‘How strange!’ said Mr. Delane-Morton, breathing heavily with bulging eyes, ‘and so opportune for your research, my dear fellow,’ with which the books were replaced upon the table. Pym appeared like a punctual apparition at the door, and the procession which had swept from the dining-room swept upstairs. It all happened with so much precision that Armstrong could have imagined the falling of the panel to be pre-ordained as well. He was alone with the books.
‘Perhaps you would like to look at them a little,’ said his host returning.
Armstrong confessed he should, and again he was alone.
III
A Story of the House: Isabella of the Downs
THE FLAME OF THE TWO CANDLES and the flame of the fire fenced with shadow-points across the yellowed pages spread before Armstrong on the table. The cupboard which the panel had covered yawned dark beside the fireplace like a toothless mouth: it lay to his right hand, and he was strangely aware of its outline even though he did not turn his head that way: it was the kind of object that must always be seen from one corner of the eye, watched furtively and almost against the will.
The book with rusted edges and worn leaves roused in him the keenest sense of excitement: the words which had been so familiar in print took on a different character now that one read them in the actual handwriting of the author. He felt he was approaching the essence of the man’s character as never before. The pen-strokes, the curls, and irregularities of line seemed like the very accentuations of speech or thought. The man’s voice shaped itself in his imagination, spoke in his ear. He read on to the final page, and then stopped with a sudden shock, aware that the last few pages differed utterly from those in the printed book. The latter had ended on a long quotation from Sir Kenelm Digby’s treatise on the soul; this continued after the quotation written by the same hand but evidently at some different period of time. The very language differed a little—less polished, more rambling, and finally ending in the midst of an unfinished sentence with an untidy series of ink-marks, as though the pen had been allowed to slide and roll across the paper.
The last paragraph ran thus:
And as I think one final proof of the spirit’s existence may add weight to the matter which we are now in the act of discussing, so I would put forth as an assured and true statement this most positive proof, that whereas it is conceivable that mind in the body without spirit should speak to another in like case, how is it possible that mind in the body should speak to mind that is without body, corporeally existing, without aid of the spirit ? And yet so it is, and hath been known of some that it is so. I myself have heard a certain man aver . . .’
and there it ceased, with the pen-marks scattered across the remainder of an empty page. He looked at it absently, wondering what the end of the sentence might have been, and rumpling the corners of the account-book with heedless fingers. It was at this moment that he became aware how cold the room had grown, and: that the fire had sunk very low on the hearth: only half a log remained, glowing almost transparent, the fire had so eaten to its very heart. He was half pondering on the possibility of adding one more log or retiring to bed, when he noticed that the door was standing wide open behind him.
‘Well, that settles it,’ he said, standing up and yawning, and yet without knowing why he stopped in the middle of his yawn with arms half-extended on the stretch. It was quite likely that Mr Delane-Morton had come to rouse him from his studies, and then seeing his complete absorption, had withdrawn repenting, but leaving the door open as a mute suggestion. Armstrong completed both yawn and stretch. And still he felt disinclined to move, almost as much as he now felt disinclined to touch the books. He discovered this absurd reluctance when it came to the point of replacing them on their shelves for the night. He shook himself and with some sort of conscious effort moved them in one armful into the recess. They seemed to make a tremendous rustle and bumping sound as he deposited them rather hastily upon their shelves. When he turned round again he was aware of someone standing in the shadow of the doorway. He could not repress a start. Then he saw that it was Miss Josephine Delane-Morton. She stood and stared at him with her mournful eyes, until he began to wonder whether she was insane, or sleep-walking. A moment passed without either uttering a word, then looking straight before her she came towards the fire, stirred up the ashes and added a log.
‘How cold it is!’ she said, both voice and body shivering at the words.
Armstrong made no reply. She had not even glanced at him after her first long stare from the doorway, and he was not considering it an appropriate moment for small-talk, or talk of any kind, for that matter. And indeed it scarcely seemed as if she were conscious of his presence. The glow of the fire lit up her dark face, making of it something vivid and strange, and alien to any human countenance he had ever seen before: the lines, the different planes of light and shade gave it a curious attraction in this aspect of fire-shine. It was strangely animal, strangely human—a pathetic antagonism, an outraged parallel. He could not help watching her as the little southern monkey, chilled by northern frosts, and huddled over the poor substitute for eternal sunshines which our winter affords. And yet he wished ardently to be out of her presence. He made towards the door.
Ape’s-face turned her eyes quietly upon him.
‘You were looking at the old papers,’ she said, more as a remark than a query.
‘Yes,’ Armstrong replied, ‘your ancestor’s manuscript interested me greatly.
He has kept me up rather late, hasn’t he?’
‘I should like to see them,’ she continued.
‘No doubt your father will show them to you tomorrow.’
‘I do not think so,’ she said; ‘please would you put them on the table?’
‘I shall have to leave you to them, then. I have read myself almost to sleep with them already.’
‘Please put them on the table.’ Rather rebelliously he complied. The old account book fell open on the top of the pile of manuscript.
‘What is that?’ she asked, coming up to the table and lifting the little volume as if it were a live thing. Her hands trembled along the edges of the page like flames.
Armstrong shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing of interest,’ he said, ‘the old gentleman’s accounts.’
She turned to the last page, peering at the writing which to her was evidently undecipherable. ‘I cannot read it at all,’ she said.
‘No, I daresay not. Accounts are dry things at the best of times.’
She peered more eagerly at the page. ‘Is that word “December”?’ she asked; ‘and here is the date—1510. December 21, Anno Domini 1510.
Nearly this time of the year—how many hundreds of years ago?—four hundred, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘In daylight I am sure you would find yourself able to read quite a lot of it. This seems to be the farm-bailiff ’s account.’
‘There was no farm-bailiff,’ she said after a pause, in which the extraordinary silence of the house seemed almost to rise up in a concrete form, and wait beyond the threshold just out of sight. ‘You see, at that time he was keeping the accounts himself; there was a change of bailiffs, and this happened between the departure of one and the coming of the next. You see that here there are three different kinds of writing.’
‘And this entry belongs to the hand of my old friend of the treatise.’
‘Of course,’ she said. Armstrong disliked her tone of assurance.
‘I suppose you know his handwriting well enough.’
‘No. I have never seen it before. But I know he wanted to get rid of the bailiff, or he could never have done what he wished. That is why he puts his own entry here. What does it say?’
‘ “To John the shepherd sixpence.”
And then,’ she said, ‘there come no more entries of John the shepherd?’
‘The entries themselves end here.’
‘At least I am glad he felt he could not touch the book afterwards.’
; ‘After what?’
‘After the man was dead.’
‘He died, then ?’
‘Yes, you may call it so if you please, and perhaps at this hour the real word is better left unsaid.’
‘You know a good deal about your ancestor and his people?’
‘I know about this,’ turning the leaves of the pages again. ‘Do you know a good deal about him?’
‘I fancied I knew all there was to be known until I saw your father’s letter in the Spectator.’
‘And now that you have read his account-book and his work on the soul in manuscript you will know more than ever?’
‘I felt more in touch with his mind tonight, reading the words as he had penned them, than ever in my life before.’
‘And what kind of mind do you now feel that he had?’
‘The mind of a gentleman of his time—as eager for a new thought as a child for a new toy, and charmed with conceits and devices in words as only the youngest can be. He is as pleased with the little learning that he has garnered on his way through life as if he had hit on some profound truth. It is the very ingenuousness of the man that is his attraction. His erudition sits upon him like a cap and bells. He seems to argue for the sheer joy of the game.
I think he would as soon have taken one side as another. But then he is credulous and listens to his neighbours’ tales with a courteous seriousness—again like a child.’
‘You forget that he was one of the most cunning fencers of his time. He was no child in that. The very way in which he would put his own adventures to another man’s account is not so very ingenuous either.’
‘His own?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘the very things that he had done. But he was afraid at the last moment, and the proof that would have put his book beyond all refutation was the only one he could not give.’
‘I should like to hear about that,’ said Armstrong, sitting down opposite to her, and himself forgetting that the time was late. She looked at him for a moment with a curious smile.
‘There is a story in the country,’ she said, ‘which you do not hear very often now—for there aren’t many old people left to tell it and the young ones don’t want to hear. They say they despise superstitions but really they are afraid. I suppose you know that besides your old friend himself, there still lived, at the time those accounts were written, a younger brother and one sister. It sounds like the beginning of a fairy-tale, doesn’t it? The Mortons have always been poor, they were poor even then; when the other landlords who turned their plough-lands into pasture had fine flocks of sheep, we still could not make ours thrive; and when other men profited from their share of despoiled churches we seemed to get a poor lot for our portion. The brothers were proud and kept themselves apart, because they could not afford to be lavish in their entertaining like the rest of their world. You could tell he was a man of leisure with much time on his hands by the elaboration of his work—a busier man would not have stayed to trifle with his business in that way.’
‘That might be,’ Armstrong agreed, musing.
‘He saved what he could so as to make a good show when he went to town, but at home he was mean and everything about him was starved. I don’t know if the accounts show how he pared his expenses down to the last farthing; but I’m sure he did so. The younger brother looked after the place when he was away, and the sister was always there to keep house—her name was Isabella. I am as certain as I can be of anything that her life was starved as well as her purse. She was busy keeping the house in order from morning until night; and a woman who has to do that, with little or nothing to do it upon, has not much joy in this world and hasn’t time to think of any other.
All the same, if she is still young there will be times when she will think of young things—especially on the days when the sun is shining all over the downs, and you can count hundreds of tiny flowers among the grass where the sheep are feeding. There’s a sheltered place at the top of the downs where they say an old camp was once made: and you can get down behind the old trenches, lying in the sun and the grass out of the winds. The elder brother owned a finer flock of sheep at the time that book was written than he had had for years. The shepherd had sixpence a week for minding the flock, as you saw the last time it was written down in that book.’
Armstrong crossed his knees and folded his arms in an attitude of attention.
‘It is getting late,’ she conceded; ‘shall I stop?’
‘Oh, if you aren’t tired . . .’ he almost pleaded, not in the least caring now whether she were tired or not. She smiled again with the funny smile which reminded him of the portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Uffizi Gallery.
The smile wandered into his mind and quickly out again, as she had recommenced her tale.
‘The elder brother was in town, and the younger brother in control of the place when the girl went up on to the downs. I should think it was just one of those fresh mornings I told you about, when the hawthorn trees are white in the hollows. You can generally hear the larks singing up there too, and it all feels very joyous and young. But it isn’t unlike drinking water fresh from the spring: there’s a keen sharp taste to it all the time. She was tired of mending, and cooking, and scolding unthrifty maids—tired of spying out petty thefts and sifting half-truths or deliberate falsehoods. I don’t think she can have been more than eighteen, which is quite young after all. And when she got to the top of the down in the sunlight she found the shepherd lying between the folds of the green trenches watching the flocks of sheep. The shepherd was young too and as handsome as she could wish. She had never seen him before either, so that he was as fresh to her eye as the young morning.
I think that she was rather beautiful too: for it was before there began to be ugly people in our family. She had a beautiful soft mouth, and her face must have been made of lovely curves before she grew thin and white.
‘You can guess what happened after that. She was always on the downs of a morning, with the shepherd sometimes piping to pass the time away, but mostly I should think they sat in the sheltered hollow out of touch of the winds with the sheep cropping the grass a little way away. He had red hair which shone in the sun, and he was vivid as all the life which until then she had been missing. I don’t suppose they had a thought beyond the moment.
All went very quietly until the elder brother returned from town; but after that it was not easy for their meeting. There was more to do in the house, and the brother himself was often on the downs looking at the sheep, thinking of the money he would make out of them—what with the wool, the fells, and the meat. She bore with not seeing the shepherd for a time, but in the end she could not keep away: and sometimes she would steal out in the summer evenings to find him in the hollow of the downs. She was very happy, poor thing, and used to sing about the house. The younger brother would never have noticed anything, but your friend had a nice discerning wit, as I daresay you found out long ago. Anyhow it was not a very hard riddle. But the thing which no doubt puzzled him was who the man could be? A young man of breeding so seldom came to the house, or any of the yeomen, or better-to-do farmers either. At first he did not think that a sister of his would look beneath her, but then he considered that youth was youth, and he began to look beneath too, after her. He watched, but could find nothing. Then late in the summer he went away; before he went he gave a hint of his knowledge to his brother, and told him to keep his eyes open. When he came home at the end of November the younger brother had found nothing at all; he had only noticed that his sister was not so gay as before, but often sat looking rather sadly into the fire with her hands folded idly in her lap. Bitter weather was setting in, and they had set up the sheep-folds under the edge of the down between the trenches of the old camp. All the tiny flowers in the grasses were dead now; and the ground was hard with the frost when the snow didn’t cover it. The shepherd used to sleep up there in a little wattled hut, where he could hear the heavy breathing of the sheep all the night through: the
place used to look warm and cheerful when the fire was lighted, I expect.
‘The elder brother used to watch his sister covertly all day, but he saw nothing strange in her behaviour. She seldom went out of doors in this wintry weather. It was wearing towards Christmas; the snow had fallen pretty deep that time; the sheep used to huddle close together in the folds for warmth, and then they were nearly frozen. When the snow did melt the sky wore that heavy hodden-grey that promised more to follow. One morning early, before dawn, the elder brother got up just to see how the sheep were faring; and he came to the side-door which used to be just where that window stands now.’ She pointed with her hand to a mullioned window over against the hearth. ‘From outside you can see where the stone-work has been fitted into the doorway. He found the door, which the night before he had left unbolted, unlatched. Outside a light covering of fine frost lay all along the surface of the grass and the path which led on to the downs. There were slight footprints leading right up to the door, and on the threshold a little lump of frost, as if it had been shaken there from someone’s shoes. The footsteps were small. He went back into the house, and knocked upon his sister’s door. There was no answer, so he opened it and looked within. He could see her head upon the pillow, and her long hair streaming over it.
‘Next night was starlight, and just as frosty. At three in the morning he was up and out at the side-door there. He found prints in the frost and followed them up to the downs, and as far as the wattled hut. The door of the hut was tightly fastened. He went home again, and knocked on his sister’s door: there was no answer. He went in and it was empty. He had been careful to leave his footprints alongside the others.
‘There were four days to Christmas. It was the day for paying his men.
The shepherd came, and he gave the young man his pay. It was bitterer outside than ever, and the snow seemed ready to fall at a moment’s notice: the world was waiting for it. ‘There’s a market tomorrow at Salisbury,’ he said to the shepherd; ‘take ten of the ewes and go.’ The shepherd looked at him, wondering. ‘It will be snowing before the hour is out, master,’ he said, ‘and it’s sixteen miles in the teeth of the wind. A man might win through, but not the ewes.’ ‘Go, nevertheless,’ said the master. ‘I fear I shall lose them,’ said the shepherd. ‘I missed one of them last night,’ said the master, looking the shepherd well between the eyes. The young man reddened to the roots of his hair, and then he went pale. He turned on his heel, and went out. In a half-hour he was out with the sheep across the downs to Salisbury; but within an hour the snow began to fall, and you couldn’t tell what way you were going.
Ape's Face Page 4
