The Moon Rock

by Arthur J. Rees

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Austin Turold was wrong in supposing that his son had left Cornwall to flyfrom England. Charles had stated his intention truly enough when he saidhe was going to London to look for Sisily, but he did not disclose to hisfather the real reason that led him there.

  His visit to London was the pursuit of a definite plan. He was animated bythe hope that he knew where Sisily was likely to have sought shelter. Eversince her disappearance this idea had lurked in his imagination andoccupied his secret thoughts.

  It was the fruit of one of their last talks together--a memory they sharedin common. How well he remembered the occasion! They had been on thecliffs looking down at the Gurnard's Head wallowing like a monster with abroken back in the foam of a raging sea. It was the day after the death ofSisily's mother, and Sisily had clung to him as if he were the only friendshe had in the world. She had spoken to him from the depth of anoverburdened soul impelled to confide in another, telling him of hermother's sad life, unintentionally revealing something of the unhappinessof her own. And she told him a strange thing about her mother's lasthours.

  On her death-bed the unhappy woman must have had her fears concerning thefuture of her daughter--belated uneasy premonitions arising after herdying confession to the man supposed to be her husband, perhaps causingher to doubt the wisdom of that revelation. That seemed plain enough toCharles afterwards, though not apparent at the time Sisily had confided inhim, for she had died without giving the girl the slightest indication ofher life's secret, as if in some inscrutable hope that the tangle might bemade straight.

  What she did do was to make a feeble effort to save her daughter from theconsequences of her own unhappy act, or at least to help her if thoseresults arose. She had whispered a name, the name of an old friend of hergirlhood who would befriend her child if ever she needed help. At herurgent request Sisily had propped her up in bed while she wrote down theaddress. Having performed this feat with infinite labour, she dropped backon her pillow, clinging fast to the hand of the child she loved and whosefuture she had blasted at the command of conscience.

  Charles recalled how Sisily had taken that pathetic little scrap of paperfrom her blouse, kissed it with quivering lips, and handed it to him insilence. He had deciphered the pencilled scrawl with difficulty. The namewas Catherine Pursill, Charleswood, Surrey. It remained in his mind for aspecial reason. Sisily was afraid she might lose the paper (perhaps, likeher mother, she had some prescience of the future) and he had endeavouredto divert her thoughts by making "memory pictures" of the name and addressafter the method of a thought reader. He had told her to picture a catsitting on a window ledge, and that would fix the name in her mind."Purr"--"Sill"--there it was! As for the place, it was only necessary toimagine him wandering in a wood (he slyly suggested it)--Charleswood, andthere they were again!

  Sisily had smiled wanly at these "memory pictures" and said she wouldalways be able to remember the address of her mother's old friend by theirmeans.

  They were effectual enough in his own case. The grotesque association ofideas brought the address to his mind when he first thought of seekingSisily in London. He decided to go to Charleswood as soon as he reachedthere. The dying woman seemed quite certain her old friend was still inCharleswood, although it was twenty years since she had heard from her.She had told Sisily that Mrs. Pursill's house was her own, and it hadbelonged to her parents before her. She had assumed that she was notlikely to move. The possibility that Death might have moved her withoutconsulting her convenience did not seem to have occurred to her.

  It did to Charles Turold though, on his journey up from Cornwall. But hethrust the chilling thought resolutely from him, clinging to his slightclue because he had nothing else to sustain him, building such hopes uponit that by the time he reached London scarcely a doubt remained. He spentthe last hour of his journey picturing his meeting with the runaway girl,holding her, kissing her, sheltering her in his arms from the world. Andafterwards? He refused to contemplate what was to happen afterwards, andhow he was to shield her from the unsentimental clutch of the law whichwas also seeking her. He declined also to allow his thoughts to dwell uponhis own position, which was invidious and threatening enough in allconscience for a man setting out to be the buckler and shield of a girl inSisily's plight. He put these obtrusive contingencies out of his mind.Time enough for those bitter reflections afterwards. The great thing wasto find Sisily first, before shaping further action. So he reasoned, withthe single purpose of a man mastered by love, and the desperate instinctof a reckless temperament which gambled with life, never looking beyondthe next throw.

  He retained sufficient caution to refrain from going to his father's housein Richmond when he reached London. His father's parting words lingeredunpleasantly in his mind to serve as a warning against the folly of thatcourse. The same unusual prudence compelled him to leap out of a taxi-cabas soon as he had leapt into it. For himself he did not care, but he hadto be careful for Sisily's sake. So he clambered on top of a 'bus with hissuit case. The same sobering feeling of responsibility directed his choiceof an hotel when he descended from the vehicle into the seething streets.He chose a quiet small place off Charing Cross, and booked a room. After abath and some lunch he went out to a neighbouring bookstall and bought arailway time-table. The next train to Charleswood left Charing Cross inless than half an hour. He walked across to the station, purchased aticket, and took his seat. In a few minutes the train started.

  Now that he was actually on the way of putting his idea to the test hisformer doubts assailed him again with renewed force, but he refused tolisten to them. He told himself that a dying woman's idea was not likelyto be wrong, and that he would find Sisily at Charleswood. She was sure tobe there, because she had nowhere else to go. So he reasoned, or sought toreason, until the train slowed down at the station which held the solutionof his hopes and fears.

  It was a small wayside station at which he alighted--a mere hamlet set inthe slumberous calm of English rural scenery, passed by express trainswith a roar of derision by day and contemptuously winking tail-lights atnight. On the dark green background of the distant heights an eruption ofnew red bungalows threatened to spread and destroy the beauty ofCharleswood at no remote date. But at present the sylvan charm of the spotwas unspoiled. Its meadows and fields seemed to lie happily unconscious ofthe contagion flaming on the billowy hills.

  The porter who emerged from a kind of wooden kennel and clattered up toCharles to collect his ticket, stared hard when the young man asked ifMrs. Pursill lived at Charleswood. He appeared to give the matter deepthought before nodding affirmatively, and accompanied him to the stationentrance to point out an old house lying behind a strip of white fence anda clump of dark-green trees half-way up a distant hill (not where thebungalows were cropping up, but in the opposite direction), with theintimation that it was the residence of the lady he was looking for. Hethen watched Charles down the rambling village street until he was out ofsight.

  It was a long walk--more than a mile--before Charles reached the whitefence and the group of trees which shielded the house behind dark-greenfoliage. He caught a glimpse of partly shuttered windows peeping throughthis leafy screen, but it was not until he had passed through the treesthat he had a clear view of the house.

  The place was dreary and dilapidated, with a partly shuttered front. Thegreen-stained walls and a mask of ivy gave the place a resemblance to alarge ivy-grown tomb. Charles's spirits were depressed as he looked at it.There was something so wan and melancholy in its appearance that his highanticipations rapidly faded. In the face of that reality he could nolonger picture a silver-haired gracious old lady welcoming Sisily withtears in her eyes for the sake of her dead mother. The human qualities ofwarmth and tenderness did not accord with that chilling neglectedexterior.

  He approached the door, his sensations painful enough in the mingledtumult of suspense, hope, and fear. There was no bell, only anold-fashioned brass knocker, which, with a kind of surly stiffness,res
isted his attempt to use it. He managed to wrench one knock out of it,and left it suspended in the air.

  There was a considerable pause before the knock was answered. Then thedoor was opened by a pretty slim servant girl. There was nothing funerealin her appearance except her black dress, and that was set off by acoquettish white apron. She looked at the young man with questioningbright eyes, as though surprised at his appearance there.

  "Does Mrs. Pursill live here?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir," she replied with a trace of hesitation.

  The barometer of hope went up several degrees in Charles's breast. "CouldI see her?" he eagerly said.

  "I'll ask, sir. What name, please?"

  "No name. Mrs. Pursill would not know it. But my business is veryimportant."

  The maid looked at him doubtfully, and left him standing there while shedisappeared within. From the depth of the house an agitated femininemurmur reached him through the half-open door. "What's he like, Ruby?""Quite the gentleman, miss--young and very good-looking." A pause, and thefirst voice rejoined: "Show him into the drawing-room, and ask him to sitdown."

  The maid came back with this message, and took Charles into a large sombreroom. She gave him a fluttered glance of coquetry as she offered him achair, as though she would have liked to linger with such an unusualvisitor, then went out softly, closing the door behind her.

  The room into which he had been ushered was furnished after some fadedstandard of departed elegance with tapestried chairs, and couches, paintedscreens, landscapes worked in black lutestring on white silk, andcollections of stuffed humming-birds which gazed wanly at the intruderfrom glassy eyes. A massive dead Christ in Gobelin tapestry covered thewhole side of one wall, and from the opposite one the threaded features ofJoseph and his brethren stared gloomily down. These subjects accorded illwith several pieces of marble statuary scattered about the room--a reelingBacchus, a nude Psyche, and an unchaste presentment of Leda drooping herhead over an amorous swan. A broken statue of a pastoral shepherd had beenlaid on a table in the corner and partly covered with a cloth, where itlooked very much like a corpse awaiting its turn in a dissecting-room.

  Charles had a dreary wait in these surroundings. At first he sat still,but as the time passed he endeavoured to distract his anxious thoughts bywalking round the room looking at the extraordinary collections of objectsit contained. He was earnestly scrutinizing a lutestring picture depicting"The Origin of the Dimple"--a cupid poking his forefinger into the doublechin of a fat languishing female--when the door opened and a womanentered.

  She was tall and thin, and had reached that period of life when it costs awoman an effort to look in a mirror because of the menace of approachingage which stares back from the depth of frightened eyes. Her dress,however, suggested that she could not bring herself to believe she was yetout of the hunt, but was still trying to follow it breathlessly on theback of that broken-kneed and sorry steed, late middle-age. There wassomething ridiculous in the girlish attire intended to convince her fellowcreatures that her day was not over; something terrible in the low blouse,short skirt, silk stockings, gauze, lace and fluttering ribbons with whichshe sought to delude the sneering figure of waiting Time.

  Charles's first startled thought was that he had unwittingly entered oneof those neglected shuttered houses of romance, where an eccentric femalerecluse sits with a waiting wedding breakfast in readiness for abridegroom who has disappeared thirty years before. But the face of thewoman advancing towards him suggested that she was not particular aboutthe identity of the form emerging from the mists of time to rescue herfrom virginity. She looked as if she would have gladly surrendered thatjewel to any freebooter in return for a passage in the ship of matrimony,and gone off flying the proud signal, "All's well."

  She approached with a smile, and heaven knows what agitation in her breastat the sight of a handsome well-dressed young man in her lonely nest. "Youwished to see me?" she asked.

  "Mrs. Pursill?" he said interrogatively.

  She made a negative sign. "I am Miss Pursill. My mother is an invalid."

  "I am most anxious to see her."

  "My mother keeps to her bedroom."

  "I have come down from London purposely to see her," he said anxiously."My business is very important."

  "Could you not tell me?" she murmured.

  "I am afraid not."

  She fidgeted and came a little closer, as though she liked the nearness ofhis handsome presence.

  "Very well, you shall see her, but you won't be able to talk to her. Comewith me."

  They went from the room and upstairs. Miss Pursill opened a door on thefirst floor and beckoned Charles to enter. It was a bedroom, furnished onthe same scale of antique magnificence as the drawing-room downstairs. Ina deep armchair in front of a fire sat an old woman, tucked up in aneiderdown of blue and white satin. She did not look round as they entered,but remained quite still--an immobile figure with a nodding head.

  "That is Mrs. Pursill," said her daughter.

  Charles glanced at the old woman in the chair and turned away. She waspast anything except waiting for death, and it was impossible to speak toher or question her. She was in the last stage of senile decay. He maskedhis disappointment with an effort, conscious that the eyes of the youngerwoman were fixed on his face.

  "If there is anything I can tell you--" she simpered, as she met hisglance.

  His face betrayed his anxiety.

  "I had some reason to think that a young lady of my acquaintance, thedaughter of an old friend of your mother's, might be staying with her."

  "There is no young lady here," said Miss Pursill with a hard look. "I knownothing about it. What is her name?"

  "I have made a mistake, I am afraid." Charles was instantly on his guard."I am really very sorry--"

  She was not altogether proof against the winning smile with which hetendered an apology, but she looked at him strangely as she accompaniedhim downstairs to the front door.

  Charles went back to London with a dark and angry face. His anger wasdirected against Fate, which had arranged such a fantastic anticlimax forhis cherished hopes. The blow was almost too much for him. He had deceivedhimself into thinking that he would find Sisily at Charleswood, and hefelt that he had really lost her. He was now reduced to searching for herin the great wilderness of London, which seemed a hopeless task.

  By the time the train reached Charing Cross he rallied from his fit ofdespondency. He refused to despair. Sisily was somewhere in London, atthat moment walking alone among its countless hordes, perhaps thinking ofhim. He would find her--he must! Where to commence? She had reachedPaddington only a few nights ago, so that was obviously the logicalstarting-point of any inquiries. To Paddington he went, this time in ataxi-cab.

  He had an extraordinary initial piece of luck. Fortune, either regrettingher previous treatment or tantalizing him in feminine fashion with theexpectation of greater favours to come, threw him at the very outset ofhis inquiries against the red-headed luggage porter who had spoken withSisily on her arrival from Penzance. The porter, leaning against the whiteenamelled walls of a Tube passage, pictured the scene with much loquacity,and a faithful recollection of his own share in the interview. Charlesanxiously asked him if the young lady he had encountered was verypretty--pale and dark. The porter, with a judicial air, responded thatlooks in women was, after all, a matter of taste--what was one man's meatwas another man's poison, as you might say--but this young lady had darkhair and eyes, and her face hadn't too much colour in it, so far as heremembered. He apologized for this vagueness of description on the pleathat one girl was very like another to a man who saw them in droves everyday, as he did. But one or two minute particulars of her dress which hewas able to supply convinced Charles that he had seen Sisily. The manadded that as far as he knew the young lady went on to Euston Square,though he couldn't say he'd actually seen her catch the train for there.

  It was not until he had pocketed the half-crown Charles gave him that headded a p
iece of information of some importance.

  "You're not the first who's been inquiring about this particular younglady," he said. "There was somebody before you--let me see--Thursday itwas. He came strolling along, affable as you please, and seemed to knowall about it before he started. 'That young lady who arrived by theCornwall train on Tuesday night, porter, and asked you the way to EustonSquare--what was she like?' That took me back a bit, but I told him, justas I've told you. He asked me another question or two, and then went intothe station-master's office."

  "What was he like?"

  "Not much older than yourself, in a brown suit, tall and thin, withsharpish features and quick smiling eyes."

  Barrant! Charles recognized the description with a sinking heart. Heturned away with a sickening sense of the impotence of his own efforts.Scotland Yard was searching for Sisily, and no doubt had warned all theLondon police to look out for her. She might be arrested any minute.Outside the station he bought an evening paper from a yelling newsboy, andhastily scanned the headlines under the flare of a street lamp. There wasnothing about the Cornwall murder. So far they were safe. His owndeparture from Cornwall had apparently caused no suspicion, and Sisily wasstill free--somewhere in London.

  Where? To find her--that was his task. He rallied sharply from hisdespondency. He would pit himself against the police. A desperate man,guided by love, could do much--might even outwit the tremendous forces ofScotland Yard. He would not be worthy of Sisily if he lost heart becausethe odds were against him. Fortune's wheel might have a lucky turn instore for him.

  He beckoned a passing taxi-cab. "Euston Square," he said as he entered.That was obviously the next point of his search.

  But Fortune vouchsafed him no more favours that day. His dive into thecrowded depths of Euston Square brought forth no result--no clue whichwould help in his search. He interviewed many keepers of the "temperancehotels" and boarding-houses which abounded in that quarter, all sorts ofwomen, but all alike in their quick suspicious resentment of his guardedinquiries and in their pretended ignorance of past visitors to their dingyportals. He had little experience of the embittered sordid outlook of aclass which earned its own bread by supplying indifferent food and shelterto London's floating population, but after his fiftieth repulse he had nodifficulty in reaching the conclusion that the police were again ahead ofhim with their inquiries.

  Nevertheless he persevered fruitlessly until a late hour before returningto his hotel to pass a sleepless night in a fever of baffled excitement.Not till then did he realize how much he had been upheld by the hope offinding Sisily at Charleswood. He was lost in a maze of conjectures,fears, and impossible plans, though his intelligence told him that no planof search he could form was likely to be of the slightest use. Only luckcould help him there, and it was part of the hopelessness of the situationthat he dared not invoke the aid of any of those agencies or organizationswhich make it their business to find persons who have disappeared inLondon. His search must be a solitary one.

  The morning saw him enter upon it with a feverish energy borrowed from thefuture and the desperate optimism of a temperament willing to gamble withFortune against such incalculable odds. At first he attempted to divinethe motives likely to actuate a girl ignorant of London in seeking ahiding-place there, and shaped his search accordingly; but he gave that upafter a while, and decided to search the streets of the inner suburbs, inthe hope of encountering her sooner or later. His method was to purchase amap of each district, and explore it thoroughly from one end to the other.He got his meals anywhere, and slept in the nearest hotel where hehappened to find himself late at night. But his meals were often missedand his broken sleep haunted with nightmare visions of the pitfalls andsnares spread for inexperienced girls in London.

  So Charles passed nearly a week of interminable tramping of Londonstreets, scanning the endless medley of faces in the hope of a chanceglimpse of Sisily's wistful eyes and pale features. But it is one thing togamble with Fortune, and another to win from her. Sometimes she flatteredCharles with a chance resemblance which sent him flying across the trafficat the risk of his life, and once he sprang off a 'bus after a girl he sawvanishing into an Underground lift, but it was not Sisily. The end of theweek saw him returning from uncharted areas of outer London to the morefamiliar thoroughfares of the city's life, for in that time his dauntlessspirit had realized the colossal folly of any attempt to search London bysystem. He had no intention of abandoning his quest, but he now felt thatit did not matter where his footsteps led him, because it was only by apiece of wonderful luck that he could ever hope to meet Sisily. He did noteven know if she was in London. But he believed she was, and someindomitable inward whisper kept assuring him that he would find her sooneror later. So he kept on--and on, seeking the vision of his desires withthe insatiable eagerness of a man pursuing the unreachable horizon of ahashish dream.

  It was towards the end of this time that it occurred to Charles to wonderif Sisily had made her way to Charleswood since his first visit there. Hewas resting in a Lambeth public-house after an exhausting day's wanderingsover South London when this thought came to him. He sat up, slapping histhigh with excitement, asking himself why he had not thought of thatbefore. It was a chance--certainly a chance. He decided to run down toCharleswood again on the following afternoon.

  He did, and found himself disappointed once more. The elegant Miss Pursillhad gone to Brighton for change of air, but the pretty maid, who had beenleft behind to look after the house and the decayed old lady, assured himthat there had been nobody to see Mrs. Pursill since his last visit. MissPursill went away the very next day after he was down, and there had beenno callers or visitors.

  She imparted this information at first with a sparkle of coquetry in hereye, then with a glance of compassion as she noticed how much the debonairvisitor had changed for the worse since she saw him last. She looked athim solicitously, as though she would have liked to remove with womanlyhands the marks of neglect from his apparel. From the door she watched himmaking his way back to the station. She stood there in the shade of theevening, following him with her eyes until the bend of the road hid himfrom view.