ANY man but a Bayard is apt to lose the accent of courtesy in the rebound from a sudden fright.
Mr. Tuke fell back a pace, breathing quickly. Then he advanced in quick fury, so that the man in the doorway shrunk before him.
“Are you Whimple?” he demanded in a harsh voice, with a slight tremor in it.
“At your good service, sir.”
The caretaker spoke up timidly, and made an involuntary motion of retreat.
“Who was that that went in before me—that has been stalking me all up the drive?”
“Ah, sir! You must hold her excused. I did not know she was out. It is my sister Darda.”
“The fiend take the jade! I’ll have her out bag and baggage if she trifles with me. Here, sir—do you know who I am? Take my horse and see that he has food and water.”
He stalked angrily past the shrinking figure and made his way into the passage.
“Go, now,” he said with an impatient stamp, “and join me when your service is done.”
The man went forth silently, and the new-comer turned to look about him.
It seemed that his most dour apprehensions were realized in that first view of his surroundings.
He saw a long hall, not too wide, that in its panelling of black oak looked a very catacomb of dismality in the light of a single flaring oil-lamp that stood up on a bracket, half-way down, and whose greasy radiance rather emphasized than relieved the enwrapping gloom. Somewhere in the further obscurity, the first steps of a stairway, with old carved-end posts, were evident; and here the windy darkness seemed to rise into vacancy like smoke up a chimney.
The traveller uttered a fretful expression, and pushing open a door to his left—through which a weak shaft of light issuing appeared to give promise of a certain comfort beyond—almost fell down a couple of stone steps that led straight into a large massive-beamed room, with a great hearth in it on which some smouldering faggots glowed with a dull crimson.
Here, at any rate, was a board spread with food and drink, and, amongst them, a couple of candles in brass sconces. The revivifying sight led the baronet to look about him with a wider geniality. Certainly the room was beautiful in its proportions and in its air of antique solemnity. The floor was paved with solid stone flags; the walls were oak up to the ceiling; and a long oriel window, now heavily shuttered, was set deep in the masonry of the side over against the hearth.
The tired man sat him down on a wooden stool before the embers, and fell to a fit of musing over his queer destiny. So this was to be his fate—to plunge from the fever and glare of fashionable dissipation into a lonely and half-dismantled dwelling-place situate in the heart of an isolated thicket. Well, he had accepted his life on the terms, and the powers of destiny should find that he had the will to shake the life out of a resolution into which he had fastened his teeth.
In the depths of his pondering, he heard the front door slammed to and bolted, and was aware the next moment that the caretaker was standing in the room, silently awaiting his notice.
He twisted round on his perch, and regarded the man frowningly.
The latter hung his head under the scrutiny. He was a hectic, bashful-looking fellow, tall and weedy, with pale eyes and a weak, sloping chin. His age might have been thirty-eight or so—was in fact; though there was a curious suggestion of youthfulness in his smooth, shaven cheeks and soft, uncertain voice.
Mr. Tuke waved his hand towards the table.
“These preparations are for me?”
“The best we could compass, sir.”
He spoke with hesitancy, and in a manner of deprecation.
“The notice was very short. I had no instructions to provide but what the house could supply; and no means of learning your wishes.”
“There is little in the house, I suppose?”
“Little, indeed, sir, but some linen and a trifle of silver and a good store of wine in the cellars.”
“Of whose providing?”
The man did not answer. The other repeated his question in a more peremptory tone. Already—he could not have said why—a prejudice was forming in his mind against this patient-spoken servant.
“Of whose providing? I say. Why—don’t you know?”
“It has always been here, sir. It was here before I came.”
“And when was that?”
The answer followed so soft that the baronet could scarcely distinguish it.
“Speak out, sir!” said he angrily. “When was that? I ask.”
The caretaker cleared his throat.
“It was in November of the year ’79.”
“The year before my father’s death? Why, man, do you mean to tell me you have lived here all this age—lived and vegetated in this isolation for twenty-one years?”
“It is true, indeed, sir.”
“You were a boy when you came. Your ambition is a tortoise. And who was the last tenant?”
Again the soft, distressed answer:
“I don’t know, sir. Indeed I don’t know. How can I tell?”
“How, truly—for one who can be content to rust in a solitude for a double decade? Well—you take your service from Mr. Creel, I suppose; and he knows his business. And whither do you wend now?”
The man was emboldened to step forward, his eyes shining with a pitiful anxiety.
“Oh, sir, sir! If you will only continue the service? We have no home or hope or prospect without ‘Delsrop’; and Mr. Creel—Mr. Creel, sir, he bade me throw myself upon your bounty.”
“I am beholden to him.”
He looked a little sourly on the flushed, weak face. Perhaps there had been small charge of powder behind his shot; but anyhow, in the long run, good-nature was sure to incline him to generosity.
“I will consider of it,” he said coolly. “Perhaps you can prove yourself worthy of my interest. For the present, at least, you may stop—you, and your sister, to whom I conclude you desire me to extend the permission.”
“If you will, sir. And I can only thank you from my heart.”
His broken tones found a weak spot in the other’s breast.
“Well,” he said—“well, what are you called?”
“My name is Dennis.”
“And your sister?”
“She is Darda.”
“H’m! A pet expression, I presume.”
“Indeed, no, sir. ’Tis Hebrew, and signifies ‘Pearl of Wisdom.’”
“And is she that?”
“Ah, sir! ’Twas a fanciful notion of her mother’s. God help her, poor stricken loveling! Sure the fiends of pride suggested it in a bitter irony.”
“What ails her?”
“Her mind keeps no growth with her body. In this, her twenty-fifth year, she is nought but a wayward and fantastic child.”
“My household figures out apace. And you two are alone on the premises?”
“Alone, sir, and have always been.”
“Well, Mr. Dennis Whimple—and I would say, ‘as I would be, too.’ Leave me, my good fellow, and light me presently to bed.”
The caretaker withdrew, with a humble obeisance, and Mr. Tuke sat down to his meal. This proved homely enough, but acceptable to a ravenous stomach; and no doubt the wine made rich amends for the poverty of the repast.
His supper finished, and a great wave of sleepiness threatening to overwhelm him, he called for his henchman and demanded guidance to his bedroom.
Up the broad stairway Dennis, bearing a candlestick in either hand, preceded him, and his drowsiness inclined him there and then to little observation of the passages by which he passed. But presently he was aware of standing in a great gusty room, strongly shuttered like the one below, and having for its one conspicuous piece of furniture a mighty four-poster, with curtains and tester of heavy, faded brocade.
Dismissing his guide with a curt “good-night,” he crawled shortly between sheets fragrant of lavender, and fell almost at once into a profound slumber.
He woke in the morning to the sound of a tap on his door panels.
“Come in!” he groaned—for his head was like lead with the close atmosphere of the room.
A broad spurt of light flooded him from the opened door, and Dennis entered with shaving water and a towel.
“Ah!” said Tuke, recollecting himself. “It’s you, is it? Oblige me, my friend, by flinging open those shutters. And for the future, refrain from closing them at night.”
The man did as he was ordered, and then paused.
“Sir,” said he, with the same painful hesitancy of manner—“if I may presume—pray let me entreat you to reconsider the question.”
The other raised his head in staring surprise.
“What question?” said he.
“That of opening the shutters at night.”
Mr. Tuke sprang up into a sitting posture, with an oath.
“What the devil!” he cried. “Are you to begin by disputing my orders?”
“But——”
“Leave the room, sir.”
When he was alone—“Mr. Whimple,” muttered he, “you must have that hang-dog mouth muzzled if you are to stop.”
He looked forth through the broad-latticed casement. It was a fair, still morning, and the sun made idyllic glory of what had overnight appeared so haunted and so sombre. The house lay, so far as he could make out, in a wide basin of ground cut out of the heart of a thronging woodland, and must from its position be very private and remote. Before him was stretched a noble lawn, with a couple of gnarled and buttressed oaks to break its greenness; but the grass was a foot long, and so weighted with dew that a kilderkin of sweet water might have been gathered from it.
To his right he saw the opening of the drive by which he had come to his own. This, so far as he could see down it, was less an avenue than a passage driven through a wood, and all over its mossy floor the light fell in brilliant smears and patches, as if the branches dripped green fire.
Elsewhere, on every side visible, were trees; but with, here and there, scant openings in them. They closed in the further line of the lawn; they packed the hollows and mounted the slopes; in every direction they filled the prospect with an ardent leafiness.
The gazer turned and pursued his inquiries into the room. He found little to reward his curiosity, beyond the general beauty of an ancient interior; for the chamber was panelled in oak, like the other where he had supped, and the window was a fine oriel, with heraldic devices in stained glass in its topmost squares. For furniture there were the great bed, whose posts were richly carved in antique foliage; a wardrobe no less generously designed; a washhand-stand and chairs of plain solid oak, and an oak table in the embrasure of the window, with a cracked mirror of old repoussé brass work standing on it. This, indeed, was the one exception to that tasteful substantiality of accessory with which a mysterious destiny seemed to have supplied his needs. Else there were no pictures, no carpet, no curtains, no adornments of any kind—only a severe simplicity, in which was suggested a certain methodical cleanliness which, it pleased the man of fashion to think, was far remote from the systems of society with its accumulations of glittering rubbish.
He went through his toilet singing, and, opening his door, found himself on a broad landing, wherefrom half-a-dozen other doors gave access to as many rooms. Into each of these In order he peeped. They were empty, one and all—dusty, spider-haunted; and not a room of them, it appeared, but had had, at some remote period, its oak flooring roughly jarred up, and as roughly thrown and stamped into place again. In one or two, moreover, bricks, dislodged from the chimneys, were cast pell-mell upon the hearths; or fissures gaped in the walls or in the plaster of the ceilings.
“One would think,” he murmured, “that the place had withstood a siege.”
That it was designed with an eye to such a contingency, the massive nature of its window-shutters would seem to point. These—all of which had been obviously only recently thrown open—were of a common pattern of studded oak, and their hinges were sunk deep in the masonry of the walls. Closed, their power of resistance would have been as that of the stones themselves.
Throughout the house, when its owner came to explore it, this same feature was apparent. The building, in an emergency, could have been sealed as securely as a castle.
Mr. Tuke found his breakfast laid in the room where he had supped. As he entered the figure of a girl, that had been busy at the table, came forward as if to pass him. He barred her way, and she stopped immediately.
“Are you Darda?” said he.
She gave a shrill laugh, and “Yes,” she answered.
She was an eldritch creature and undersized; but the clean symmetry of her limbs was perfect, and her manners of movement showed all the mingled grace and self-consciousness of a child of ten. In her face was a marvellous contrast of colour, that was even startling on first acquaintance—for the skin was white as bleached kid, but the eyebrows were very dark; and the piled heap of hair that curled down upon her forehead was of a bright coppery tint.
She nodded at the intruder, and showed a line of even teeth.
“You come in good time for the shadows,” she said. “In the autumn the house is dark with them.”
“What shadows, girl?”
“Ah! you will know. They moan and look from corners; or swing from the cobwebs and clutch at you as you go by. You will know. Did I frighten you last night?”
“You startled me, you jade.”
She clapped her hands merrily. Her laugh was the most weird concatenation of rippling discords the baronet had ever heard.
“Poor gentleman!” she said. “Perhaps you shall see my museum for recompense. Will you come?”
“By and by, maybe. Is my breakfast ready?”
She nodded again, with her lips set, and vanished from the room.