‘I’m afraid we are prisoners, for the morning at least,’ she said when they were half through the meal, and without much sign of regret in her tones, ‘or do you think your Druids may like to come out in this queer-looking mist?’
‘Perhaps a disembodied spirit prefers this sort of climate,’ Armstrong replied; ‘what do you think? Supposing one of those old dead people were to come alive, what kind of weather would it choose?’
She put her head on one side, laughing. ‘That is just the kind of problem I like!’ she cried, resting her chin on her hands. ‘Not that I believe in spirits at all, not even one of my own. But last summer in all that red heat upon the downs here, it almost felt as if some queer thing stirred and began to live again. Yet still that would only be the commencement (like the way in which people give you a sudden look when first their interest in you is stirred; then perhaps it almost dies down again). Then perhaps it grows a little in the quiet warmth out of the autumn earth, and hardens with the winter to burst out in the spring. But no, you know, one great crashing storm at this time of the year, or the first piercing frost might suddenly start it into life, and it would rise up and awake in the midst of this mist. It would grow more accustomed to being alive perhaps in that way—it would be something like the mists of Death it had been wrapped in so long.’
Armstrong cast a keen look at her, but she was still laughing in evident jest: there was no after-thought or double meaning behind her words, no idea that the sort of thing she was describing could possibly happen. He rose and went across to the window where that dense pall of palpitating mist still hung. The curious current of receding and approaching gave it the appearance of hangings wavering in a draught—something which might be withdrawn and show strange things behind. It seemed impossible that only the bare snow-spread downs could lie untouched behind.
‘I think I shall go out all the same,’ he said, and the girl looked up with a quick kind of surprise.
‘Why,’ she returned, ‘you might easily get lost, or fall down the steep sides and break your neck—a cheerful prospect! or are you tired of life already?
I shall wait until I am quite old, and then find some convenient precipice; but not till then. There is a story about two men who parted at the cross-roads below, lost themselves in the fog, wandered about all night, and found themselves at the same spot at the same moment the next morning.’
‘I shall keep to the road then,’ he said and went out, glad to escape the awakening interest he appeared to excite in her venturous mind. He did not think he could call upon the Delane-Mortons until the afternoon, when he might perhaps explain his reappearance more satisfactorily, and at the same time show Ape’s-face that he had not deserted her after all. Now he only meant to get nearer to the house, and see if by any chance there was anything unusual toward.
When he went out a thick drift of fog came in at the door, clouding the passage-way; it had a damp feeling like the laying on of clammy fingers. The trees in the avenue were spectral in appearance, their trunks showing vague and pale, whilst only now and then some of the topmost boughs would sway momentarily into sight on a slight withdrawal of the mist; still even this helped Armstrong to find his way to the commencement of the road. Once upon the bare chalk he turned to the left, and feeling with a stick along the grass edging he managed to walk at a fair rate in the desired direction. He knew that the ground trended upwards slightly to the spot parallel with which stood the Danish encampment; from that point it took a sharp turn and went downwards at a steep angle, being bordered on the right-hand side by the outermost fringe of the plantation. His memory of the trend of the ground served him in good stead today, for the usual landmarks in the landscape were as little evident as though he had been utterly blind. This groping method of procedure was extraordinarily subversive to his ideas. He found himself in a world where his wits, his senses, and his physical strength were really of very small assistance, and his progress entirely dependent upon chance. Anyone who has walked in a thick fog knows this baffling sensation.
As he crept downwards slowly through this world, which seemed like nothing so much as a kingdom of negations, tapping cautiously with his stick at every step, and keeping its point well to the fore, he became suddenly aware of someone or something approaching towards him. For a moment a kind of cold tremor shook him, and then his stick came into contact with an object of much the same nature; he drew to a full stop, peering eagerly through the mist. At the same moment a black figure began to appear gradually, also bent eagerly forwards, until at length a pair of black eyes in the midst of a swart countenance made him aware that Ape’s-face stood before him. The strangeness of their chancing upon one another in this groping and almost visionary manner kept him silent for a moment. She also said nothing for a little while, and they stood before one another like dark apparitions, their sticks tapping idly together against the grass.
‘My business . . .’ he began slowly, and then broke off impatiently. ‘The truth is,’ he said, ‘I could not keep away. I came back again last night and am staying at the Drylches. I intended calling upon you this afternoon to explain.’
She smiled and her expression looked pleasant as softened by the atmosphere which drifted past in pale wreaths. ‘I am very glad you did not come down to explain in the way you had intended,’ she returned, ‘I like the real way so much better. You cannot believe,’ she continued in a lower voice,
‘what a relief it is to see a stranger. I came out because the house had grown unbearable. All yesterday and last night were like a prolonged picnic on the edge of a volcano. Aunt Ellen and Godfrey have driven into Salisbury for her yearly outing, and as it is father’s day on the bench I was left alone with Arthur. It is too horrible of me to suspect him, but I thought he kept on watching me in a curious way all the time we sat together in the library. He was pretending to read a book, but he had only turned a page at very long intervals. And every time I looked at him out of the corner of my eye I found he was looking at me out of the corner of his own. I bore it for half an hour, but after that it was not possible to endure it any longer. So I ran out here.’
He noticed now that she had only a black silk scarf twisted about her head. There was something forceful and fine in the mould and the pose; it gave essentially the same satisfying sense of shape and proportions as a well-grown oak-tree. Now that it had lost its truculent, assertive air it allowed the approach of more tolerant observation. He found that he liked to consider her.
‘You will certainly catch cold if you remain,’ he said in the most matter-of-fact voice. ‘Let me see you home.’
‘Must I go?’ she asked. ‘I really cannot find words to tell you how the thing inside the house grows. The very pictures seem to have changed. And worst of all I feel changed myself. It was horrible how a kind of unreasoning anger against Arthur rose up in me when I saw myself observed in that fashion. I hated him ! Poor Arthur! It was really for his sake I came home too.
Do you think it will be tonight? Cannot you let us send for your luggage from the Drylches?’
‘Why? What could I do?’ cried Armstrong, the man of peace in him protesting.
She looked at him a moment without speaking, and then smiled. ‘Perhaps you would be angry if I said,’ she returned, ‘but you are like something funny at a funeral. You make one sane again.’
He laughed with her.
‘I will come into the house with you for a little if you will let me,’ he said,
‘but there is an attraction at the Drylches. I think I should tell you about her.
Yes, it is generally female, that kind. I do not fancy it to be dangerous; but simply I think it accounts for the scene at tea-time between your brothers.’
‘Ah!’ she said slowly, ‘so Godfrey does not tell Aunt Ellen everything after all.’
‘I cannot imagine Godfrey introducing this young lady to Aunt Ellen.
She is an artist, and enjoys the privileges which novelists of a certain class always conceive indi
spensable to the part. I thought you would be glad to know there is a real cause for rivalry; though as to the feelings of the lady herself with regard to your brothers—I do not think she has any. Besides, she is about to remove herself from your neighbourhood.’
Ape’s-face looked sombre. ‘Once Christmas is over,’ she said, ‘I shall be quite happy again—about them.’ The fog drifted a little backwards as she spoke, leaving the way clearer behind her; she turned her face in the direction of the house. ‘Are you coming?’ she asked. Again the fog closed down.
‘You had better take my arm,’ he said. She put her hand lightly upon it, and he could see the long, tense fingers close over his sleeve; then that too was blotted out.
It would, have been impossible to descend through the plantation, so they were forced to continue along the road and enter the avenue by the iron gates. They skirted the house, and instead of advancing to the front door passed to the back, and made their way in at the gallery-window between the strange wood-creatures. The gallery was dim with mist, and only the gilt picture-frames showed—as if they contained black canvases. Everything seemed wiped out except the extreme cold of the place and the penetrating odour, yet this time there was something more with it.
‘Do you feel anything?’ she asked in a lowered voice, for he had hesitated just outside the door of his former apartment.
‘Absurd,’ he said with a displeased laugh, ‘I had that curious feeling which comes to one in a crowd when one feels impelled to turn round and see who, out of all that multitude, is looking at one. Generally you find it is some old friend who has recognised the bald patch below your hat. Hardly likely here!’ He shrugged.
‘I know what you mean,’ she rejoined. ‘I felt it first last night. I think the others felt it too. We were all sitting round the fire pretending to read; and first father and then Aunt Ellen kept asking if someone had not spoken. If only you would stay tonight you would understand what I mean.’
‘Really,’ said Armstrong petulantly, ‘I am a modest man. You think too much of my powers as a protector against spooks.’
‘Very well,’ she said quietly, and at once he realised that he was occupying the position of most human beings before the incomprehensible—fretful and churlish. Her patient attitude struck him as being finely tolerant, and yet it annoyed him that this petulance was no surprise to her: she seemed to expect as much, but instead he would have preferred her to believe him incapable of pettishness. And all the while those blotted portraits gaped upon them both like blind eyes. Neither of them could be unaware of that pervasive consciousness which flooded the place. The lead and stone work of the windows looked spidery and pale, the end of the gallery melted where floor, wall, ceiling were all involved in the obscurity.
‘I wonder where Arthur is,’ she continued calmly; ‘shall we look for him?’
He thought her voice sounded tired, and considered that she must be putting constraint upon herself to keep so still.
It was at that moment that a door opened down the passage, and the object of her remark suddenly appeared. He came very rapidly towards them, his face flushed with excitement, his hair rumpled in every direction, and his fine brows scowling. Armstrong could not help noticing his extraordinary beauty even then. He came angrily up to his sister, and with a sort of laugh flung a pair of very worn and dirty boots at her feet.
‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s the result of all your suspicion! I saw you watching me! I knew you guessed what I was after! And I suppose you knew too what I should find?’ His voice continued rising louder and louder. ‘Just like a woman to come and gloat over you when you are down! I suppose you will say it is all I deserve for stealing. Go on. Preach away!’
She looked at him steadily with her mournful eyes and never said a word; she did not even look at the boots which had been thrown down at her feet.
‘I wish you wouldn’t glare at me like that,’ he continued; ‘and as to stealing—I suppose when the old lady is dead we shall all have some of her money, so why not have it now when I really need it? It’s impossible to stay in this place any longer—and as to curates! I’ll see myself hanged first. If father won’t help me I must jolly well help myself. Besides, it isn’t even moral to keep money hoarded up as she does—never spending a penny. You know it isn’t, everyone says so.’
She went on looking at him with that mournful, almost tender gaze, and gradually his voice lowered a little until it became propitiatory instead of defiant.
‘And really, you know, it ought to be ours already. Father always thought cousin David’s money would be left to him, but Aunt Ellen got it somehow instead. If only he had we should be well enough off now, and I could do what I liked. And Aunt Maria’s diamonds. You ought to have had them. If you had you would have lent them to me. And that is just what I told myself when I picked the lock of her precious cupboard. I knew she kept something hoarded up in there. She wears the key on a bootlace inside her dress: I saw it fall out once, and you should have seen her hands grab at it. No, she hasn’t any right to all those things. It is she who is the thief—not I!’ He kicked the boots heartily. ‘And then you see what I found. A pair of dirty old boots; an old hat with the crown bashed in, and a diseased looking feather hanging off one corner; and some sort of garment hanging on a hook. I felt them all over but there was nothing in them. You can see for yourself there isn’t anything hidden in the toe. The old miser! I expect she keeps it all at the Bank! And I suppose I shall have to be a curate after all.’ He glanced down dejectedly.
‘Hanged if I will!’ he cried suddenly, ‘I’d rather starve than be a humbug like that,’ and his white face flushed again.
‘Were you watching for me to get out of the way all this morning?’ she asked quickly, ‘so that you might go and steal Aunt Ellen’s diamonds?’
‘You know I was,’ he answered angrily, ‘don’t rub it in. You’ve as good as found me at it.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ she murmured almost under her breath.
Arthur stared.
‘And when you got them what did you mean to do?’ she added urgently.
‘Why, I meant to go straight off to London and begin work in earnest. I mean to be an artist one day, in spite of father and Aunt Ellen, and all of you!
But I don’t know what you mean about being glad,’ he added suspiciously;
‘I shouldn’t have expected a girl like you to say that kind of thing. It’s all very well for me . . .’
She interrupted him. ‘Never mind that now. How much do you want to get up to London?’
‘Oh, as to the fare,’ he began lamely, and then stopped. ‘I suppose you haven’t a fiver? I could manage on that for a bit, though it would not go far.
Still, I believe in luck, you know . . . and then a friend has promised me introductions.’ The last part of his speech was confused, accompanied by the reddening of his whole countenance.
‘I can give you that,’ she said sharply, ‘and when will you go?’
‘I meant to go this evening by the late train, after dinner. But . . .’
‘You could catch an earlier one if you walked to Monckton over the downs,’ she cried eagerly, ‘and that would give you more time to look for a lodging for the night. The fog cannot last for ever, and besides, you know the road so well you could not possibly miss it.’
‘One would say you were glad to get rid of me,’ he said between surprise and dissatisfaction, pouting almost like a girl.
‘Now you look just like Godfrey,’ she retorted.
‘Do I?’ he cried; ‘when I’ve been in London a year or so you’ll see some difference. Get me the money and I’ll be off. You can send my things after me.’
‘Certainly,’ she said, and went off obediently down the corridor as if it were his own money he had ordered her to fetch. The mixture of teasing, care-taking, of service taken for granted, which is the burden under which most sisterliness thrives, all this was expressed by the speed of her vanishing figure.
�
��Let me hear from you,’ Armstrong said to the boy when she had gone, at the same time scribbling his address upon a card. ‘I should like to see you again.’
Arthur shuffled his feet to drown some inaudible words of which it seemed he was half ashamed; then his eye alighted upon the boots where they lay forlornly on the boards. They were heavy, clumsy contrivances of country make, the toes where they upturned aggressively tipped with metal on which the mud had become thickly encrusted. The leather was cracked and embrowned with age, and a large patch had been inserted at one side where the toe-joint had made wrinkles and split the skin.
‘Shall I take them with me as a keep-sake?’ he said, grinning. ‘Aunt Ellen is the kind of old lady you would always like to remember, isn’t she?’ He went to the glass door and peered through the panes. ‘Queer, isn’t it?’ he continued in a different tone, ‘that the one thing one would like to take away in remembrance of the place should be hidden utterly. I suppose it thinks I have seen it often enough—the old Down. You wouldn’t guess what a lot of different moods it has, and how it plays with one. It feels sad tonight. I don’t think it has ever felt so before. Although it is so hidden you can guess it is surging more than usual; perhaps just because it is hidden and can do as it pleases without being seen. The great powerful creature! If I could put all its force into my painting Michael Angelo would be tame beside me!’ He left a silence, his head pressed against the lintel; then he opened the door a little and the mist crept slowly through the opening. ‘Why, it quite pushes against you,’ he cried; ‘for all the world you would think the old Down was trying to say goodbye to me. Don’t be in such a hurry, old man! I’ll say goodbye to you all the way to the station, and mind you don’t let me lose my way on you, like the unfortunate chaps who wandered round all night in a circle.’ The mist curled all about him now, making his figure shadowy in the curious light; it drifted along the corridor towards Ape’s-face as she came again hurrying towards them.
Ape's Face Page 11
