"He is extraordinarily gifted. Whether he is also mad, you must judge."
"Isn't he an archaeologist?"
"Yes."
"But he should be a mystic, too."
"He is that, too," said Saltfleet.
"So you caution me against this strange man's choosing to fasten upon me, a woman, as the one indicated?"
"It would be most painful for all involved. Yet I cannot say that his insanity would go so far, and I merely wish to give the warning that it is a possibility; besides the positive psycho-chemical risk of the rejoining."
"But simply to talk with him, I may meet him without embarrassment?"
"Mr. Copping and I would both be present."
She sent him a queer flitting smile, which was no smile at all, but like a silent speech; and asked him afterwards:
"What do you think of this thing?"
"I think that in this quick-spreading growth of wondrous transactions, any new miracle may find room. Arsinal, as well, has hitherto been peculiarly lucky in his guesses—far-sighted, if you will. I myself have seen and heard plain impossibilities both on this hill just now and elsewhere, in more or less near relation. … So I would like to adopt the sane, cynical attitude towards the prediction, but cannot. That is what you asked?"
"Aren't you altogether working against your friend's interests? First you have refused my mother's offer, and now you have not yet accepted mine, and you are raising the points of his sanity and propriety with me as if an intimate. Is it because you are coming to understand that these happenings cannot be for him alone?"
"It is so," returned Saltfleet, surprised. "At the beginning of the acquaintance I admired the man tremendously, and still recognise that he possesses valuable qualities enough to endow a dozen others, but within these last twenty-four hours the damned spot of his nature seems to have appeared. I am finding him self-centred." He viewed her more steadily. "You may or may not understand me, but without, on the contrary, self-contempt, nobody, man or woman, can rise past a certain determinate level of willing. …"
"Yes, I have sometimes struggled with that idea. One must be able to despise even one’s own aims, or pay the penalty of everlasting pettiness. This man, perhaps, cannot separate the two things: the service of fate, and the service of the will."
"And you?"
"I am a girl, and the abandoning of my will is naturally easier for me by reason of many physical and social circumstances."
"I don't know if we are speaking the same language. However, you are personally as ready to give up all this business as go on with it?"
"I have no eagerness to go on with it."
"How did it start with you?"
"Devil's Tor has spoken to me for years."
"What has it said?"
"I have long felt that there was a woman's tomb here. For the rest, it has talked to me as music, and wild nature, and silent prayer, talk to one."
"But now you fear?"
"Yes," said Ingrid.
"What do you fear?"
"I have things to lose, in spite of all."
"You are engaged, perhaps?
"It is not announced."
"To Copping?"
"Yes."
He ceased his questions. He felt no disappointment that his grown companionship of a sort with this girl should still thus be easily surpassed, but such a relation to so ordinary a man mystified him, the more that he had heard it so calmly from her own lips. It always had mystified him since he had first surmised it, but now the puzzle seemed to have become active. His problem of the outward walk was already resolved. This business was hers, not Arsinal's, because she, not he, was subdued, noble, unenthusiastic, selfless, in it. Her interests, therefore, not Arsinal's, he must push and guard. Now, however, it was actively complicated by her curious affection, hardly to be understood, for that unamiable, dry-tongued young artist, who should be temperamentally outside everything and must be obstructing her mood at each inch of the way. Thus, since Copping was her choice and presumably she loved him, he should be helping her in her storms and confusions; yet apparently they were only lovers for a quieter time. Was this quieter time—the promise of it—the deep inward ground of her wonderful passiveness, or did that arise from the acquiescence of an unusual nature in what might well seem inevitably advancing tragical events?
The question was brain-spun; not of his wisdom. For in his depths he knew that her noble quietness and standing-back were being produced in her by her consciousness of having been chosen, whether by the blindness or the caprice of fate, for a central rôle in this play of deaths, ghosts, and distant heavens. Tossed by her thousand dark feelings and scraps of feeling, never comprehended by herself, a girl wandering in a night whose quick increase might terrify a strong man, she assuredly could not in these last days and hours be remembering her engagement at all. It was her time of trial. She had no helpers, but her spirit was being left to follow its course. She remained outwardly tranquil, peaceable, approachable; she spoke no hard words of her friends; she shunned nothing, she sought nothing; yet confessed her fear. Admiration for her grew up rapidly in Saltfleet's mind. …
In the long silence, she became restless, and at last said, without looking at him:
"I must go home. Do you wish to take the stone?"
"Thank you, no," was his reply. "I think you should meet Arsinal, for the reason that he may be of assistance to you. But, if you find the suggestion not too strange and impossible, let us cache it somewhere on this Tor, where either can retrieve it at need."
"The only strangeness I find in it is that it should be proposed by you, who unluckily have succeeded in giving certain other people a different impression of you."
"I know; but we need not speak of them."
"We will hide it, then, and afterwards decide who is to have it. It had better be at the further end of the top. Here visitors are sure to come, and disturb things."
Accordingly, they moved off; but Ingrid had not taken many steps before the other noticed the slight limp.
"Have you hurt yourself?" he asked.
"In the thunderstorm that opened the tomb, three evenings ago, Hugh and I were caught by the end of an explosion, and my ankle was sprained; but it is nearly well again."
He pointed behind them. "That, of course, is the tomb entrance?" And when she had replied, "Yes," he went on to inquire:
"You yourself did not go down any part of the way?"
"No."
"You suppose that a woman was buried there?"
"Please do not speak of her," said Ingrid.
But Saltfleet, understanding that that had been her apparition, fell into silence and thoughtfulness. He would not now or at any other time press her for her vision, yet if she had seen a woman, he too had seen one; and how could they not be identical? And that ghost was thus shown to be from the hill's ancient tomb. … She should at least be told his vision of the morning, for that concerned her. She should know all. …
Beyond and below the western edge of the Tor's plateau, they found a rock that might be raised from its bed of turf. Here, while he poised the rock upon its angle, Ingrid put the flint, and then everything was replaced and made inconspicuous. No word was exchanged about the operation during or after it; only, before they came away, Saltfleet, indicating the fog-buried country to the west, asked what lay there.
She told him that the bare moor ran for miles, without roads, houses, or notable landmarks, but only rocks, streams, bogs and heather.
"What is this Tor's history?"
"It has none."
"But why its name?"
"Its stack, that was blown down the other evening, was shaped like a devil's face."
"Was it artificially carved so?"
"It is impossible to decide, but perhaps it was."
"I've been in many strange places in the world," said Saltfleet, "yet certainly in none so strange as this. It has had a very remarkable history, this hill—a part of which it was granted me to see, visibly, w
ith my own eyes, those not many minutes ago. If you care to, we will sit down by the tomb before going back, and I will tell you about it."
Ingrid looked at him with troubled eyes.
"I shall like to hear, but can't return you story for story."
"You have said so already, and I don't ask it."
A few minutes later they sat together on the flat slab facing the valley, and Saltfleet was relating his experience. His account was in the fewest words, and he avoided all picturesqueness, sensation, and departure from the plain facts. It was soon finished. Ingrid's face appeared even whiter than before while she listened to him, but afterwards she made only one comment.
"That sound of waters, then, was what I have heard twice."
"So it has occurred to me as well," replied Saltfleet. "That is only one of the many queer features of the phenomenon. The queerest of all, possibly, is the causation of it. I had nothing occult in my hand or on my person, it was very evidently brought about by your proximity, in plain language, it was from the flint on your lap at the time—I saw it there—yet my vision has not been yours, nor anything like yours. I am to ask you no question. So in this thing, there is a primary and a derived. They differ; and necessarily the derived must be the weaker. You said that yours was terrible. … I am truly sorry for you."
Ingrid had the impulse to tell him, despite her choking inward bond of silence. She suddenly cast her mind back to—Her... and all things else, before and after, this man included, again grew mean and mortal in her sight. …
Upon entering her trance, she had seemed always to have been viewing fearfully that astral shape of preternatural height, standing away from but fronting her in the hole itself of the tomb. She had been wrapped in swathed draperies of an indescribable mode, of the hue of the dark granite beside her. Her appearing flesh had been like the moon. … Then her eyes had fallen upon Ingrid, and for an instant it had been as if she was to speak, but her lips never parted, and no sound came; only, she had signed. The sign—very slow, awful, and beyond meaning—had been the setting of a hand over her heart. …
Ingrid could not impart these things to the man before her. They had already talked too much together, and now she must leave him, or he must leave her. Instead, however, he went on to recount his earlier vision, of another kind, at the inn the evening before.
Words continued to fail her. She got up abruptly, to cover the awkwardness created by her inability, and stood looking away from him, while he regarded her with a glance sidelong and anxious.
"Now there is no more to say between us?" he asked.
"No," her tongue formed voicelessly.
"Then let us go. I will, if I may, bear you company as far as the top of the next hill, but we need not talk for the sake of talking, and after that I will beg permission to go on ahead. Both of us have enough to turn over in our private minds."
Ingrid assented—neither knew how, but not in speech—and they descended from the top of the Tor side-by-side.
Chapter XXIII
THE ANCESTORS
After lunch the two men retired for speech to the upper private room, where Arsinal, contrary to his wont, sat smoking a cigarette nervously, and Saltfleet stood or moved about in undisguised restlessness. The gong had already sounded before the latter's return to the hotel. During lunch itself motoring parties had been present, so that as yet he had had no opportunity of recounting his morning's adventure. Coffee and brandy were now on a tray. Saltfleet was not smoking.
"Yes, Miss Fleming was up there," he repeated; for so much he had told the other at their first remeeting in the lounge, though no more. … He gazed through the window at the foggy street, and added:
"She was in a trance."
"A trance, Saltfleet!"
"Yes. … I presently followed suit."
Arsinal regarded his back in silent perplexity; then said:
"Is this a long story? Is it further to complicate the case, and must I stay here the night?"
"Perhaps. I cannot say. Pray have reasonable patience, and I will get the tale out." He turned round from the window, while continuing. … "I found her rigid and senseless; her eyes open, but blind. When she came to, some while afterwards, she informed me that she had had a vision. As she would not relate its particulars to me, I cannot relate them to you. Her flint, however, was at the time in her hand; and must have brought the state about."
Arsinal frowned. "And your trance, when was that?"
"It seemed to start a minute or so after I had sat down to wait for her waking up, and finished a little before hers; or nearly simultaneously."
"I shall have two or three questions to ask before you proceed. What, would you say, originated yours?"
"I understand it to have been an overflow from hers, by direct telepathy."
"And had yours as well the nucleus of a vision?"
"Yes."
"Can you say, or guess, if these two visions were identical?"
"They were definitely different."
"How do you know that, Saltfleet?"
"Because mine was largely dependent on the existing geography of the place, whereas we were looking different ways. Then, by her later manner, she must have been through something personal and emotional—I judged so, at least—while mine was purely spectacular."
"You described to me a phenomenon in this room last night your vision to-day has been nothing like that?"
"No, quite of another character."
"Then let me hear it."
"I propose not to tell it you, for a different reason."
Arsinal set down his cigarette-end impatiently.
"All this business is so bewildering in itself, Saltfleet, that I would beg you not to add."
"My idea is to simplify, by arriving at an unquestionable explanation. You shall decide. Here we have certain apparitions, caused by either of the stones, singly. Their vividness and wonder have been strongest on Devil's Tor. I suggest, therefore, that you and I repeat the experiment up there, with your flint, as soon as ever you are ready to move off. The hill is three miles out. But the test will be most certain, least open to adulteration by preconception, if you come to it unprepared. …"
"Don't go on. If I can see a thing for myself, I will wait. I shall be ready whenever you are. … So now let us finish the rest speedily. What else passed?—of the matter of the ownership, I mean. Was she in a state to conclude anything? Am I to meet her?"
"Of course, you haven't heard again from the house?"
"Not a word," said Arsinal.
"They could have nothing to say as yet. … Well then, I have kept open that meeting with her, provided she can at all manage it, for five-thirty this afternoon, at Copping's, or another place—she will let us know. Further, I requested a necessary guarantee, to which she consented without demur. Her stone, at this moment, is lying secreted in an unlikely spot on top of the Tor; thus, temporarily, is safe from the mother."
"That was well thought of, Saltfleet. You can show me the spot when we go up. I had better know it."
"It would be a breach, I fancy."
Arsinal bit his lip.
"I was not to understand that. However, it will not be brought away by the other side before a meeting?"
"I have asked no assurance."
"It was casual. … Yet I have but to persuade this girl that my claim is good, and then we may take it, regardless of her mother's attitude?"
"As things are, she is to talk to her mother, and abide by her decision."
"So that it is you, not I, who have probably dropped the bone for its reflection in the water!" Arsinal’s tone was suddenly sharp, as he shot the other an unpleasant glance. "You have taken it on yourself to decline an offer that was all I needed, presumably just to keep alive your acquaintance with this young woman, who now proves herself to be quite ordinary. No doubt, she is sensible to obey her mother, and I have no quarrel with her, but it is a thousand pities that you could not have used your eyes to better advantage."
; "She strikes you, from a distance, as ordinary? ... No. A strong agitation and a wonderful personal passiveness in combination can never be ordinary. Her mood, too, has swung round since yesterday. Now she seems really so indifferent about the destination of her stone, that she could offer it to me rather wearily there and then, on my assurance that her mother was to let us have it."
"You dared not refuse such an invitation as well!"
"I felt no inclination to accept it. Her mother had promised the stone on a condition that I had already broken—only half innocently. Then, if I saw a child giving away a diamond ring, I would put a restraining hand on its arm; and so here. It perhaps is to be of later urgency to her—neither you nor I can tell ... Also I won't be outdone in generosity by anyone. … And still another consideration presented itself to my mind..."
"What?"
"I've somehow come to regard it as necessary that you should meet her; but once both stones are in your holding, such a meeting becomes distinctly more disagreeable in promise."
"I cannot follow."
Saltfleet returned him stare for stare.
"Nor do I greatly care to be more explicit."
"Either you should leave superfluous riddles, or not speak at all."
"Then let us drop it."
There was a pause, during which Saltfleet examined a discoloured oil painting on the wall, while Arsinal sat frowning and vexed.
"It will be especially painful to me," he recommenced, "if your habitual character of directness is to be affected with the rest. It can do neither of us good for you to remain perversely silent on a topic of importance to both, such as I conclude this to be."
"The risk has been avoided, Arsinal, whereas our relations are quite raw enough. Lift no curtain!"
"Is it that you can be resuming a fantastic idea hinted at by you in our after-breakfast talk? Has it to do with those recorded prophecies?"
"Yes; since you will have it. Nor is my sanity in doubt, when I bring into the open the circumstance that these same prophecies have included the mention of a woman."
Arsinal’s face had quickly flushed. The other came over to him, to pursue the altercation more quietly and effectively.
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