Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “I’m glad you ask,” said I. “I was afraid you’d say you knew.”

  “Meaning my old man of the soil?”

  “I made sure you’d put it on him.”

  Uvo laughed heartily.

  “You don’t know as much about him as I do, Gilly! He was the last old scoundrel to worry because he didn’t love a woman as much as she deserved. It was quite the other way about, I can assure you.”

  “Yes; but what about those almost murderous inclinations?”

  “I thought of them. But they only came on after our good friend had shaken this demoralising dust off his feet. As long as he stuck to Witching Hill he was as sound as a marriage bell! It’s dead against my doctrine, Gillon, but I’m delighted to find that you share my disappointment.”

  “And I to hear you own it is one, Uvo!”

  “There’s another thing, now we’re on the subject,” he continued, for we had not been on it for weeks and months. “It seems that over at Hampton Court there’s a portrait of my ignoble kinsman, by one Kneller. I only heard of it the other day, and I was rather wondering if you could get away to spin over with me and look him up. It needn’t necessarily involve contentious topics, and we might lunch at the Mitre in that window looking down stream. But it ought to be to-morrow, if you could manage it, because the galleries don’t open on Friday, and on Saturdays they’re always crowded.”

  I could not manage it very well. I was supposed to spend my day on the Estate, and, though there was little doing thus early in the year, it might be the end of me if my Mr. Muskett came back before his usual time and did not find me at my post. And I was no longer indifferent as to the length of my days at Witching Hill. But I resolved to risk them for the man who had made the place what it was to me — a garden of friends — however otherwise he might people and spoil it for himself.

  We started at my luncheon hour, which could not in any case count against me, and quite early in the afternoon we reckoned to be back. It was a very keen bright day, worthier of General January than his chief-of-staff. Ruts and puddles were firmly frozen; our bicycle bells rang out with a pleasing brilliance. In Bushey Park the black chestnuts stamped their filigree tops against a windless radiance. Under the trees a russet carpet still waited for March winds to take it up. The Diana pond was skinned with ice; goddess and golden nymphs caught every scintillation of cold sunlight as we trundled past. In a fine glow we entered the palace and climbed to the grim old galleries.

  “Talk about haunted houses!” said Uvo Delavoye. “If our patron sinner takes such a fatherly interest in the humble material at his disposal, what about that gay dog Henry and the good ladies in these apartments? I should be sorry to trust living neck to what’s left of the old lady-killer.” It was the famous Holbein which had set him off. “But I say, Gilly, here’s a far worse face than his. It may be my rude forefather; by Jove, and so it is!”

  And he took off his cap with unction to a handsome, sinister creature, in a brown flowing wig and raiment as fine as any on the walls. There was a staggering peacock-blue surtout, lined with silk of an orange scarlet, the wide sleeves turned up with the same; and a creamy cascade of lace fell from the throat over a long cinnamon waistcoat piped with silk; for you could swear to the material at sight, and the colours might have been laid on that week. They lit up the gloomy chamber, and the eyes in the periwigged head lit them up. The dark eyes at my side were not more live and liquid than the painted pair. Not that Uvo’s were cynical, voluptuous, or sly; but like these they reminded me of deep waters hidden from the sun. I refrained from comment on a resemblance that went no further. I was glad I alone had seen how far it went.

  A handsome, sinister creature, in a brown flowing wig and raiment as fine as any on the walls.

  “Thank goodness those lips and nostrils don’t sprout on our branch!” Uvo had put up his eyebrows in a humorous way of his. “We must keep a weather eye open for the evil that they did living after them on Witching Hill! You may well stare at his hands; they probably weren’t his at all, but done from a model. I hope the old Turk hadn’t quite such a ladylike — —”

  He stopped short, as I knew he would when he saw what I was pointing out to him; for I had not been staring at the effeminate hand affectedly composed on the corner of a table, but at the enamelled ring painted like a miniature on the little finger.

  “Good Lord!” cried Delavoye. “That’s the very ring we saw last night!”

  It was at least a perfect counterfeit; the narrow stem, the high, projecting, oval bezel — the white peacock enamelled on a crimson ground — one and all were there, as the painters of that period loved to put such things in.

  “It must be the same, Gilly! There couldn’t be two such utter oddities!”

  “It looks like it, certainly; but how did Miss Hemming get hold of it?”

  “Easily enough; she ferrets out all the old curiosity shops in the district, and didn’t Berridge tell us she bought his ring in one? Obviously it’s been lying there for the last century and a bit. Bear in mind that this bad old lot wasn’t worth a bob towards the end; then you must see the whole thing’s so plain, there’s only one thing plainer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The entire cause and origin of Guy Berridge’s pangs and fears about his engagement. He never had one or the other before Christmas — when he got his ring. They’ve made his life a Hades ever since, every day of it and every hour of every day, except sometimes in the morning when he was getting up. Why not then? Because he took off his ring when he went to his bath! I’ll go so far as to remind you that his only calm and rational moments last night were while you and I were looking at this ring and it was off his finger!”

  Delavoye’s strong excitement was attracting the attention of the old soldierly attendant near the window, and in a vague way that veteran attracted mine. I glanced past him, out and down into the formal grounds. Yew and cedar seemed unreal to me in the wintry sunlight; almost I wondered whether I was dreaming in my turn, and where on earth I was. It was as though a touch of the fantastic had rested for a moment even on my hard head. But I very soon shook it off, and mocked the vanquished weakness with a laugh.

  “Yes, my dear fellow, that’s all very well. But — —”

  “None of your blooming ‘buts’!” cried Uvo, with almost delirious levity. “I should have thought this instance was concrete enough even for you. But we’ll talk about it at the Mitre and consider what to do.”

  In that talk I joined, into those considerations I entered, without arguing at all. It did not commit me to a single article of a repugnant creed, but neither on the other hand did it impair the excellence of Delavoye’s company at a hurried feast which still stands out in my recollection. I remember the long red wall of Hampton Court as the one warm feature of the hard-bitten landscape. I remember red wine in our glasses, a tinge of colour in the dusky face that leant toward mine, and a wondrous flow of eager talk, delightful as long as one did not take it too seriously. My own attitude I recapture most securely in Uvo’s accusation that I smiled and smiled and was a sceptic. It was one of those characteristic remarks that stick for no other reason. Uvo Delavoye was not in those days at all widely read; but he had a large circle of quotations which were not altogether unfamiliar to me, and I eventually realised that he knew his Hamlet almost off by heart.

  But as yet poor Berridge’s “pangs and fears” was original Delavoye to my ruder culture; and the next time I saw him, on the Friday night, the pangs seemed keener and the fears even more enervating than before. Again he sat with us in Uvo’s room; but he was oftener on his legs, striding up and down, muttering and gesticulating as he strode. In the end Uvo took a strong line with him. I was waiting for it. He had conceived the scheme at Hampton Court, and I was curious to see how it would be received.

  “This can’t go on, Berridge! I’ll see you through — to the bitter end!”

  Uvo was not an actor, yet here was a magnificent piece of acting, because it
was more than half sincere.

  “Will you really, Delavoye?” cried the accountant, shrinking a little from his luck.

  “Rather! I’m not going to let you go stark mad under my nose. Give me that ring.”

  “My — her — ring?”

  “Of course; it’s your engagement ring, isn’t it? And it’s your duty, to yourself and her and everybody else, to break off that engagement with as little further delay as possible.”

  “But are you sure, Delavoye?”

  “Certain. Give it to me.”

  “It seems such a frightful thing to do!”

  “We’ll see about that. Thank you; now you’re your own man again.”

  And now I really did begin to open my eyes; for no sooner had the unfortunate accountant parted with his ring, than his ebbing affections rushed back in a miraculous flood, and he was begging for it again in five minutes, vowing that he had been mad but now was sane, and looking more himself into the bargain. But Delavoye was adamant to these hysterical entreaties. He plied Berridge with his own previous arguments against the marriage, and once at least he struck a responsive chord from those frayed nerves.

  “Nobody but yourself,” he pointed out, “ever said you didn’t love her; but see what love makes of you! Can you dream of marriage in such a state? Is it fair to the girl, until you’ve really reconsidered the whole matter and learnt your own mind once for all? Could she be happy? Would she be — it was your own suggestion — but are you sure she would be even safe?”

  Berridge wrung his hands in new despair; yes, he had forgotten that! Those awful instincts were the one unalterably awful feature. Not that he felt them still; but to recollect them as genuine impulses, or at best as irresistible thoughts, was to freeze his self-distrust into a cureless cancer.

  “I was forgetting all that,” he moaned. “And yet here in my pocket is the very book those hopeless lines are from. I bought it at Stoneham’s this morning. It’s the most peculiar poem I ever read. I can’t quite make it out. But that bit was clear enough. Only hear how it goes on!”

  And in a school-childish singsong, with no expression but that involuntarily imparted by his quavering voice, he read twelve lines aloud —

  “Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because — —”

  He shuddered horribly —

  “The dead so soon grow cold.

  “Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.”

  “It’s all I’m fit for, death!” groaned Guy Berridge, trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face. “The sooner the better, for me! And yet I did love her, God knows I did!” He turned upon Uvo Delavoye in a sudden blaze. “And so I do still — do you hear me? Then give me back my ring, I say, and don’t encourage me in this madness — you — you devil!”

  Trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face.

  “Give it him back,” I said. But Uvo set his teeth against us both, looking almost what he had just been called — looking abominably like that fine evil gentleman in Hampton Court — and I could stand the whole thing no longer. I rammed my own hand into Delavoye’s pocket. And down and away out into the night, like a fiend let loose, went Guy Berridge and the ring with the peacock enamelled in white on a blood-red ground.

  I turned again to Delavoye. His shoulders were up to his ears in wry good humour.

  “You may be right, Gilly, but now I ought really to sit up with him all night. In any case I shall have it back in the morning, and then neither you nor he shall ever see that unclean bird again!”

  But he went so far as to show it to me across my counter, not many minutes after young Berridge had shambled past, with bent head and unshaven cheeks, to catch his usual train next morning.

  “I did sit up with him,” said Uvo. “We sat up till he dropped off in his chair, and eventually I got him to bed more asleep than awake. But he’s as bad as ever again this morning, and he has surrendered the infernal ring this time of his own accord. I’m to break matters to the girl by giving it back to her.”

  “You’re a perfect hero to take it on!”

  “I feel much more of a humbug, Gilly.”

  “When do you tackle her?”

  “Never, my dear fellow! Can’t you see the point? This white peacock’s at the bottom of the whole thing. Neither of them shall ever set eyes on it again, and then you see if they don’t marry and live happy ever after!”

  “But are you going to throw the thing away?”

  “Not if I can help it, Gilly. I’ll tell you what I thought of doing. There’s a little working jeweller, over at Richmond, who made me quite a good pin out of some heavy old studs that belonged to my father. I’m going to take him this ring to-day and see if he can turn out a duplicate for love or money.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, “if you can wait till the afternoon.”

  “We must be gone before Berridge has a chance of getting back,” replied Uvo, doubtfully; “otherwise I shall have to begin all over again, because of course he’ll come back cured and roaring for his ring. I haven’t quite decided what to say to him, but I fancy my imagination will prove equal to the strain.”

  This seemed to me a rather cynical attitude to take, even in the best of causes, and it certainly was not like Uvo Delavoye. Only too capable, in my opinion, of deceiving himself, he was no impostor, if I knew him, and it was disappointing to see him take so kindly to the part. I preferred not to talk about it on the road to Richmond, which we took on foot in the small hours of the afternoon. A weeping thaw had reduced the frozen ruts to mere mud piping, of that consistency which grips a tyre like teeth. But it was impossible not to compare this heavy tramp with our sparkling spin through Bushey Park. And the hot and cold fits of poor Guy Berridge afforded an inevitable analogy.

  “I can’t understand him,” I was saying. “I can understand a fellow falling in love and even falling out again. But Berridge flies from one extreme to the other like a ball in a hard rally.”

  “And it’s not the way he’s built, Gilly! That’s what sticks with me. You may be quite sure he’s not the first breeder of sinners who began by shivering on the brink of matrimony. It’s a desperate plunge to take. I should be terrified myself; but then I’m not one of nature’s faithful hounds. If it wasn’t for the canine fidelity of this good Berridge, I shouldn’t mind his thinking and shrinking like many a better man.”

  We were cutting off the last corner before Richmond by following the asphalt foot-path behind St. Stephen’s Church. Here we escaped the mud at last; the moist asphalt shone with a cleanly lustre; and our footsteps threw an echo ahead, between the two long walls, until it mixed with the tramp of approaching feet, and another couple advanced into view. They were man and girl; but I did not at first identify the radiant citizen in the glossy hat, with his arm thrust through the lady’s, as Guy Berridge homeward bound with his once beloved. It was a groan from Uvo that made me look again, and next moment the four of us blocked the narrow gangway.

  “The very man we were talking about!” cried Berridge without looking at me. His hat had been ironed, his weak chin burnished by a barber’s shave, the strong moustache clipped and curled. But a sporadic glow marked either cheek-bone, and he had forgotten to return our salute.

  “Yes, Mr. Delavoye!” said Miss Hemming with arch severity. “What have you been doing with my white peacock?”

  She had a brown fringe, very crisply curled as a rule; but the damp air had softened and improved it; and perhaps her young gentleman’s recovery had carried the good work deeper, for she was a girl who sometimes gave herself airs, but there seemed no room for any in her happy face.

  “To tell you the truth,” replied Uvo, unblushingly, “I was on my way to show it to a bit of a connoisseur at Richmond.”
He turned to Berridge, who met his glance eagerly. “That’s really why I borrowed it, Guy. I believe it’s more valuable than either of you realise.”

  “Not to me!” cried the accountant readily. “I don’t know what I was doing to take it off. I hear it’s a most unlucky thing to do.”

  It was easy to see from whom he had heard it. Miss Hemming said nothing, but looked all the more decided with her mouth quite shut. And Delavoye addressed his apologies to the proper quarter.

  “I’m awfully sorry, Miss Hemming! Of course you’re quite right; but I hope you’ll show it to my man yourselves — —”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Berridge, holding out his hand with a smile.

  But Uvo had broken off of his own accord.

  “I think you’ll be glad” — he was feeling in all his pockets— “quite glad if you do—” and his voice died away as he began feeling again.

  “Lucky I wired to you to meet me at Richmond, wasn’t it, Edie? Otherwise we should have been too late,” said the accountant densely.

  “Perhaps you are!” poor Uvo had to cry outright. “I — the fact is I — can’t find it anywhere.”

  “You may have left it behind,” suggested Berridge.

  “We can call for it, if you did,” said the girl.

  There was something in his sudden worry that appealed to their common fund of generosity.

  “No, no! I told you why I was going to Richmond. I thought I had it in my ticket pocket. In fact, I know I had; but I went with my sister this morning to get some flowers at Kingston market, and I haven’t had it out since. It’s been taken from me, and that was where! I wish you’d feel in my pockets for me. I’ve had them picked — picked of the one thing that wasn’t mine, and was of value — and now you’ll neither of you ever forgive me, and I don’t deserve to be forgiven!”

  But they did forgive him, and that handsomely — so manifest was his distress — so great their recovered happiness. It was only I who could not follow their example, when they had gone on their way, and Delavoye and I were hurrying on ours, ostensibly to get the Richmond police to telephone at once to Kingston, as the first of all the energetic steps that we were going to take. For we were still in that asphalt passage, and the couple had scarcely quitted it at the other end, when Delavoye drew off his glove and showed me the missing ring upon his little finger.