Devil's Tor

by David Lindsay

  "I think you must. But will you let me apologise for that last illustration? It was discourteous, and I shouldn't have used it. …"

  "It was unapt," said Saltfleet indifferently.

  He returned immediately to the practical arrangement.

  "Then with regard to meeting Drapier, I believe—in view of this new turn you have considerably more than hinted at, which I confess I don't at all comprehend ... I believe it will be advisable not to rely on his caring to give me a look-up at the inn; I had better call here again later. I assume it hasn't arrived at the pitch of his wishing to avoid me? So will you suggest a time, and notify him as soon as he gets back?"

  "He would certainly be in this evening. … You might like to take dinner with us, and talk to him after?" She smiled anxiously, consulting his face with a rapid glance. "If you are to be marooned in the village for any length of time, waiting for him, the 'Bell' is rather a dreary place, and you may be glad of a little diversion."

  "It’s extremely kind. I trust to get him much earlier than that, however; and, if possible, to be away this afternoon."

  Helga was sure that it was as he said, not that he was despising her hospitality, and so she felt that she could press the invitation without loss of dignity. She must press it. Something was telling her that should these two meet by themselves during the day, Hugh would come to serious grief. She had to catch him directly he returned to the house, and use all her persuasions to induce him to give up this thing he had no right to want to keep. If he consented to, the trouble would be at an end. If he refused, or remained undecided, she must anyway get him to stop at home for the rest of the day. If Saltfleet ran up against him anywhere out-of-doors, as was otherwise extremely likely, there would be an infinitely worse scene between them; in fact it would be as bad as possible. Until it was all somehow arranged, she could not trust them alone together. … Arranged!—How could it be arranged, except by Hugh's unconditional surrender? But what would the other do? Helga already seemed to know that her second will, which she was so powerless to command, was intending to provoke Saltfleet, just in order to discover how far his threats would carry him. She was sick with dread for the impulse that was to make her so insanely brazen. …

  Postponing the moment—for at least that was within her ability—she said:

  "I think I would not be in such a hurry, Mr. Saltfleet. It is disagreeable that you should have to stay on, through no fault of your own; but still, I would like to get this settled amicably. Let me speak to him first. Will it be inconveniencing you terribly to put it off till this evening?"

  "No. I am only anxious to know where I stand. You are to urge him to fulfil his obligation?"

  "Yes, I want him to."

  "Haven't you done so already?—since, evidently, you must have discussed it with him."

  "I was rather taken by surprise, and it seemed not particularly pressing; but now that it is pressing, I shall certainly strengthen my arguments."

  "You should. … But yet there is one point I fail to understand. You have only just now been finding all sorts of reasons for his not restoring our property..."

  "Those reasons did not represent my opinion," she replied, with a true simplicity, that succeeded in convincing him. He judged, accordingly, that they had merely been testings to elicit from him the degree of emphasis of their claim.

  So thoughtfully, after another moment, he said, "Very well, since I wish to get this affair fixed in any way that is the best, if we don't meet first I will leave it as you propose."

  "You will dine with us?"

  "Thank you."

  "At seven—just as you are. We shall only be a small family party."

  He half-bowed, from his seat.

  Helga smiled uneasily. "Apart from this bother, you and Hugh Drapier must have many gaps to fill in. Did your fight develop into a serious affair?"

  "No, it was never more than a feint, to keep the beggars employed until the spoil should be well on its way to Drapier. Afterwards Arsinal would not hear of the real thing, so we let ourselves be taken, stripped and searched; and before the brutes dismissed us again, they took care to secure the full sentimental value of their fetish, expressed in the terms of nine-tenths of our goods and ponies."

  "Then how did you contrive to get back so soon?"

  Saltfleet laughed.

  "We adopted Napoleon's method, after Moscow. Arsinal and I came on ahead light, leaving the caravan to crawl home how it could. But as the men were to receive triple pay at Srinagar, they could not complain."

  "You personally would perhaps have preferred to cut a way through?"

  "I am not a very patient man."

  "No, that I am sure you are not!" thought Helga.

  Now he was immediately to go, and if she was to make trial of his true temper and ascertain how they proposed to manage in the event of a rebuff, it must be at once. …

  "This Curio, Mr. Saltfleet"—she discovered the words issuing from her mouth, seemingly almost without breath—"I can't help noticing that you have been very careful to say nothing about itself. Has it a quality, or why does your friend set such an extreme value on it?"

  "To answer you, I fear I could only repeat what he has passed to me in strict confidence."

  "I am persuaded it has a quality, then. And, unfortunately my cousin Hugh is just the person to have stumbled upon it, and be affected. You were quite right to describe him as being essentially a man of honour. In all normal circumstances, he would make large personal sacrifices before he would consent to fail in his duties. But he is Celtic and psychic, as well."

  "That is interesting, but hardly has to do with us."

  "I am going to be candid. Your stone, I happen to know, is appealing to him in the most extraordinary fashion. Is there any chance at all of his being permitted to keep it, for a consideration, of course?"

  "It is absolutely out of discussion. Do you mean a money consideration?"

  "I cannot suggest what else," answered Helga.

  "The offer is yours—not his?"

  "The inquiry is mine."

  "Then, in you, Mrs. Fleming, it may be excusable, as I conceive you are only anxious to serve him and to get this matter put out of the way. But I think I should make it plain to you, before we go further, that here it is not a case of comparing one man's interest in a certain thing with another man's. Arsinal is the stone's rightful proprietor in a sense that your cousin could never attain to were he to live with it for another fifty years. Arsinal has taken vast pains over a very extended period to track the thing down to the native religious house where finally we unearthed it—pains of a heartbreaking study of ancient Hellenic and Eastern records, scattered over three continents; and pains of practical detective work, rendered possible by his acquaintance with half a score of specialised sciences, and twice as many peoples and tongues. So, to undeceive you at once regarding Drapier's prospects of being permitted to retain what already he has retained too long, even for an absurdly large cheque in return—they are utterly nil; and, as I said before, we could not tolerate so much as a broaching of the matter."

  "I am sorry."

  "It is not an affair of money. It is the crowning of an Idea, to which Arsinal has devoted all his life. The single excuse your cousin can possibly furnish for his delay in surrendering what is not his, is that he may be failing fully to appreciate the urgency of the expedition he found us on. Yet—not to drag in myself, being a man generally on some hazardous trip or other—he must surely have realised that a person obviously so physically frail as my associate does not go out of his way to penetrate almost the most difficult country of all Asia, for the sake of acquiring an object which afterwards he is to be willing to throw away for a few guineas, or a few hundreds of guineas. So now, on Drapier's behalf, to offer us money—money—forgive me if I discard courtesy in declaring the proposition to be something very like impudence!... If he were called home so unexpectedly, he should have left the thing in India under seal for us. But to run off
in the way he did, leaving no message and no address, and on the top of it to request to be allowed to retain it for his own insignificant enjoyment..."

  "Mr. Saltfleet!—stop, please!.

  A sort of low bellowing note had changed his voice, producing in her the strangest agitation, of sympathetic emotion, and æsthetic pleasure, and shock, and fear. It was nearly reminiscent of the first hollow opening of the full roar of a lion, and her intelligent feeling was that she must stop him in time. She apprehended she knew not what savage explosion of unrestrained ire. … So Hugh was right, and it might well be Sulla or another fearful ancient dictator and imperator thus confronting her with eyes of distended menace. He had risen.

  Retaining with a conscious effort her own seat, she gave him a long, calm and friendly look, and he said no more. When, after a pause, she begged him to resume his place, he did that too. …

  This anger, besides, was a virtue in him, since it was for a friend. … She suddenly and without a reason remembered her daughter; then, having remembered her, was glad that she was not here, to be subjected to her own womanly reactions. … That was absurdity; but she ought, for Hugh's sake, to dismiss the man quickly. He might come back at any moment—they might encounter here or in the lane, before anything had been prepared. …

  But still she had to hear his extreme threats; and surely he could state them without a repetition of that beginning outburst. She must know them, so that Hugh might know them too.

  She must also know them for her own reassurance.

  Persons of Saltfleet’s social class or Arsinal's professional standing could not conceivably dream of imitating the methods of American underworld criminals; but neither had they any recourse in law. …

  In this way her singular secret will, that was independent of her upper sense, was captured by her everlasting desire for mental security. She would consent in mind to no action of hers that she could not understand, and so must invent these motives for her own predetermined conduct. Another eye in her saw that Hugh's persuasion or her reassurance was of the smallest moment in the case, and that it was for a different invisible result that she was, on her own seeking, to be put in fear by a most fearful man. …

  "There is no need," she said, "to use such a very big club to destroy an inquiry so simple and humble as mine! You won't hear of it; and that is enough. But if I am to speak to Hugh, I ought to be informed. I hope he will be reasonable. If, unhappily, he is not, however ...?"

  "Having entertained no suspicion of the facts, naturally, we have not considered the contingency."

  "Please consider it now. I am not raising new objections, but, for instance, it seems quite clear that you could not prosecute your claim through the Courts."

  "Should there be trouble, Arsinal must be fetched down. … Nevertheless, Mrs. Fleming, I would point out that this talk is very much in the dark. You are hinting, and hinting, and will tell me nothing definite of what Drapier has said to you; yet either you should make the plain statement, or else you should leave it alone. It is rather too much to expect, that we should present an ultimatum upon the mere vague insinuation. I can only say at once that we shall on no account allow your cousin to keep a thing which Arsinal regards as so infinitely important. …"

  He stopped abruptly, to glance round. The door-handle had been turned from outside in the quick, casual way of a person entering a room supposed to be unoccupied, and now the door itself was in the moment of being swung open. As well as he, Helga, without needing to turn her head, beheld the apparition of her daughter arrested on the threshold; tall, pale, grave, striking and beautiful, in a dark dress. But then, at the spectacle of her mother and a strange man talking together privately, the girl would have retired again quietly from the room. …

  "Come in, Ingrid"

  She accordingly advanced a pace or two further, with a slow, wondering self-possession, while intently viewing Saltfleet, who rose. Her queer thought was that it was Hugh's friend, Mr. Arsinal—only it was not in the least like her preconception of him. Helga also got up, to introduce the two; and then Ingrid knew her mistake, and was almost equally disappointed and relieved. Saltfleet's person impressed her a little disagreeably. She found him rather improperly big; his eyes too staring. She looked away from him.

  The interruption troubled Helga, not because it was one, but because, somehow, the bare acquaintance of this man seemed not quite right for her child. She was vexed that she had detained her so impulsively—though, of course, if he was to dine with them, they would have to meet. Then, nearly instantly, she had the insight that this irrational dislike of their encountering was but the measure of her own secret dread of him. The dread had only occasionally risen to anything like acuteness during their interview, but now she realised that it had nevertheless been constant in her; that she had generally had to suppress it by her manner of determined urbanity. … He was become Hugh's enemy, she supposed, and that was at the root. And still the impropriety of his even resting his eyes on her daughter continued to oppress and puzzle her. …

  Invent a conversation she must, now that they were together in silence, and so she questioned her about Hugh's movements; yet a little negatively, Ingrid thought, as though she wanted her to know nothing.

  "He is out walking," she had to reply.

  "May I ask if you are aware in which direction?" said Saltfleet. And Ingrid understood, from the compelling force and steadiness of his gaze, that she would be unable to refuse the truth to him at least.

  "I expect in the direction of Devil's Tor."

  "Is that far out?"

  "It's about three miles from here."

  "And you fancy he would be there at this time?"

  "There, or coming back from there."

  "Should I easily strike him, if I went after him?"

  "On another day you should have no difficulty, but to-day is foggy."

  "But there is only the one direct road?"

  "Until you reach the open moor."

  Helga felt very sick and chill. All her careful planning, therefore, for Hugh's safety and wellbeing was to be swept away by this incomprehensible certainty of Ingrid's that he had walked out there and nowhere eise. And the rencontre on the moor would be calamitous. Whether on or near the Tor, there they would be totally remote from people and houses; imprisoned by the fog. She intervened hurriedly, addressing her daughter.

  "Is it reasonable to dispatch Mr. Saltfleet on such an exceedingly doubtful quest? Hugh may not even be in that direction at all."

  "He was constantly there yesterday."

  "What is the attraction?" smiled Saltfleet.

  "There was a shattering of rocks by lightning the day before last, the exposing of a prehistoric tomb in consequence, and yesterday again an earthquake, bringing about the destruction of the same tomb."

  "That certainly sounds sufficiently interesting. I think I'll follow him up, then. How does one get to it?"

  Ingrid described for him the route from the cross-roads, which he must have passed already in getting to the house. He thanked her; then returned to the mother.

  "And the location of what we have been talking about—do you know where he has it?"

  "I don't." Her reply was truthful, and yet she coloured. Saltfleet, perhaps remarking the colour, urged her.

  "Not at all? Whether here or in London?"

  But Ingrid, watching in surprise her mother's half-embarrassment, obtained from it her earliest faint intimation of a mystery relating to the visitor. … Hugh and he must have met abroad; the one was as weather-beaten and tough-looking as the other. And Hugh seemingly held something that this man wanted, only what it was, or to whom it belonged, was not clear. It was why her mother should be endeavouring to keep back a part of her information from the caller, that began to perplex her.

  "Yes, I do know so much," Helga answered to his last interrogation. "He has it down here. But whether it is with him, or in its case in this house ."

  "A box he keeps it in?"

 
; "Yes."

  Saltfleet, in the thought of both women, smiled rather significantly.

  "It would simplify matters if we met out-of-doors, and he proved to have it on him. I wonder if you could ascertain at once?"

  "It would necessitate my going through his private belongings, a thing I hardly care to do."

  "I can't ask it of you."

  Quickly succeeding her first mystification, a quiet shock passed through Ingrid of remembrance and enlightenment, that was like the promise of another door, a new direction, for the escape of all her pent thoughts. The box her mother spoke of, surely it could only be the tin one she had handled on her dressing-table before breakfast yesterday morning, just as Peter was approaching the house! So that what this Mr. Saltfleet was inquiring about was what she had taken from the box when her mother was still out of the room, and slipped unthinkingly into her dressing-gown pocket, as she had hurried off to her own room to greet Peter. There it must have stayed ever since, and it was peculiar that neither Hugh nor her mother appeared to be aware of the abstraction. … Unless her mother's uneasy manner a moment ago meant that she had discovered the loss, but had not found the courage to confess it to Hugh. For why should the box have stood on her dressing-table precisely while he was out of the house on a long excursion? She must have taken advantage of his absence to borrow it from his room. Ingrid knew that they had sat up late talking, the night before. It might, in part, have been about this. …

  Or else her mother's embarrassment was owing to her knowledge of some unpleasantness coming to Hugh from this Mr. Saltfleet. …

  It was unusual that two acquaintances should want to look him up during so short a holiday-visit. Wouldn't it be on the same business? One person could have come instead of the other. An association of three men, originating abroad... seeming to have for its object the quite ordinary-looking piece of stone she had misappropriated in innocence. So was it in dispute? Was her mother trying to put off this big, ruthless inquirer? Ingrid was afraid, in that case, that she had frivolously played straight into his hands. …