
“There it comes again!” said Joan in a quiet voice. “Oh, I do wish it would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us.”
As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of wistfulness heard in all the words.
“We were going to have a small house in London
and spend our time between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into the market.... It had a brass front door. There we should be. We could go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our own brass door.” Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added to it a most appealing tenderness.
“After all,” she said again, “Harry fulfilled himself. I love to think of that. The ambition of his life — young as he was he saw it realised and helped — more than all others, except perhaps one old Colonel — to realise it. And he left me a son ... to carry on.... There will be no stigma on the Clayfords when my boy gets his commission. Won’t I tell him why? Won’t I just tell him!”
And the soft October evening closed in upon them as they drove.
THE END
The Winding Stair (1923)
First published in 1923 by Hodder and Stoughton, this novel was one of Mason’s most popular works. The title was inspired by a passage in Francis Bacon’s Essays Civil and Moral: Of Great Place, which is quoted as the frontispiece: ‘All rising to great place is by a winding stair’.
It is the end of the working day at the chambers of Mr. Ferguson, a renowned criminal lawyer and he is irritated to be told that someone has arrived at the offices wishing to see him. His irritation turns to dismay when it is revealed that the visitor is Paul Ravenal, involved in a case Ferguson dealt with years before. The young man is the son of a French mother, who died when he was young and a British father, with whom he had a difficult, distant relationship that did not encourage confidences. Aware that his father had had dealings with Ferguson, but unaware of the nature of those dealings, he has come to see the lawyer to find out more about his father, who has recently died – for instance, why did Ravenal Senior turn his back on his country, but not give up his citizenship? The young man states that he wishes to resume his original surname of Revel and his British nationality and take up a commission in the British Army. Before he begins to put his life plans into action, he feels he must know more about his father, should there be anything that might thwart his ambitions. All he can remember is a mysterious event one night nine years before, in London, when his father had an unwanted encounter with a man at an upmarket event – can this throw any light on the character of his enigmatic parent? Ferguson is implacable; he knows things, but will not help the young man. Ravenal leaves, disappointed, but resolute in his determination to understand the true nature of his father.
Ravenal is offered hospitality by Phyllis Vanderfelt and her family, who knew Ravenal previously when he was too young to remember them; but greater revelations are to come. Phyllis shows him the house he shared with his father years before, a home from which the contents were sold in unhappy circumstances. Then unwittingly, Phyllis offers up the first of a series of revelations that will stun the young man – she reveals that his mother died not during his birth, as his father had told him, but only a few months before he, as a little boy, left the house that he is looking around. Why was he led to believe that his mother had died at the time of his birth? Ravenal is stunned and upset, but the news further propels him on his mission to discover the truth about his parents, so that he can lift the burden of the mystery he carries around in his heart…
In many ways this is an archetypal early twentieth-century adventure story, with all the elements one would expect – handsome, patriotic heroes; older men of gravitas of honour; brave, but feminine young women; the army and exploits abroad. Mason does have a habit of referring to race, not so much as a direct comparison between white people and those of colour, but certainly in this novel and, for example, Fire over England, he makes glowing reference to the fine characteristics of the Englishman’s race – his reluctance to display excessive emotion in company is apparently proof enough for Ferguson that the young man is indeed a fine Englishman and does not favour the excessively emotional nature of his mother’s French nationality and race.
Such attitudes in adventure novels – indeed, any genre of novel at the time – are not unusual and Mason should not be castigated for applying the cultural tropes that were common to fiction writers of the times. The rise of eugenics had a pervasive influence on many aspects of culture and thinking and whilst it is abhorrent in the twenty-first century, at least novels such as this are contemporary evidence of the popularity of such thinking in Mason’s lifetime and in that sense, it should be viewed as an historical resource, as well as a useful insight into Mason the man and the author.
The first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER I
Flags and Pedigree
“I HAVE FINISHED work for the week. I’ll see no one else were he as terse as Tacitus,” cried Mr. Ferguson, the lawyer.
It was six o’clock on a Friday afternoon and a pleasant rustle of the plane trees in the square came through the open window of the office. Mr. Ferguson thought of his cool garden at Goring, with the river running past, and of the fine long day he would have upon the links to-morrow. Gregory, the head clerk, however, held his ground.
“Perhaps if you would look at this card, Mr. Ferguson.”
Mr. Ferguson looked at the size of it.
“By the Lord, no! It’s a woman. She’ll be as prolix as the devil.”
“It’s not a woman,” the stubborn Gregory insisted.
“Then it’s a foreigner, and that’s worse.”
“It’s not even a real foreigner,” said Gregory. He had been a servant of the firm for thirty years, and knew the ins and outs of its affairs as thoroughly as the principals.
“You are very annoying, Gregory,” said Mr. Ferguson, with a sigh. He took the card regretfully, but when he had read the name printed upon it, he dropped it upon his table as if it had stung his hand.
“Paul Ravenel!” he said in a low voice, with a glance towards the door. “The son.”
“Yes.”
“Is he like the father?”
“Not in the least.”
Mr. Ferguson was distressed. It was nine years since he had finished with that affair, settled it up, locked it away and turned his back on it for good — as he thought. And here was the son knocking on his door.
“I must see him, I suppose. I can do no less,” he said, but as Gregory turned towards the door he stopped him. “Why should Paul Ravenel come to see me?” he asked himself. “And how much does he know? Wait a moment, Gregory. I have got to go warily here.”
He sat down at his desk. Mr. Ferguson was a man, of middle age, with a round, genial face and a thick covering of silver-white hair. He looked like a prosperous country gentleman, which he was, and he had the reputation of the astutest criminal lawyer of his day. He was that, too. His kindly manner concealed him, yet he was not false. For he was at once the best of friends, with his vast experience of the law as a sort of zareeba for their refuge, and the most patient and relentless of antagonists; and he had a special kindliness which showed itself conspicuously in his accounts, for all connected with the arts. It was an old friendship which was troubling him now as he sat at his desk. Paul Ravenel, according to his knowledge, would take this or that line in the interview, Mr. Ferguson must be clear as to how in each case he should ans
wer. Problems were his daily food — at least until six o’clock on Friday evening. Yet this problem he met with discomfort.
“You can show him in now,” he said to Gregory, and a few seconds later the visitor stood within the room, a tall slim youth, brown of face and with hair so golden that the sun seemed to have taken from it the colour which it had tanned upon his cheeks.
“You wish to see me, Mr. Ravenel?” he asked, and a smile suddenly broke upon the boy’s face and made him winning. Mr. Ferguson made a note in his mind of the smile, for he had not as yet its explanation.
“Yes,” answered Paul. “I should have been more correct in approaching so prominent a firm, had I written asking for an appointment. But I only landed in England this morning, and I couldn’t really wait.”
His formal little prepared apology broke down in a laugh and an eager rush of words.
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Ferguson pleasantly. “Take a chair and tell me what I can do for you.”
“You knew my father,” said Paul, when he had laid down his hat and stick and taken his seat. Mr. Ferguson allowed himself a sharp glance at the lad. For his tone was without any embarrassment at all, any shame or embarrassment. He was at his ease.
“I knew Mr. Ravenel — yes,” Mr. Ferguson answered cautiously.
“He died a fortnight ago.”
“I was sorry to notice that you were wearing black.”
“He died in a house which he had built upon an island off the coast of Spain at Aguilas. I lived with him there, during the last eight months, after I left my school at Tours,” Paul continued.
“Yes?” said Mr. Ferguson.
“My father and I were always — how shall I put it? — in a relationship which precluded any confidences and even any cordiality. It wasn’t that we ever quarrelled. We hardly were well enough acquainted for that. But we were uncomfortable in each other’s company and the end of a meal at which we had sat together was to both of us an invariable relief. He had what I think is a special quality of soldiers — he was in the Army, of course, wasn’t he?”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 563