To Glynn, fresh from the meadowlands of Leicestershire with their neat patterns of hedges, white gates and trees, this corner of the Outer Hebrides upon the edge of the Atlantic had the wildest and most desolate look. The seagulls and curlews cried perpetually above the marsh, and the quiet sea broke upon the sand with a haunting and mournful sound. Glynn looked at the little house set so far away in solitude, and was glad that he had come. To his southern way of thinking, trouble was best met and terrors most easily endured in the lighted ways of cities, where companionship was to be had by the mere stepping across the threshold.
When the trap drove up to the door, there was some delay in answering Glynn’s summons. A middle-aged man-servant came at last to the door, and peered out from the doorway in surprise.
“I sent a telegram,” said Glynn, “from Loch Boisdale. I am Mr. Glynn.”
“A telegram?” said the man. “It will not come up until the morning, sir.”
Then the voice of the driver broke in.
“I brought up a telegram from Lochmaddy. It’s from a gentleman who is coming to visit Mrs. Thresk from South Uist.”
In the outer islands, where all are curious, news is not always to be had, and the privacy of the telegraph system is not recognised. Glynn laughed, and the same moment the man-servant opened an inner door of the tiny hall. Glynn stepped into a low-roofed parlour which was obviously the one living-room of the house. On his right hand there was a great fireplace with a peat fire burning in the grate, and a high-backed horsehair sofa in front of it. On his left at a small round table Thresk and his wife were dining.
Both Thresk and his wife sprang up as he entered. Linda advanced to him with every mark of surprise upon her face.
“You!” she cried, holding out her hand. “Where have you sprung from?”
“South Uist,” said Glynn, repeating his lesson.
“And you have come on to us! That is kind of you! Martin, you must take Mr. Glynn’s bag up to the guest-room. I expect you will be wanting your dinner.”
“I sent you a telegram asking you whether you would mind if I trespassed upon your hospitality for a night or so.”
He saw Linda’s eyes fixed upon him with some anxiety, and he continued at once:
“I sent it from Loch Boisdale.”
A wave of relief passed over Linda’s face.
“It will not come up until the morning,” she said with a smile.
“As a matter of fact, the driver brought it up with him,” said Glynn. And Martin handed to Mrs. Thresk the telegram. Over his shoulder, Glynn saw Thresk raise his head. He had been standing by the table listening to what was said. Now he advanced. He was a tall man, powerfully built, with a strongly-marked, broad face, which was only saved from coarseness by its look of power. They made a strange contrast, the husband and wife, as they stood side by side — she slight and exquisitely delicate in her colour, dainty in her movements, he clumsy and big and masterful. Glynn suddenly recalled gossip which had run through the town about the time of their marriage. Linda had been engaged to another — a man whose name Glynn did not remember, but on whom, so the story ran, her heart was set.
“Of course you are very welcome,” said Thresk, as he held out his hand, and Glynn noticed with something of a shock that his throat was bandaged. He looked towards Linda. Her eyes were resting upon him with a look of agonised appeal. He was not to remark upon that wounded throat. He took Thresk’s hand.
“We shall be delighted if you will stay with us as long as you can,” said Thresk, “We have been up here for more than three months. You come to us from another world, and visitors from another world are always interesting, aren’t they, Linda?”
He spoke his question with a quiet smile, like a man secretly amused. But on Linda’s face fear flashed out suddenly and was gone. It seemed to Glynn that she was at pains to repress a shiver.
“Martin will show you your room,” said Thresk. “What’s the matter?”
Glynn was staring at the table in consternation. Where had been the use of all the pretence that he had come unexpectedly on an unpremeditated visit? His telegram had only this minute arrived — and yet there was the table laid for three people. Thresk followed the direction of his visitor’s eyes.
“Oh, I see,” he said with a laugh.
Glynn flushed. No wonder Thresk was amused. He had been sitting at the table; and between himself and his wife the third place was laid.
“I will go up and change,” said Glynn awkwardly.
“Well, don’t be long!” replied Thresk.
Glynn followed Martin to the guest-room. But he was annoyed. He did not, under any circumstances, like to look a fool. But he had the strongest possible objection to travelling three hundred miles in order to look it. If he wanted to look a fool, he grumbled, he could have managed it just as well in the Midlands.
But he was to be more deeply offended. For when he came down into the dining-room he walked to the table and drew out the vacant chair. At once Thresk shot out his hand and stopped him.
“You mustn’t sit there!” he cried violently. Then his face changed. Slowly the smile of amusement reappeared upon it. “After all, why not?” he said. “Try, yes, try,” and he watched Glynn with a strange intentness.
Glynn sat down slowly. A trick was being played upon him — of that he was sure. He was still more sure when Thresk’s face relaxed and he broke into a laugh.
“Well, that’s funny!” he cried, and Glynn, in exasperation, asked indignantly:
“What’s funny?”
But Thresk was no longer listening. He was staring across the room towards the front door, as though he heard outside yet another visitor. Glynn turned angrily towards Linda. At once his anger died away. Her face was white as paper, and her eyes full of fear. Her need was real, whatever it might be. Thresk turned sharply back again.
“It’s a long journey from London to North Uist,” he said pleasantly.
“No doubt,” replied Glynn, as he set himself to his dinner. “But I have come from South Uist. However, I am just as hungry as if I had come from London.”
He laughed, and Thresk joined in the laugh.
“I am glad of that,” he said, “for it’s quite a long time since we have seen you.”
“Yes, it is,” replied Glynn carelessly. “A year, I should think.”
“Three years,” said Thresk. “For I don’t think that you have ever come to see us in London.”
“We are so seldom there,” interrupted Linda.
“Three months a year, my dear,” said Thresk. “But I know very well that a man will take a day’s journey in the Outer Island’s to see his friends, whereas he wouldn’t cross the street in London. And, in any case, we are very glad to see you. By the way,” and he reached out his hand carelessly for the salt, “isn’t this rather a new departure for you, Glynn? You were always a sociable fellow. A hunting-box in the Midlands, and all the lighted candles in the season. The Outer Islands were hardly in your line.” And he turned quickly towards him. “You have brought your guns?”
“Of course,” said Glynn, laughing as easily as he could under a cross-examination which he began to find anything but comfortable. “But I won’t guarantee that I can shoot any better than I used to.”
“Never mind,” said Thresk. “We’ll shoot the bog to-morrow, and it will be strange if you don’t bring down something. It’s full of duck. You don’t mind getting wet, I suppose? There was once a man named Channing — —” he broke off upon the name, and laughed again with that air of secret amusement. “Did you ever hear of him?” he asked of Glynn.
“Yes,” replied Glynn slowly. “I knew him.”
At the mention of the name he had seen Linda flinch, and he knew why she flinched.
“Did you?” exclaimed Thresk, with a keen interest. “Then you will appreciate the story. He came up here on a visit.”
Glynn started.
“He came here!” he cried, and could have bitten out his tongue fo
r uttering the cry.
“Oh, yes,” said Thresk easily, “I asked him,” and Glynn looked from Thresk to Thresk’s wife in amazement. Linda for once did not meet Glynn’s eyes. Her own were fixed upon the tablecloth. She was sitting in her chair rather rigidly. One hand rested upon the tablecloth, and it was tightly clenched. Alone of the three James Thresk appeared at ease.
“I took him out to shoot that bog,” he continued with a laugh. “He loathed getting wet. He was always so very well dressed, wasn’t he, Linda? The reeds begin twenty yards from the front door, and within the first five minutes he was up to the waist!” Thresk suddenly checked his laughter. “However, it ceased to be a laughing matter. Channing got a little too near the sapling in the middle.”
“Is it dangerous there?” asked Glynn.
“Yes, it’s dangerous.” Thresk rose from his chair and walked across the room to the window. He pulled up the blind and, curving his hands about his eyes to shut out the light of the room, leaned his face against the window-frame and looked out. “It’s more than dangerous,” he said in a low voice. “Just round that sapling, it’s swift and certain death. You would sink to the waist,” and he spoke still more slowly, as though he were measuring by the utterance of the syllables the time it would take for the disaster to be complete— “from the waist to the shoulders, from the shoulders clean out of sight, before any help could reach you.”
He stopped abruptly, and Glynn, watching him from the table, saw his attitude change. He dropped his head, he hunched his back, and made a strange hissing sound with his breath.
“Linda!” he cried, in a low, startling voice, “Linda!”
Glynn, unimpressionable man that he was, started to his feet. The long journey, the loneliness of the little house set in this wild, flat country, the terror which hung over it and was heavy in the very atmosphere of the rooms, were working already upon his nerves.
“Who is it?” he cried.
Linda laid a hand upon his arm.
“There’s no one,” she said in a whisper. “Take no notice.”
And, looking at her quivering face, Glynn was inspired to ask a question, was wrought up to believe that the answer would explain to him why Thresk leaned his forehead against the window-pane and called upon his wife in so strange a voice.
“Did Channing sink — by the sapling?”
“No,” said Linda hurriedly, and as hurriedly she drew away in her chair. Glynn turned and saw Thresk himself standing just behind his shoulder. He had crept down noiselessly behind them.
“No,” Thresk repeated. “But he is dead. Didn’t you know that? Oh, yes, he is dead,” and suddenly he broke out with a passionate violence. “A clever fellow — an infernally clever fellow. You are surprised to hear me say that, Glynn. You underrated him like the rest of us. We thought him a milksop, a tame cat, a poor, weak, interloping, unprofitable creature who would sidle obsequiously into your house, and make his home there. But we were wrong — all except Linda there.”
Linda sat with her head bowed, and said not a word. She was sitting so that Glynn could see her profile, and though she said nothing, her lips were trembling.
“Linda was right,” and Thresk turned carelessly to Glynn. “Did you know that Linda was at one time engaged to Channing?”
“Yes, I knew,” said Glynn awkwardly.
“It was difficult for most of us to understand,” said Thresk. “There seemed no sort of reason why a girl like Linda should select a man like Channing to fix her heart upon. But she was right. Channing was a clever fellow — oh, a very clever fellow,” and he leaned over and touched Glynn upon the sleeve, “for he died.”
Glynn started back.
“What are you saying?” he cried.
Thresk burst into a laugh.
“That my throat hurts me to-night,” he said.
Glynn recovered himself with an effort. “Oh, yes,” he said, as though now for the first time he had noticed the bandage. “Yes, I see you have hurt your throat. How did you do it?”
Thresk chuckled.
“Not very well done, Glynn. Will you smoke?”
The plates had been cleared from the table, and the coffee brought in. Thresk rose from his seat and crossed to the mantelshelf on which a box of cigars was laid. As he took up the box and turned again towards the table, a parchment scroll which hung on a nail at the side of the fireplace caught his eye.
“Do you see this?” he said, and he unrolled it. “It’s my landlord’s family tree. All the ancestors of Mr. Robert Donald McCullough right back to the days of Bruce. McCullough’s prouder of that scroll than of anything else in the world. He is more interested in it than in anything else in the world.”
For a moment he fingered it, and in the tone of a man communing with himself, he added:
“Now, isn’t that curious?”
Glynn rose from his chair, and moved down the table so that he could see the scroll unimpeded by Thresk’s bulky figure. Thresk, however, was not speaking any longer to his guest. Glynn sat down again. But he sat down now in the chair which Thresk had used; the chair in which he himself had been sitting between Thresk and Linda was empty.
“What interests me,” Thresk continued, like a man in a dream, “is what is happening now — and very strange, queer, interesting things are happening now — for those who have eyes to see. Yes, through centuries and centuries, McCulloughs have succeeded McCulloughs, and lived in this distant, little corner of the Outer Islands through forays and wars and rebellions, and the oversetting of kings, and yet nothing has ever happened in this house to any one of them half so interesting and half so strange as what is happening now to us, the shooting tenants of a year.”
Thresk dropped the scroll, and, coming out of his dream, brought the cigar-box to the table.
“You have changed your seat!” he said with a smile, as he offered the box to Glynn. Glynn took out of it a cigar, and leaning back, cut off the end. As he stooped forward to light it, he saw the cigar-box still held out to him. Thresk had not moved. He seemed to have forgotten Glynn’s presence in the room. His eyes were fixed upon the empty chair. He stood strangely rigid, and then he suddenly cried out:
“Take care, Linda!”
There was so sharp a note of warning in his voice that Linda sprang to her feet, with her hand pressed upon her heart. Glynn was startled too, and because he was startled he turned angrily to Thresk.
“Of what should Mrs. Thresk take care?”
Thresk took his eyes for a moment, and only for a moment, from the empty chair.
“Do you see nothing?” he asked, in a whisper, and his glance went back again. “Not a shadow which leans across the table there towards Linda, darkening the candle-light?”
“No; for there’s nothing to cast a shadow.”
“Is there not?” said Thresk, with a queer smile. “That’s where you make your mistake. Aren’t you conscious of something very strange, very insidious, close by us in this room?”
“I am aware that you are frightening Mrs. Thresk,” said Glynn roughly; and, indeed, standing by the table, with her white face and her bosom heaving under her hand, she looked the very embodiment of terror. Thresk turned at once to her. A look of solicitude made his gross face quite tender. He took her by the arm, and in a chiding, affectionate tone he said very gently:
“You are not frightened, Linda, are you? Interested — yes, just as I am. But not frightened. There’s nothing to be frightened at. We are not children.”
“Oh, Jim,” she said, and she leaned upon his arm. He led her across to the sofa, and sat down beside her.
“That’s right. Now we are comfortable.” But the last word was not completed. It seemed that it froze upon his lips. He stopped, looked for a second into space, and then, dropping his arm from about his wife’s waist, he deliberately moved aside from her, and made a space between them.
“Now we are in our proper places — the four of us,” he said bitterly,
“The three of us,” Glyn
n corrected, as he walked round the table. “Where’s the fourth?”
And then there came to him this extraordinary answer given in the quietest voice imaginable.
“Between my wife and me. Where should he be?”
Glynn stared. There was no one in the room but Linda, Thresk, and himself — no one. But — but — it was the loneliness of the spot, and its silence, and its great distance from his world, no doubt, which troubled him. Thresk’s manner, too, and his words were having their effect. That was all, Glynn declared stoutly to himself. But — but — he did not wonder that Linda had written so urgently for him to come to her. His back went cold, and the hair stirred upon his scalp.
“Who is it, then?” he cried violently.
Linda rose from the sofa, and took a quick step towards him.. Her eyes implored him to silence.
“There is no one,” she protested in a low voice.
“No,” cried Glynn loudly. “Let us understand what wild fancy he has! Who is the fourth?”
Upon Thresk’s face came a look of sullenness.
“Who should he be?”
“Who is he?” Glynn insisted.
“Channing,” said Thresk. “Mildmay Channing.” He sat for a while, brooding with his head sunk upon his breast. And Glynn started back. Some vague recollection was stirring in his memory. There had been a story current amongst Linda’s friends at the time of her marriage. She had been in love with Channing, desperately in love with him. The marriage with Thresk had been forced on her by her parents — yes, and by Thresk’s persistency. It had been a civilised imitation of the Rape of the Sabine Women. That was how the story ran, Glynn remembered. He waited to hear more from James Thresk, and in a moment the words came, but in a thoroughly injured tone.
“It’s strange that you can’t see either.”
“There is some one else, then, as blind as I am?” said Glynn.
“There was. Yes, yes, the dog,” replied Thresk, gazing into the fire. “You and the dog,” he repeated uneasily, “you and the dog. But the dog saw in the end, Glynn, and so will you — even you.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 792