Arsinal leant forward in his chair at last to Peter, who was alone on the divan, smoking restlessly.
"It is hard to know how much I need say to you, Mr. Copping; and, to tell the truth, we have been half-hoping you might have some communication for us in your pocket. … You prefer to reserve the direct answer to that. It is legitimate to ask, however, if you have now seen Miss Fleming?"
"I haven't."
"Nor been to the house since her return from Devil's Tor?"
"Yes, I spoke with her mother."
"But didn't Miss Fleming appear at all?"
"She was lying prostrated in her room," said Peter, with a dry bitterness. "A girl is not a man... though Mr. Saltfleet here may care nothing for the difference."
Saltfleet frowned. "I am sorry for the prostration, but am hardly responsible for it."
"Not immediately; but you are an increasing part of the whole responsible cause of her whole condition. We won't go into that."
"She was to notify us, one way or the other, about a meeting for to-day," said Arsinal. "But we have had nothing from her... and so, Mr. Saltfleet conceiving a very strong sense that a personal application at the house would be taken amiss, we have come to you, as the only other recourse within our means. I know that any such meeting was negatived earlier; Miss Fleming offered the hope, however, that her mother might reconsider it."
"Certainly you must be hard up for shifts, to come here! I thought I had made my attitude sufficiently clear this morning. A set interview between yourself and Miss Fleming is both unnecessary and improper, and therefore I don't approve of one, and won't lend myself to one. You are no friends of mine, gentlemen."
"A meeting is not indispensable, but I wish to learn where I stand."
"I warned you this morning, and you would not listen. You can't take and expect to be given as well."
"That is your view, then," said Arsinal more coldly. "Pray what is Mrs. Fleming's?"
"How do you know that I am still acting for her?"
"I don't, of course—yet it is scarcely possible that a difference of opinion between you has brought about such a breach that you are washing your hands of the matter. Rather, Mr. Copping—I am going upon a certain reluctance and reticence in your present manner... you may have been begged actually to communicate a message to us, and are still debating its advisability in your mind. …"
"You are acute. Doesn't it make me out rather weak, though?"
"I should need to know the circumstances. If you have a message, I can only suggest it will do little good to seek to suppress it."
"Perhaps. As a matter of fact, I was lying down, revolving it all, when your knock sounded. The message was a quite good guess of yours. Only, to whom should it be said to belong—to the sender, to the intended recipient, or to the agent? My sole pay for its delivery would consist in the spectacle of the consummation of a bad blunder, as I see it."
"I have but to wait on Mrs. Fleming, to get it from her own lips." He turned to Saltfleet. "I personally have mismanaged nothing with her, that she should refuse to see me."
"On this information, no... still, you'll have to go alone."
Peter gave an uneasy stretch. "I'll not put you to the trouble—having registered my protest. … But I'd better explain my own office first. I never blessed the proposition. Mrs. Fleming was so firmly insistent, however... so in another place altogether, if I could try to describe a mood in her that I haven't known before... that I might as well not have been occupying her time. In any case, whosoever the messenger, the decision is hers, no one else's. I gave the sort of promise to see you, just to get back here and reflect in quietness what it all stood for... and if you conceive, gentlemen, that I was thereby balking your business—you must... or you may choose to give me credit for a pause not of malice, and that, if I am at all acquainted with my own incentives, will be nearer the mark. Perhaps you will find a reason for flatly declining the scheme: then you will have me pulling with you. I take it, for instance, that you are extraordinarily in earnest in wanting what you do want, whereas this may be thought... pageantry. I don't assert that Mrs. Fleming is going for the pictorial effect, but it happens that I cannot visualise her plan without a picture—that I wish was only absurd. …
"The purport is, that the little property all this pother is about, left behind on Devil's Tor today—supposing that you haven't retrieved it already—shall be delivered to you two on the spot, by Mrs. Fleming herself, in her legal right, at nine to-morrow evening. Miss Fleming as well shall be there, to stop further difficulties from you on that score; and I, at my option, to see fair play—or anything... The proviso that you shan't attempt more communications with Miss Fleming is withdrawn, since you so obviously mean to please yourselves in the matter. She will just keep away from you, except on this single occasion in her mother's company; and her undertaking to the effect is regarded as security enough. … Then, once being given your thing, you shall make all reasonable speed to evacuate the district; and return no more. Thus a business exceedingly dubious and disagreeable, launched in a tragedy, will be dispatched for good and all. There should be a less elaborate means, in my view; but this is Mrs. Fleming's solution."
The callers exchanged looks.
"It cannot be this evening?" inquired Arsinal.
"No. Miss Fleming is unfit."
"What is her attitude towards the plan?"
"I learn that she is as indifferent to all programmes as a nearly complete physical collapse can make her."
Then Saltfleet spoke, glancing doubtfully away. "Only, there is never an end to it; and here we are being invited to wait for a ladder to a fruit within reach. The absurdity, as you call it, may pass, and the delay is of small account, but how came Mrs. Fleming by such an extravagance? I believe you that her daughter has had no hand in it. This stone is offered us unconditionally; yet we are not to be allowed to walk up there now and fetch it away."
"I hear you had your chance this morning."
"So I did, but then I wished to leave open Miss Fleming's talk with Arsinal."
"Don't you take your engagements rather lightly?"
"You know if there was one, Mr. Copping. In any event, on a bad road one cannot decide steps ahead."
"I can't acquiesce that you are under any moral obligation to choose Miss Fleming's next steps for her. She has surely well-wishers and advisers of her own. … Anyway, she doesn't now want a meeting to talk."
"But that is new." He shrugged, then rose to move to the window, and look out into the garden of weeds. Peter glanced malevolently after him.
Arsinal addressed him:
"Nevertheless, Mr. Saltfleet's question was the natural one to ask. Before replying to Mrs. Fleming's invitation—I don't know if the reply is to be transmitted through you... ?"
"I will tell her."
"... We must be made acquainted with the whole intention. As Mr. Saltfleet suggests, we have but to fetch the stone away. Has so very simple a procedure not occurred to Mrs. Fleming? or what else has she in mind?"
"Why, I think we are all to lose our wits, but the women first! ... Doubtless, it is largely a case of impulsion. I know of no reason... but ghosts and influences are lively on the Tor, so she must see them too. … One cannot even describe it as an indefensible whimsy."
"Then she has no pity on her daughter?"
"An apt question! ... Yet it must be exactly her alarm for her daughter that has driven her to this caprice... seeking to probe a mischief rather too underground for normal eyesight."
"What do you fear from—such a caprice, Mr. Copping, that you should be so opposed to it, even to the extent of nearly suppressing the message? You called it just now, a 'bad blunder'."
"It is one, thus. Accidents, incidents, phenomena, disturbances spiritual and mental, in a series seemingly connected—in these past days they have been selecting certain persons among us for attack. Drapier was most venomously attacked, and yesterday killed. So there is to be no quarter given. I myself h
ave been attacked, more mercifully; or slightingly. Mr. Saltfleet here has not come off scot-free. But the most frequent, and, short of death, the most vicious attacks hitherto have been directed against a girl, a child, delicate more than robust... who sees no escape for herself, nor any around her who will consent to pocket their curiosity for the good of her soul's health. Now, in four-and-twenty horns longer, she is cited to the seat and stronghold of these congregated phantoms, that know how to hurl the elements, and recreate the no longer possible, and bring back chaos to the world, and move whatsoever feet and hearts they desire... for my speech rises to poetry, yet I defy you to indicate one exaggeration in this account of the Devil's Tor elf-hall. … Here, then, at the week's very end and as a fitting climax to its five or six days' flaying of the fair skin of the world for that number of persons, the chief victim—also happening to be the most defenceless and innocent—is cited; no doubt, to receive her final sentence and punishment, since much more her spirit cannot endure. … I cannot proceed in this vein; but ask yourself if you find the blunder to be other than a bad one! I will not suppose that you don't understand every word of what I have said."
Arsinal quietly called across to his associate at the window, who, at the first special sound of his voice, turned round.
"Saltfleet, are you willing to have our afternoon's business touched on?"
"Yes, if you wish."
"You used an expression—'ghosts and influences'—Mr. Copping. The 'ghosts' I perhaps could talk of too, but I have no clear notion whether, by 'influences', you mean the intangible impressing of imaginations, or a second order of more definite phenomena: not ghosts, but not mere atmosphere either."
"You have been up, during the day?"
"Yes; with Mr. Saltfleet, this afternoon."
"You have brought nothing away? You have both been talking as if you hadn't; but that might be to prepare me. You are offering it as the simplest way out, so perhaps you have already done it? I shall be very glad if you have; but if you have, please don't waste my time, gentlemen."
"The deposit is still there, unless another has taken it."
"Then it is almost a pity that you should be so honest where honesty could well be dispensed with, not quite so honest in observing contracts. … The word, 'influences', as applied to Devil's Tor, slipped out as a more or less comprehensive one. On the one hand, you have the hill's attraction: persons must foot it there, once, twice, and perpetually. On the other hand, there is its spell, acting on one person through another. I have no doubt it is so. Without such a magnetic aid, a day—a day and a half—would be all too short a time. …"
"Here is a riddle!" said Saltfleet, gruffly.
"It is my advantage, that I have to do with intelligent men."
"You take another, to use your excellent control of language to shave dangerous corners, Mr. Copping. I shall have to be more direct for us both. You charge me with improperly keeping alive Miss Fleming's interest in a forbidden case? What concern is it of mine to do so? And who is now to feed her interest? You, who have brought us this unholy arrangement for to-morrow? or I, who would elect to stand altogether out of it, were it not for other circumstances? ... But you are doubly inexact; for supposing I had in any way been able to coerce Miss Fleming, and were still merely this Tor's instrument or machine, as you have just said, then where would be my iniquity? ... In fact, in such a weird business, for which my life has afforded me no preparation whatever, the chances are that she would be far more a principal than I. I am little accustomed to be a vent for the malignity of strangers who have happened to find me and their trouble on the same spot. From Miss Fleming's mother I must endure it, no doubt; but you are a man, Mr. Copping, and my patience has generally been thin."
"You would stand out of to-morrow's settlement, but for other circumstances: then what are they?"
"When you know as much as I, we shall discuss it."
Peter, with an unwonted spot of red in his cheeks, relapsed to silent smoking; but Arsinal had glanced sharply at his alienated friend. He guessed the allusion, and thought to turn it.
"Indeed a great deal of this electricity in all of us is arising from our talking in the dark. Let me set the example of openness, Mr. Copping, even though my confession be of matters such as have come to be treated too falsely and apologetically in our heavy working world. For, undoubtedly, the supernatural must be all around us and is true enough, were it not that for the most part it has fallen into wrong hands—into the hands of the gullers and the too-easily gulled. …
"On his return from your Tor this morning, Mr. Saltfleet told me of a psychic adventure he had had up there, in company with Miss Fleming. Your own words seem to imply that you have had the other side of the story from her mother. Whether it be so or not, I found myself sufficiently interested to wish to see something of this haunting with my eyes, so we went up together after lunch. … In a state of trance, I witnessed very strange things, from near the foot of the hill, just above the stream. The whole mass should therefore be subject to such manifestations. … I can't spend time now on describing the particulars of my vision, but I was carried back to immense antiquity; while Mr. Saltfleet saw something, not the same. I am telling it, to invite you to an equal candour. There is a process of wireless telegraphy called syntonising: the despatcher and receiver are tuned to the same wave-lengths. Let us employ that process here, Mr. Copping. Apart from what you may have learnt to-day, what, if anything, do you directly know of the Tor's wonders you have referred to so eloquently, so curiously as well? ..."
"You may not have been the only ones privileged; but what then? Are we to shake hands, or be awarded medals?"
"Were you alone?"
"If you will insist on a particular occasion... whereas my relation to the Tor's activities is rather that of compound to compound... no, I was accompanied. It was before Drapier's catastrophe, and he was there. We weren't together."
"Perhaps one of the stones was in his hand?"
"So I think."
"And you saw—what?"
"I saw a Stone-Age funeral party."
"And Miss Fleming—what has she seen up there, to-day or at any other time?"
"I don't know."
Arsinal paused; then went on:
"Thank you for your sincerity... and simplicity. … Thus it is put beyond doubt that these hauntings are objective, not figments of the fancy. But also it is established that we may scarcely dare to set ourselves against them; and I think you do wrong, Mr. Copping, to allow a persistent defeating of your will in the matter to swell into ill-will against persons. At another time, I could tell you much else, to demonstrate to you how broad this great general movement of the invisible should be; then anger, I am sure, would depart from a mind of which it cannot be a habit. Meanwhile, what exactly is it that you are asking us to do? I shall say without concealment that I can't afford to go on risking Mrs. Fleming's displeasure. My sole aim in these negotiations is the procuring of that stone. Put it in my hand to-day, and cancel the Tor meeting to-morrow in any fashion you please; but the stone I must have."
"Saltfleet knows where it is"—the dropping of the title for the first time was noticeable—"let him go and bring it away, as suggested. I will take any responsibility."
Saltfleet came back to them from the window, but did not sit down.
"Being only a party to a trust, I cannot do that."
"Are you a married man?" Peter seemed to smile, but it was rather a contortion of transition and unpleasantness.
"No. Why?"
"I am throwing myself on your charity, and would have appealed to the relation. Have mercy on this unfortunate girl. I address you, because you are the recurrent and permanent block. Don't go for the stone if it's against honour; but at least suggest another means. Stop this wretched gathering, by... raising objections—or accepting and failing to turn up in time... I don't care how it is. Miss Fleming and I will see to it that you lose nothing, gentlemen, by the underground frustration. I don't
ask you even to offend her mother: there is plenty of difference between disappointing and slighting."
But Saltfleet remained cold.
"The nature of the transactable business up there would seem not to require the attendance of Miss Fleming. That should be your way out. It is of course your affair, not ours."
"She has promised her mother to go with her. That may be the tap-root of the entire idea; and Mrs. Fleming, after all, may have an excellent insight into the demands of the situation. She wants to discover what this appalling tangle is, that is so rapidly paralysing her daughter’s functions and making of her present hours an unutterable misery; and so she is inspired to bring everything together, in such a way as to leave nothing out—you two men, and her daughter, and my humble self, and Devil's Tor, and Drapier's stone. From these psychic and psychological ingredients, she will attempt the construction of a diagnosis, that she hopes may suggest the remedy and bring the cure. … I do not agree with her that the best method of studying a serious disease is to heighten its ravages."
"You have the general intuition," said Saltfleet, "and, like all general intuitions, it is both true and false, right and wrong. Accordingly, there is this distinction between our two attitudes towards Miss Fleming’s coming to a meeting on the proposed lines: you feel a danger to her, Mr. Copping; I nearly know of one. But the danger presenting itself in my mind is probably the one of all others you have never dreamt of. …"
He proceeded, while Peter fixed him with his steady greenish eyes of genius:
"The quite likely accident of another occult seizure on the Tor would assuredly be a painful enough shock to her system, already much shaken; but would not kill her, or more than slightly affect the future course of her life. Neither are we bandits, to terrify or distress her on another account. Her mother would be there; and you. The flint is to be surrendered to us, so that there could be no scene of violence on that score. These are all the common threats to Miss Fleming. They are negligible, as against the inconvenience of attempting to prevent her attendance: she has promised her mother, you say; I fancy her sense of the supernatural in these things will be a bar to the retractation of her promise on purely cautionary grounds. We must make up our minds, therefore, that she will accompany her mother to-morrow evening. Yet a peril for her does exist, that will render the action most inadvisable unless a safeguard can be found. And it can be found; but will depend upon the benevolence of an individual."
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