Fern Seed (Saturday Evening Post)/Part 2
Here's Your Old House for You. How Do You Like It?"
VII
THE service next morning seemed to drag. Dim light from a world hidden in fog made the windows gray but served only to deepen the gloom and the stone coldness of the church. Leonard fell prey to a mood anything but devout. Everyone in the village had come there to cough. The parson, a worthy and even a genial fellow creature on week days, disguised himself with a Sunday manner like that of Cowper's fine puss gentleman; and when in the gloom a conscientious choir performed the Athanasian Creed their chant seemed to heave stumbling blocks more than were needful across the thorny path to heaven. Corsant drove away these indecorous fancies. A crick in the back was his reward, and both legs went to sleep, for the pew, a narrow shelf of hard old oak, cut him to the haunch bone. He grew restless. Moreover, Grayland had promised to meet him before church, to bring his jacket, and had failed. This fog outside threatened to become rain. Altogether the world was too much for him.
I'd soar and touch the heavenly strings
And vie with Gabriel, when he sings
In notes almost divine,
In notes almo-ost divine.
From some pew behind, an excellent bass voice joined the hymn. Its vibration came deep, as if stirring the floor. Leonard thought he knew that voice. Later, glancing round, he saw Grayland's long frame relaxed in an attitude of patience.
The last man in church and nearest the door, George leaned his head on the rear wall and pointing his thin beak of nose upward, dreamily studied the rafters. He looked like a black wolf, too lazy to harm the sheepfold.
They met outside the churchyard.
"You singing about Gabriel," said Leonard as they walked on, "after robbing him! What were you in a church for by daylight?"
"Does a man no harm to chin-chin joss now and then," replied the heathen, grinning. "Got as much right to sing those words as Sam Medley had to write 'em. Soaring and bumping amongst the heavenly strings! Put the whole orchestra out, he might, and then it would be a medley for fair!"
He stooped toward a hedge and, from a cranny where no bird could have well hidden its nest, produced by some conjuring trick a parcel and Leonard's jacket.
"I'll set you on your way," he continued, striding along with these under his arm. "No, you don't often catch me there—more's the pity. Like perching on a hymn-book rack. Those carvings amongst the roof, they do tell us a heap of old things worth hearing. But then, to sing you the multiplication table, believe-that-or-be-damned fashion. No, no! It don't persuade a chap."
In these pagan sentiments Leonard found an echo of his own.
"We think alike, George, about some things."
His companion's bright black eyes darted, sidelong, a very quizzical glance.
"That's good—we ought to."
"Why?"
Grayland ignored the question, or failed to hear. He began talking at random as they went. The fog was now thinning and whitening, to lift. As they crossed the river in one of Ashkettle's boats, a gray disk of sun glowed high among streaming vapors; and when they had climbed the first hill on Leonard's journey, the sea lay sparkling behind them, all the green country billowing before, dappled with a few last shadows that scudded inland.
"Here—short cut." Grayland, turning from the lane, struck into a footpath traced only by a wavering line on the moister grass of the fields. "This will save you many a step. Eat and drink first."
He chose a dry rock on a knoll, sat down, and opening his parcel, brought forth sandwiches and a flask.
"The grub is Cousin Laurence's," he explained. "Also the whiskey: it's genuine Sma' Still."
They pledged each other and fed, with sea-air appetite.
"Troubled about your cousin," said the provider of this feast. "You saw he was lame, yesterday, and looks frail? That's where he was tortured by those devils."
Corsant waited, but his friend sat brooding, with dark cheeks flushed and eyes that beheld something evil far off.
"Who were they?"
"Some damn tribe. A white man put 'em up to it. I haven't caught that noble sport yet," said George very softly, but his voice ached with a passion of revenge. "There's nine or ten of 'em will never torture again. We pulled their stings for good. I happened to be with the rescue party." He woke from musing and ate his sandwich with peculiar tidiness, like a man who abhorred crumbs.
"Your cousin labored," said he, "in the vineyard of the abomination of desolation, out there alone, the awfulest holes in the East. His work, you know, was like good housekeeping—well done, you never see or hear of it; undone, there's gurry all over the shop. Ay, and blood too! He did more'n a dozen of your political agents. Unattached; not recognized—couldn't be. Why, that boy," he cried in admiration—"nobody will ever know what that boy has suffered and done! The quiet little beggar! I told you he could wipe his boots on George Grayland any day. So he can!"
The speaker jumped up, strode back and forth over the grass to vent enthusiasm in action, then returned and flung down on the rock again.
"I'm sorry," declared Leonard, "if my coming here upset his plans at all. You said last night"
"No fault o' yours," growled George. "It did, but just by happen-so. He thought to slip down here, do a flit, no one the wiser. Hadn't been home since a kid. Well, here was you, weeks ahead, taking his place blindfold, the news going round from mouth to mouth. Can't be helped, that's all—fate—luck."
"Bad luck," said Corsant.
"Bad or good," was the reply. "Never can tell till it plays out."
Their mound, a high point in the landscape, had nothing round it but grass and open sky; not a bush, not a handful of leaves anywhere near, and from sea landward to the farthest hill no living creature but a titlark that fluttered and twittered in the sunshine two fields away. Yet Grayland, before he spoke again, looked on all sides carefully as though in a room. He lowered his voice.
"What lays heavy on my mind," said he, "is this: The polecat we spoke of just now, nobleman who had our boy tortured and maimed, will follow on down here if he's got wind. Good reason why. Expect him any day. He's a dirty fighter, and dangerous. Well, so'm I. Nothing would suit my book better"
Grayland's powerful and shapely hands grappled some imaginary bulk, wrenched it in two, and cast away the pieces.
"But I can't always be on deck. And with Laurence Corsant sick as he is, needing rest—well, I'm off. Here's your coat. That beast may be prowlin' round the house now."
They rose. Leonard unbuttoned and was removing his namesake's jacket, when suddenly he stopped, and pulled it on again.
"No. Why swap?" he asked. "Here's an offer. I did the damage, so give me a chance to repair it."
"What do you mean? How?"
"Mr. Laurence Corsant needs a rest. Suppose we let him have one. I took his place blindfold, you say. Now, if he's in danger, suppose I took it again for a time, blinkers off. Would that help?"
Grayland stared.
"Goliath o' Gath!" he cried.
"You and I, George, would make a strong team. Me the bait, and you to land the fish."
The older man laughed.
"They call me wild," said he, "but I begin to believe, alongside of you, son, I'm a fuzzy lamb on wheels. Danger, yes. Come now, bar nonsense!"
"You bet, bar nonsense!" replied the younger. "It would be larks."
"Might not."
George shook his head. "You run along, boy. See that gorse a-shining on the next brow? Turn to your right round that. I'm off."
Halfway down the slope, Leonard heard footsteps come flying after him. He turned, and saw that Grayland's long legs could cover ground amazingly.
"Bait, I'm tempted to use you." His friend pulled up, and clapped him on the shoulder, grinning mischief. "You'll hear from me to-morrow or day after. If 'twill work, I'll put you on the hook like old Izaak, as if I loved ye."
Turning to go, George had a second afterthought.
"You'd better know, in case," he added—"you'd better know. Bait, that our fish is that white-eyed, wooden-jointed pike you saw in Gino's café, Street of the Sword. So long!"
With that he set off running again, up the hill as if it were level ground. On the sky line he flourished his arm in farewell, and dropped below the crest.
Leonard went down alone toward his landmark, the shining gorse. With no lack of thoughts for company, he traveled the hillsides, now so far aloft that he could count the whitewashed stones of the coast guard's path like a bead necklace unstrung along the cliffs, now deep in a valley checkered with fields of pink and pale green, where the air boiled quivering up the slopes. An hour's walking brought him to a road that glared and sweltered. The afternoon grew hot. Sometimes, but rarely, he passed under shade and verdure in a street of cottages, all still as though abandoned; sometimes, tearing the Sunday calm into tatters, destroying a mile or two of straight solitude, a motor car roared by with dust and stink; but most of the way and the country he had to himself, till heat and lonesome plodding turned monotonous. Once, among the endless show of hedge flowers, he found some white sprays unknown to him: rather pretty, he thought, like dwarf lilies run wild; and while resting, he plucked and pocketed a few to show Mrs. Merle later and ask their name of that wise woman.
The tramping became more and more tedious, but Grayland's short cut over grass had saved many steps indeed. Well before sunset he mounted a rise, and saw the ugly blotch where his journey should end—a huddle of slate roofs glowering bluish under hot sunset, murky with the dregs of Saturday smoke.
"Now bath and dinner."
The hotel to which he asked his way through grimy streets, frowned soberly from its grand portico; but within was all cleanliness, quiet, and sober welcome. His room proved regally spacious. He was the more surprised, therefore, to find while undressing that it reeked with onions.
"The kitchen can't be so near? Phew!"
Leonard flung open the windows, took his bath, and returning met the reek still there, worse than ever.
"Vile! The stuff's on my clothes, too!"
From his pocket he tugged a clean shirt, tightly rolled. With it came tumbling the remnants of those pretty wayside lilies. One sniff as they lay on the carpet was enough.
"Whee!" Leonard gathered them gingerly, and hurled them into the street. "Wild onions or wild garlic. Foh! Shame on you, posies."
Laughing, he leaned out at window until aired enough to go downstairs among his fellow men. From a big leather chair, sheltered by hothouse fronds, he watched them while waiting for dinner. Amid the usual come and go of a lobby, two small children drew his attention, brother and sister, both dazed by the great world, shy, and dreamy with wondering expectation. They were charming, thought Leonard. A voice behind the leaves caught his ear.
"Look? I tol' you so. Look there—Corsant."
He turned his head quickly. Two men stood behind him, at the desk. He saw only the back of the taller one, and the face of the shorter, which was round, dark and chubby. Neither had spoken to him. Both were looking carelessly over the register, as if to pass the time.
"Shut up, you fool! I can read."
They went lounging off toward the street door. Leonard's ambush of leaves hung in the way, and when he rose for a better view it was too late. The children scampered across in that direction to twine themselves round the legs of a newcomer, a handsome bronzed young sailor daddy, just off his ship, who beyond a doubt was glad to see them. Mother followed more sedately.
Leonard forgave the obstruction.
VIII
A SOLEMN gentleman in a cage, with a brazen scoop, ladled forth much money and rendered his opinion that the morning was overcast. Leonard accepted the opinion, weighted his namesake's pocket with the money and having thus quickly finished the business which had brought him so many miles on foot, began his homeward journey straight from the bank door. A memorial clock in a dumpy little tower, staring blear-eyed through fog, rang the half hour past ten as he crossed the square. Few persons were abroad. In belated stillness and gloom, a kind of Black Monday reigned.
To gain variety in his return, Leonard chose another route; but for three hours of good tramping he saw no more than the green borders along its way, the same hedge, the same branches of elm, ash, thorn, or beech, the same margin of field continually repeated through a world of smoky drift and dampness. At times this drift brought with it a sound or two: sheep bleated far aloft, harness leather creaked near by, a plowman upbraided his trampling horses, a dog barked in the distance, a sea gull miaowled overhead. But these evidences of life unseen came rarely, and for miles together he heard nothing except his own footsteps, saw nothing to right or left.
Illustration: "Oh, I Say! Could You Help Me for a Moment?"
Early afternoon found him hungry and steaming hot. The road plunged down some valley, the narrowness of which made itself felt by a more sultry moisture, and seen in patches of hillside floating high through the fog. At bottom here Leonard came without warning, almost between strides, into another village quiet as though forsaken. Midway in the street rose an elm. By its trunk, less graceful but no less round and erect, stood a lone figure, a constable meditating on the absence of crime.
"In uffish thought," was Leonard's commentary. He approached the elm, greeted the thinker, and asked where food was to be had.
"Well, sir," said the constable, slowly, as if revolving in his mind a Homeric catalog of taverns, "you might try the Bottle of Hay. In fact it's the only one. That little house yonder with door open."
He pointed stiffly down street, to the far end. Corsant thanked him and passed on.
The cluster of cottages hidden under green leaves and gray vapor had swum into view quietly as part of a dream, and even now, though plain, solid, built four-square to last, it kept a dreamy old look. Sleep had been poured on its head; an exposition of slumber lay warm on the gables. Mother Goose might have lived and written here—nothing happened since her day. The Bottle of Hay, a beetle-browed tavern, sat squinting down at a causeway and a veiled strip of marsh.
Leonard stepped through the open door, but nearly backed out again at once. After so tidy a street, this interior was downright scandal. Round the greasy wainscot ran a black frieze of smudge where heads had lolled; glutinous rings marked every table top, shining like the trail of a slug; the gloom was close, hot, rank scented, and the floor swam with puddles of Saturday night's leaving.
"Yes, sir." A dreary, slack woman, neither old nor young, dragged herself forward from some lurking hole. "Good evening, sir. What can I get you?"
Leonard paused on the threshold. He took a kind of shamefaced compassion on her at first glance, a helpless being, foredoomed. Besides, the next food would be some ten miles farther. A long course of Chinese inns had left him hardened.
"Whatever you have best, please."
Resigning himself, he hung up jacket and cap on a peg in the vestibule. By pulling the inner door wide open, he could sit behind it as in a private box, and perhaps forget the rest of the room. By pushing outward a stubborn window over his head, he caught more fresh air, at any rate, than had passed that way in years. Tobacco ashes covered his table, but he blew them away, spread an old newspaper for his cloth, and sat down to swelter in patience. After a time, he heard the woman returning.
"Here, behind the door!" he called.
"Oh, sir, I thought you were gone!"
She spoke as if that would have been the more natural discovery, and coming round the door, brought her best into his corner. It was bad cheese, worse bread, and excellent beer in a sticky mug.
Leonard paid her, intending to drink promptly, then carry his food along with him outdoors. The woman had not dragged herself out of the room again, however, before a sudden whirring noise came rapidly down the street, grew into a sputtering roar, and ceased abruptly. Two voices beneath Leonard's window exchanged words that he did not catch, and soon afterward feet trampled in the vestibule.
Remembering that his jacket hung there and contained almost all his money, Leonard peeped through the chink of the door. He saw two pairs of khaki-colored legs go by.
"Beer," said a harsh voice in the room. "And bread; and be quick about it."
Chairs creaked. A man sighed.
"Ah, comme j'ai soif! Bon sang, je suis tout mouille!" he declared plaintively. "Il faut rester ici pour"
The first voice broke in, growling: "Tu as bien souffert, pauvre ange! Bah, j'en ai assez, de tes malheurs. C'est le micmac, ça. Mais attention, écoule"
The talk flowed on in undertones. Leonard, finishing his ale, heard enough to know that the accent of both men was barbarous. They could not be French. It struck him as odd that they should sit there earnestly employing a language foreign to them both. He pressed his temple against the greasy wainscot, brought one eye to the chink of the door, and so looked through, along the wall.
Facing him, three yards away, sat the little chubby man who had read his name aloud from the hotel book last night. The fellow now wore misfit cycling garb, dust-colored, wrinkled, and sweaty. He mopped his dark cheeks with a handkerchief none too clean, and glowed like a furnace. Of his companion Leonard could see only half a shoulder.
"Missed him? Till now, yes. But he must have gone this road: we tried the other far enough. If we don't overtake him, what then? Keep straight ahead, and be there waiting, on the ground beforehand."
Thus, in bad French and always harshly, the man to whom the shoulder belonged was grumbling, when some object outdoors fell with a crash.
"There goes your motorcycle again!" he cried. "I told you to prop it, imbecile!"
The speaker jumped up from table, and marched out, cursing. A moment later he returned, more slowly, and appeared to halt near the threshold.
Leonard bent forward. Aslant through his good practicable cranny he spied, in the vestibule, a rather tall man angrily pulling off his coat. His motions, though energetic, were stiff and muscle-bound. While tossing the garment over a peg, the stranger beheld Laurence Corsant's old ruddy-brown tweed hanging there. He gave a perceptible start, pounced on it, handled, scrutinized the cloth like a tailor, then quickly turned to look all about.
His face, his pale gray eyes full of shifty light, were unmistakable. Here within arm's reach stood George's polecat, the man who had gone sneering through Gino's café in Sword Street.
Next moment, cool and swift, he was rummaging in the jacket. Leonard, with great indignation, saw his own belongings pulled out, scanned, then by flying fingers transferred into the pockets of the stained yellow coat alongside.
"Smiling, are you?" thought the young man. "You'll smile other side your mouth in half a jiffy." He sat still, waiting. The pickpocket entered the room on tiptoe. "Psst! Kamsa!" He startled the chubby one with a whisper. "Our man's here in this house!"
Leonard was quick in action, light on his feet. Without a sound behind the door, he climbed upon the table—the bare end, taking care not to touch the newspaper—and wriggled through the window like an eel.
"Is he, though, this man of yours?"
The street lay empty and Mother Gooselike as before. Under his great elm tree the constable, in profile, strictly meditated.
"Shan't disturb you, my boy. We'll do our own law. Tooth for tooth."
From the doorstep he heard that pair still buzzing vehemently at their table. He stole to the row of pegs, reversed the legerdemain, and emptied his foe's pockets. There was no time for choosing of property. Leonard took all that came to hand—papers, money, anything—crammed it inside his shirt, took jacket and cap and slid outdoors again.
"A good row would be rather fun," he thought. "I've a notion"
Just then the inner door slammed. They were searching behind it in his private box the corner. He laughed.
"No, a jape. A gentle jape were best in this hot weather."
Two motorcycles leaned against the front of the house. Each had as fine a leather tool pouch as man could wish. Leonard procured some tools. He did not hurry. A deliberate humor of deviltry inspired him.
"All my life I've longed to ruin one of these beastly things." He stripped off the first saddle, then the second. "No time like the present. Never get such a good chance again." With a pretty little spanner, he gathered a handful or two of vital nuts, which he threw broadcast away. Tire after tire fizzed. "It's a pleasure."
On a green bank where the nuts had scattered, humble wayside lilies grew, white and fairylike.
"Just the thing! My dear old posies. Garlic and onions for dressing!" He picked a handsome bunch of them, and returned to the door. That fellow's cycling tunic had shown a rip in the lining. He found it again, thrust his floral tribute well down inside, and patted all smooth.
"C'est le bouquet, messieurs!"
Even then his devil craved something more. He could hear a throaty voice in the kitchen, haranguing or calling the landlady. It seemed a pity not to improve this occasion. Leonard clothed himself, and then opened the inner door.
"Bonjour, monsieur." He politely doffed his cap. "Il fait bien chaud."
At the table by the wall sat his little round rascal, with handkerchief now tucked like a bib under his oily chops. This and the swaddling folds of his gabardine made him resemble a depraved infant, a dark goblin child.
"Ah, ah!" he stammered. A look of stupid cunning crept into his eyes. "Yes, vairy 'ot, sir. 'Ow tit you know we were Freynsch?"
"I don't," said Leonard, "because I heard you talking it."
He Saw Only the Back of The Taller One, and the Face of the Shorter, Which Was Round, Dark and Chubby
This logic appeared to confound the man in the bib, who looked behind him as though for help, then stared at Leonard once more. It was evident he could not descry the face of his visitor, against the light.
"Oh! Ah?" he mumbled.
Leonard began to close the door, but leaned halfway in, smiling. "Will you give your friend a message?" he said. "Mr. Corsant's compliments, and best wishes for a pleasant walk home again. Mr. Corsant will be at the same hotel where he was last night—oh, and will you remember? Tell him Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow-bone."
The man had sprung to his feet, stood wavering, uncertain whether to charge forward or run back.
Leonard did not wait, but closed the door.
On the causeway he stopped long enough to throw their saddles into a pool of marsh water; then he ran on, chuckling through the fog, which closed and swept away all trace of things behind.
IX
EARLY next morning, as Leonard came out from breakfast, he found Mrs. Merle, her Maltese cat, the bullfinch, and the bull terrier forming a family group on the doorstep. In bright sunshine near by George Grayland stood talking.
"Yes, we'll have rain. Good morning, sir." He glanced up and made a slight motion with one hand, a forward snap of the forefinger. Most men would have failed to see, or disregarded; but Corsant happened to know it for an old sign, which inquires: "How are you?" "Good morning," he replied, and with spread fingers of both hands threw a chest, in brief pantomime to say, "Very well indeed."
"Now I'd give a deal, George," declared Mrs. Merle, "to know how you foretell weather so true. Rain? Why, there's not a cloud in the sky."
Grayland laughed.
"The sheep are all gobbling their breakfast," said he, "as if to catch a train. Skylarks a-singing wet, too. And right there by your feet"—he pointed down at the cat, who hooked her paw rhythmically over one ear—"see Old Lady Maltee scrub her face for rain. No common sunshiny wash, that; no lick and promise, but solid work. Your garden will be wet before evening, sure. I've a chit here for you, sir."
He offered an unsealed envelope.
"Come into the garden, Maud," said Leonard, taking it. "I'd like to talk with you. Have you time?"
In the arbor, where the dog and the superannuated pet lamb joined them, the two men sat down for private conference. Grayland seemed very wide awake and cheerful.
"Where," asked Leonard, "did you learn Injun sign language?"
"Your country. Lived among 'em once," replied the other briefly. "But that's old. Your letter's new. Go on, read it. I made him think he wanted to go away for a week. It took some doing, but he never suspected me."
George lighted a time-blackened brier pipe, and smoked thoughtfully while his friend read the letter, first to himself, then aloud:
- My dear Mr, Leonard Corsant: It was a pleasant surprise to learn whose jacket I had been wearing, and I hope we shall meet again soon. Grayland, who brings you this hurried note, will explain that I am off to town for a few days. If it is not asking you to bore yourself too much, won't you come up and camp here meanwhile? A dull enough house, but you might find it interesting in spots. Grayland would look after you well.
- "Au revoir, and do let me find you at the house!
- "Monday, p. m.
There followed a galloping scrawl of postscript:
- You might even keep an eye on George for me. Tell him by all the earmarks he is about to break loose again."
The conspirators, in their honeysuckle bower, grinned at each other.
"Catch a weasel asleep," said George. "Boasted too early, didn't I? You'll come?"
"If you still want me." Leonard put away the note, and brought out two other documents. "Fair exchange—here's more news. Do you know a place called the Bottle of Hay?"
George nodded.
"Smells like a rabbit hutch," he testified.
"The same. Well, yesterday afternoon while that note was being written," said Leonard, "I met a couple of men there."
He went on to describe them. His hearer, leaning back in a garden chair, watched him with eyes half closed but far from drowsy.
"That's our pair. Talking bad French, eh? They would. Your little fat greaser, he's a Levantinish mongrel of some sort. Four and twenty blackbirds, all different, in his pedigree. Called himself Kamsa last, but 'answers to Hi or to any loud cry.' He's second fiddle. Your friend from Gino's café is the boss; what I call a professional traitor, playing both ends, then selling out either way, or to third party—him and Kamsa the Locust. That's the pair."
Murmuring thus, George kept his black brier alight and missed not a word in what followed, the tale of yesterday's performance at the Bottle of Hay. As it progressed, his eyes opened full and sparkling. He slapped his thigh.
"Spoiled the Egyptians good!" he exclaimed, greatly approving. "Off with their chariot wheels, so they drave heavy. You'll do, my son!" And he gave a curt nod, that seemed to bind their alliance for good and all, to drive the last nail home. "It runs in the family."
"While getting back my own," continued Leonard, "these things—ah—fetched loose and came away in my hand." He tossed over one of his documents, an eight-page letter closely written in purple ink. "Female fist. Begins like a love letter, so I didn't go into it."
Grayland had no such scruple. He read carefully from date to signature.
"Tender," he growled; and again, "Tosh!" His lips curled scornfully round the pipestem. "Some women will take up with anything. Well," he concluded, folding the pages away, "It meant a lot to her, poor fool, but nothing to me. My chief had better study it. What's your next trick, Houdini?"
Corsant passed over to him a sheet of parchmentlike paper, blank on one side, covered on the other with line upon line of queer marks, and stamped in one corner with a bright red thumb print.
"Looks like shorthand, done in printer's ink," said he. "The thumb daubed with an oily vermilion paste, you see. Chinamen use something of the kind."
But Grayland cut short all this, bounding upright and strewing the lawn with sparks, ashes, the bowl of his pipe in one direction, the bit in another.
"You've done it now, boy!" Glee, triumph and sly calculation strove in his dark face. "Good on your old curly top, go to the head of the class! O Brave We! Son, You've turned the cat in the pan!"
Next moment he had subsided again, thinking hard, brooding over the paper.
"What is it, then?" asked Leonard.
"No shorthand, anyway," said George. "Arabic, maybe. Wrote by Turks, Armenians, or Kurds, or whey, Moabites, Amalekites—don't matter a dump. We can't read it, but your cousin Laurence can. Here's the point, though: Whatever it is, whatever it says, our friend kept it on his person, next his hide. He'd give that hide to get it back, probably. Because why? I'll tell you, son. Because he and his Kamsa have traveled many a hundred mile to lay hand on just another sheet o' blessed polygots, heteroglyphs—drat the word, you know what I mean—as these figgers here. In plain language, my chief holds the mate to this very writing. They want it. What happens? Why, in walks you, as gay as Garrick, and nips their own. You turned the cat in the pan. And I'd have give a double tooth to be there seeing you."
Grayland rose, and tucked the sheet of paper carefully into a pocket, which he buttoned.
"It goes home now this minute for the chief. I'll stow her in safe hiding." He stooped to the grass, and assembled the parts of his pipe. "Will you come along? Old man Merle can fetch your bags and stuff in his cart."
"They're not quite ready for moving," replied Leonard. "Suppose I pack and join you later?"
"Right-ho! But this can't wait," said the other, turning to go. "Remember, from now till further notice you're Laurence Corsant."
"Very well.—But look here, George, where do I live when I'm at home?"
Grayland gave an impatient snort.
"Oh, Lord, that's true!" He stood fretting and scowling. "All came so natural, I forgot you never lived in the old house. How to map you the way? River runs right past your windows; but by land, all them lanes and blind corners, 'tis a maze, a Fair Rosamund's bower surely."
"Trot along," said Leonard. "I'll row up."
"Good as wheat!" cried his friend. "Only big stone house to starboard, and I'll wave to you."
Without a sign of haste, yet light and swift as any creature of the woods, Grayland seemed to cross the lawn at a stride and vanish while still talking.
Noon had nearly come before Corsant was ready to follow him. Old Ashkettle's daughter, a taciturn broad maiden, with hair the color of oakum, dwelt under the Ship on Ways in a cellar full of curly shavings, of oars, paint kegs, rowlocks, ringbolts, lumps of aged sponge, grease, double blocks, rope, and cobwebs. Among all these and many fragments, in darkness that smelled of clean chips and turpentine, Miss Ashkettle drudged about moping like a stalwart Melancholia who cared naught for the world outside, pondered the futility of all handiwork and grieved to see so much of its lumber filling her cave. She said never a word, took no heed of time. When at last, after immense deliberation she had chosen an armful of gear, and beckoned this tiresome young man with her chin, it was therefore surprising to find her boats the model of readiness and trim order. Tight, slender, dazzling with varnish, they lined the water, glossy as brand-new toys. The spoon oars had their blades painted a brilliant red; spotless cushions lay on the thwarts; and at their sterns, gilded scroll by gilded scroll bore the names of Daisy, Lily, Violet, Pansy, Hazel.
"How very—neat," declared the passenger. Coy, he had nearly said, for the flotilla seemed almost to giggle. "I'll take Daisy by the week."
Miss Ashkettle cast off, coiled his painter like a man-of-war's man, wrote his name in a pocketbook, folded her arms, and watched him row off. The Daisy might have been Charon's barge, and she an oakum-headed sibyl who took dreary joy in knowing he could never come her way again.
Round a bend he escaped that dark influence, and soon forgot. Among green hill fields, a silvery layer of tide stole up broadening to immerge a curve here of sand bar, a tiny cape there of brookside gravel. The Daisy drew little water, yet grounded so often in clear shallows where an oar could barely dip, that he ceased trying to row, fended her off and let her drift. The shores, with mirrored grass and flowers under them, floated down in a trance. Here and there a gull sat on the river and squalled out wicked complaints that rang along the surface with whining overtones; once his red spoon blade grazed a salmon that lay torpid on bottom; and for some time a mussel shell lined with blue nacre, freighted with grains of dry sand and one pearl of sea water, sailed alongside him like an elfin cargo boat, bobbing in the ripples of the undiscernible motion. Cool salt breaths arose to temper the sunshine. But as he drifted inland, these were the only reminders of the sea, which lay hidden behind the hills. Fringes of gorse on two green interlocking headlands formed, as it were, a giant pair of outspread wings, blazing golden. A dark cloud stretched between, solid from tip to tip.
"George was right," thought the oarsman. "There's rain coming ashore."
Hot sunlight filled the next reach, however, and the next. High in air against blue sky, a man driving two horses harrowed the crest of a great red field, with snowy gulls flying behind him or waddling after worms among the clods. Tree tops drew slowly across this picture. The river narrowed. Banks of foliage made a winding corridor, quiet except where oozy reflected brightness trembled and poured like misty fire through the under sides of the leaves. The channel grew deeper, in pools motionless to the eye. Leonard could now row. He came slowly past a point where beech woods ran down to the water, when suddenly a voice hailed him.
"Oh, I say! Could you help me for a moment?"
It was a girl's voice, near by. He looked over his shoulder. Stranded, close ahead, lay a varnished boat like his own, bearing the red oar blades of Ashkettle and the name Rose. She was empty. He ran ashore below her and jumped out.
"She wouldn't shove off again, you see," continued the voice. It was a very pleasant voice indeed.
Bluebells carpeted the grove. From water's edge as far as he could see within the trees bluebells formed one shining slope unbroken. A girl stood among them. Her white dress glowed with their color halfway up to her waist, as if tinged with light through stained glass. Beech leaves flickered round her hair in a lambency of green.
"Sorry to stop you," she said.
Leonard caught himself staring. It was the girl he had seen with George, a week or more ago in the White Hart coffee room. He remembered those large dark eyes, that look of friendly mischief.
"Mr. Corsant, I am well punished." The mischief had gone, or changed, he could not tell which. "I'm well punished for trespassing on your land."
She spoke with frankness, rather gravely. Perhaps it was the shifting translucence overhead that made a hint of mockery seem to dart in her glance, hide and seek.
"All the blue under here looked so lovely that I couldn't resist."
Was he supposed to know this colored wood sprite? If so, how well? Playing for time and safety, Leonard examined her boat.
"Oh, that's all right, you know," he declared. "Her stern's against a rock."
"Yes, I tried to lift her round it."
He did so, though the Rose weighed heavier than she looked. When about to launch her, he became aware of a sudden coolness, a darkening, a rustle in the air, and looking up, saw the grove clouded, the lower end of the river lashed white by sheets of rain that swept nearer. Grayland's prophecy was coming true, coming fast.
Leonard hauled the Rose inshore again, hoisted her nose on the bank, turned her keel up, and laid her cushions on the ground below.
"You'd best take shelter," said he, pointing, "till that's gone by."
The girl came out from her beeches, and looked at the gray curtain that advanced hissing.
"Oh!" she cried in dismay. "I should have been off long ago!"
She jumped lightly down from the bank, crept under the gunwale and disposed herself in a few neat whisks and tucks. Leonard brought his old brown oilskin, which he placed as lap robe. The first drops were now spattering.
"This is jolly!" She smiled. Her black eyes danced. "But aren't you coming under my roof? What nonsense! Plenty of room."
Most willing and yet unwilling, Leonard obeyed and crawled beneath the lower end of the boat. Rain drummed on the strakes, threaded the gunwales with silver, then slid into gleaming points, then dripped, then trickled. Rain hopped on the shore like hailstones. His companion sat clasping her knees under the oilskin, which covered her to the throat. A tuft of ferns, crushed and doubled inside the bow, hung over her head. It cost him a cramp in the neck to see her, for a thwart intervened; but somehow the cost did not count. Here in wet shadow, muffled by his old slicker, this girl had a knack of being prettier than when, just now, sunshine had steeped her from head to foot among bluebells and beech leaves. The only discomfort was, he crouched here as a pretender. They kept silence for a while.
"Speaking sub Rosa," she said, "I think this is jolly!"
Leonard agreed. She had a faint downward smile which came and went as if not quite under control, which he liked, but which kept him uneasy.
"You must have been glad to come home."
Now here looms trouble, thought the pretender. Why the deuce hadn't George coached him a bit?
"Weren't you?"
"Oh, yes, of course. Glad, yes, indeed."
Those large clear eyes regarded him from a fathomless depth.
"What are you going to do about Becky?"
He would have answered at once, had he known who or what Becky was—a girl to be married, a runaway parrot to be found or a horse he had talked of selling.
"Tell me if it's none of my affair," she begged suddenly, as though piqued. "I didn't mean to"
"No, no! Becky? No, no, not at all!" said he. "Yes, Becky—you see, I haven't quite made up my mind."
The girl wondered at him.
"Haven't you really?"
A wrong answer—it must have been.
"No, I haven't," he rejoined, turning stubborn.
The rain beat upon the Rose, dripped and splashed without, though not so heavily now. The silence grew long within, and to Leonard more and more distasteful. That fine spirited young face opposite him, lively, delicate in coloring yet wholesome, had become downcast. For a moment he feared she was going to cry.
"It's not like you, Laurence, to be so grumpy with your—with old friends."
So then, thought Laurence the false, he knew her very well. He must speak comforting things. How could he? But speak or be silent, either way, there was no guessing what he might let Laurence the true in for. She was trembling. He could see the folds of oilskin quiver and the fern that touched her head. A craven impulse told him, if she did weep, to crawl out into the rain. He even glanced that way. The rain had stopped, the sun shone.
"Please don't cry," said Leonard earnestly. "I can't bear to have you think so. If I said or did anything to hurt you, please forget; or anything strange, anything not like—unlike myself. I can't explain it if there was. Not now. But some day you may understand—soon, I hope."
He stopped, in distress between too much said and too little. She had turned her face away, and was plucking a fern tip caught in her hair.
"I'm quite ashamed of myself," she declared abruptly—"quite."
Next moment she was out in the sunlight. Neither spoke again till the Rose was righted and afloat.
"If you're going down river, take my oilskin with you," said Leonard, and forestalling an evident refusal, added: "I'm not far from—from home, and you'll catch more showers on your way."
The tree tops downstream glittered, but above them came rolling another band of rain clouds.
"You can leave the old thing at Ashkettle's," he urged.
The girl thanked him, and stepped aboard. Taking her sculls, she discovered the tip of fern still in her hand. She made as if to fling it overside, but paused, and looked up quickly.
"Fern seed. Here." Holding out her hand she dropped the torn leaf into his. "For luck. The receipt of fern seed, to walk invisible."
With that she gave way, pulling a very clean pair of oars. A branch jutted out to hide her and the Rose; but before turning it she stopped, backed water for an instant, and looking Leonard in the face, quietly spoke.
"It wasn't crying. It was laughing. That's what I'm ashamed of, for I do wish you luck. It's a most sporting thing you've undertaken."
Her blades flashed again. The Rose slipped behind the bough.
X
ROUND the next bend a little green valley opened shining, refreshed with rain. Straight almost as a canal, and quite as placid, the river ran toward a vanishing point under the low arch of a bridge. Three swans rose noisily from the water and flew in line abreast upstream with a great rushing sound of wings. Even as they went, their whiteness darkened, a cloud and another burst of rain driving after them. Drenched while he rowed, Corsant peered up through the shower and saw at his left hand a gray stone house, that looked down a hillside of rough lawn dotted with shrubs and trees.
From one of its many broad windows fluttered something white—a towel that flapped vigorously and then was whisked indoors. He pulled his right oar, and headed the Daisy for the nearest gravel.
Meanwhile he neither felt the rain nor considered his arrival.
"She knew me all the time!" he thought. "Saw through me, that girl did, and took her revenge teasing."
Down over the wet grass, as he landed, his friend George came striding—a pair of long legs active under a huge umbrella.
"Wet but welcome! Hop under grandma's gamp."
Leonard made his painter fast to a root, but disregarded the invitation, and stood musing in the rain.
"I've half a mind to buy the good ship Rose," he declared, "for a souvenir. George, who is the prettiest girl you ever saw? She's a young witch, lives among bluebells, and gave me this." He held out a wet, crumpled green leaf, the fern tip. "You know her. What's her name?"
Grayland viewed him askance with wicked black eyes.
"No weather for daydreams, this. In with you! Come in. Under the paraploo, my son!" And hooking arms, George elbowed him up the bank. "Get dry first at the fire, then you can write her a poem or sing her a serenade—I'll lend you a concertina; or you can carve some nice fat hearts on your trees roundabout. Plenty of good smooth bark."
Leonard was not to be put off with these rough conceits, though he returned her talisman to his pocket.
"She called it the receipt of fern seed, and told me we might need to walk invisible. She knew all about us; knew I wasn't Laurence; knew what we're both up to; called it sporting."
His companion halted, glared, and breathed out something like a curse.
"Young devil, she guessed it! Might 'a' known."
"Yes? Then who was she?" Leonard repeated.
Grayland shook his head. Mirth and chagrin seemed to underlie the frown with which he kept his countenance.
"No telling," he grunted. "I don't know all the young women round here—been away too long."
"You were talking horse with her at the White Hart, less than a fortnight ago."
"No," said George blandly; "couldn't have done. Never was there in my life."
"But man, I saw and heard you!"
"Daydreaming again." George started forward. "Impossible! Flat! Never knew a girl whose opinion of a horse was worth listening to."
The umbrella—a monstrous lank-ribbed tent of rusty black cotton—hid all the world except a traveling circle of downpour and of rough lawn, unkempt and weedy. As they climbed, Corsant had nothing to do but study his friend at close range. He learned very little—that George was wearing Indoor clothes, dark, sober, sleek-fitting, which made his face look all the more restless and untamed; that George had been lying just now; and that however long they might discuss this phantom of the bluebell grove, George would calmly abstain from telling truth about her. They mounted the hill, therefore, In silence.
"Here's your old house for you." Grayland suddenly tilted back his umbrella. "How do you like it?"
Overgrown shrubs, and vines pelted with rain, hid much of the lower story; but above these, the weathered gray forehead of the house rose clear, overlooking the men, the hillside lawn, and the river with a kind of benignity almost human. It was not a large house; yet the two upper tiers of windows, broad, nobly framed and outlined in carven stone, gave it a spacious air that seemed better than grandeur; and Its plainness, thought Leonard, warmed him like the discovery of some new virtue in an old friend.
"Ever so much," he answered.
The umbrella descended. They moved on, following round the house a path covered with weeds and grass.
"By the front door you come in," said George. "We'll do it all fitty, eh?"
But in the upper garden Leonard paused, and dodging out from their grandmotherly extinguisher, looked about him. Red valerian had run wild here, and been trimmed or cleared into rude borders. A driveway, lately weeded and raked, curved off to end among dripping trees, where an iron gate stood half open.
"Why, that's Peacock's gate," said Leonard. "Were there chains across, before? Then this is the house Merle brought me to, the first night!"
"Of course he did." George stood grinning. "And you sat in his cart and threw cold water on him. You looked at your old home, says Merle, neither glad nor sorry, like a dog at his father's funeral."
This landward front of the house, being on a crest, had one story less than the river side. Its left-hand corner stood embedded in a great rock high as a man's head, and patched with turf where cranny flowers hung trembling in the rain. Buttressed thus, the house appeared to hold fast by mother earth, hewn stone cleaving to its native hill.
"Come!"
George opened the front door, in the carved frame of which wallflowers were growing. "Don't stand here and soak."
He caught Leonard by the arm, pulled, and brought him indoors on the run, like Christian escaping arrows at the wicket gate. Indeed, the rain fell now like bright arrows shot aslant. Their misty light entered with the men, and echoes of splashing murmured in the room. It was a long, deep room, at first sight gloomy; under a high mantel blazed a fire of boughs; and the ruddy flicker of this, thwarting rather than joining the cold light from windows blurred with water, showed only here and there a glancing line of brightness on old furniture, and sank without reflection, as though quenched. Into the sombre oak-paneled walls.
"Well, here you are," said Grayland; then looked sharply at his guest. "What's wrong?"
"One moment. I can't—I can't find the words." Leonard stood In a daze. "Wait till my eyes get house broken."
As they did so, he became aware of other objects in the room—dark portraits along the panels, dull gilding touched with firelight, the backs of tall books, a staircase that mounted under a pointed arch. But these and all details were lost in one overwhelming impression, a whole stranger than any of its parts, because not strange at all. His eyesight understood it, his tongue refused to explain. Without warning he had stepped from another man's garden into a room peculiarly, mysteriously his own. Everything here, color, form, proportion, the carving above the panels, the staircase arch, the conflict of subdued lights and the way they fell—everything was as it should be, rightly placed, in the right direction. So it had always been; and so, never having seen, he had always known it by some remembrance lost until now.
"What's the trouble?" said George. "A chill? Yes, you did. You shivered. Come to the fire."
Leonard suffered himself to be drawn there, but standing on the hearth, remained at gaze.
"The trouble is, I could find my way about here blindfold," said he. "It's as though—it's like a place where I'd lived a lifetime, when I was somebody else."
"Right-ho. You are somebody else." George leaned his umbrella under a portrait, and left it to form a brown puddle like prune juice on the floor. "Nothing to worry about, then."
He stripped off Leonard's coat, spread it over the high back of a chair to dry, brought a footstool, bade him sit between the andirons, fetched an old loo table, swung down Its top and bolted it, then with long silent strides was gone from the room. Leonard, his back steaming in the grateful blaze, hugged his knees upon the footstool and wondered.
"George turned left through that door," he thought, "and I knew it beforehand."
He sat mooning, with sounds of the fire and the rain for company. Along the panels, at a height of seven feet or so from the floor, a series of carvings took his eye. They were simple, rather well done and well varied, no wise remarkable but for slight quaintness in design. One of them, however, in the darkest corner on his right toward the garden, broke all rules of the pattern and stood out grotesque as a gargoyle. Too lazy to rise, Leonard peered at it for some time before concluding that it was not an imp's head in a nightcap, but a queer little image of the Devil's Nose, the sea rock he had swum through. There in miniature, holes and all, it clung to the wall like a wasp's nest, ugly and misshapen.
"What's that doing here?" he asked, when George returned.
"The good old Nose? Why not?" Grayland bore in, and set on the table, a vast tray covered with bread and butter, Cambridge brawn, half a ham, gooseberries, cream, and bottles of soda. "Why not? That was carved many a year ago, that and the rest, by the man who made your iron gates, I've heard tell, and all the jokers up aloft in church."
While answering he went out again, presently to come back with a tantalus and a tumbler that looked as long as an aleyard.
"Once was a story about that carving," he continued. "What to signify, nobody knows. Something we've all forgot. Bad luck—or good luck. Some old wives' tale."
Into the mighty tumbler he poured a hero's dram of whiskey, and when he had mixed it, came to the hearth.
"Down her, if you please."
In doing all he moved like a zealous, grave, and highly trained man-servant; his voice, always pleasant, he seemed to lower when indoors; and now after placing a chair and seating Leonard by table and tray, he stood at hand, attentive, ready for orders.
"Come join me."
"I'm only caretaker here."
"Hang it, George, sit down!"
He did so, laughing.
"Mr. Laurence couldn't have said that more like himself," he declared. "You're one of 'em. The same sleepy look when ruffled."
He sat talking while his guest ate and drank. The firelight played on his handsome, tawny face, but was no brighter or livelier than the changes that came and went there like a visible running accompaniment to his thoughts. Leonard watched him, pondered, and was baffled again and again. Whom did the man resemble so closely, yet with so many differences?
"Ay, who is it?" George suddenly asked.
"Why, how could you read my mind?" said Leonard. "How did you guess what I was thinking?"
George smiled, rose, and darted one of his wicked cornerwise glances.
"It was revealed to me in a dream," he answered very drily. "I must go fetch wood to mend the fire."
He went out grinning. A door shut, the sound of his light footsteps passed down a stairway somewhere, the fluttering of the fire and the splash of rain succeeded. A long time passed. Then suddenly the light footsteps came bounding upstairs, and Grayland reappeared in the door. He brought no wood, but carried an ax. He was frowning.
"I don't savvy this," he announced quietly. "Something going on behind our back. Come over here, will you, and see what I found."
He beckoned, then crossing to one of the garden windows, bent his head and fell into a close, workmanlike scrutiny. He appeared to be testing, with his thumb, a defect in the head of his ax.
XI
LEONARD followed him to the window.
"What do you make of it?" said George, tracing with his thumb nail along the blade. "What's that stuff?"
Newly ground, the ax had a sharp edge. The brightness of this was overlaid and dimmed by a stain, a tinge of heliotrope color shading into purple, as if someone had brushed the steel hurriedly, on both sides, with changeable ink. It felt dry to the touch.
"Juice," ventured Corsant, "or sap."
"Sap, yes," replied George impatiently. "But what kind? I can't remember, can't put a name to it again. Sap of what tree?" The question seemed to perplex him inordinately. "Mark you, not a soul about the house but one old woman who's cook and bed maker—she goes home at night, by the way. This ax lay where I put it. I always keep tools proper, in place. Who's come and tampered with it, and what was he chopping?"
George put his nose to the blade.
"No smell," said he.
As he leaned there in the broad old window, frowning, slowly examining the tool on each side, he called to Leonard's mind another graceful person who long ago "with his keener eye the ax's edge did try." Lovelocks and a court dress would have made him a figure of Vandyke's; his face belonged to an earlier century; but his black eyes were sharper than any king's. Gradually the wrinkles left his forehead. He began to whistle Money Musk between his teeth, and dandle the ax in time with that jig.
"Half a mo'. It's coming back." His thoughts also had reverted to the past. "When I was a lad and worked for Lord What's-name's gardener on the Riviera—Wait! Hold hard. Yes, have got. Mimosa juice. Now where on these grounds, do you suppose, can there be any mimosa?"
Grayland hung the ax head over his shoulder, whistled Money Musk again in the same muted fashion, then turned and smiled.
"Let's go see." It was plain he had answered himself, and found the answer to his liking. "Down below, if I'm not sore mistaken."
He led the way to the door by which he had been coming and going, thence along a dark passage, through some darker vaulted hole in wainscot, and down a flight of blind stone stairs that bent continually with unexpected crankings. Corsant, leaving behind in the great room that sense which it had evoked of things familiar and directions known, groped after him quite lost, down and down, stumbling, guided only by one hand or shoulder on the walls. At the stair foot, George unlocked a door. They stood presently in a damp, close room, bare, and dismal in a greenish twilight. Three small windows glimmered in a row, obscured without by grass and leaves.
"Soon learn," said George.
He closed the door, and went to the right-hand square of glass. Like the other two, it was set at about the level of his chin. He reached up and struggled with the catch.
"Rusty. Doubt if it's this."
The fastening yielded, the window opened, with a series of aged creaks. Grayland thrust out his hand.
"Ouch! Holly." Closing that window, he moved to the middle one. "We're below ground, you understand. These look riverward."
The middle square came open harder than its mate, and still more noisily. Again George put his arm outdoors.
"Yew."
He worried the second groaning frame shut, hammered its crazy catch into place, and tried the third.
"Always the last of a lot," he complained; then in an altered voice, cried: "Hal-lo! My brethren, I should say so!"
This last window swung in easily at one pull, without a sound. A light-green feathery spray, released from pressure against the pane, burst inward nodding and sprinkling the men's faces with water.
"Mimosa for you," said Leonard.
"Right as rain!" replied Grayland. "Give us a leg up. I thought so."
Mounting his friend's knee, he poked head and shoulders through the wet leaves. Leonard heard his arms threshing outdoors. He wriggled in again quickly, hopped to the floor, and dashed rain from his face.
"This bough was cut off to clear the window," he reported. "They laid all back pretty near in place."
He struck a match, and by its flame looked—so rapidly that Corsant could but just follow his glances—at the intruding tuft of mimosa, the top of the window frame, its outer edge, the catch, and the hinges.
"Lately cut. Leaves have had no time to wilt." George blew out match and closed window. "Catch pried down from outside. With my ax, dare say. Hinges oiled, catch oiled, bough laid across all proper. No, son. They'd never take such pains if they weren't coming back. Our friends, think you? I'd give a thick un to be sure it was them."
"Fork out," said Leonard. "Because I think I know."
"How?" George demanded testily. "What did I overlook?"
His ally repaid some late mystifications by grinning calmly.
"Unless your old bed maker you spoke of has been cooking the same." Leonard paused to keep him waiting. "It's extremely delicate. But surely you—perceive? I did. I smelt 'em in here."
Grayland tossed up his head and sniffed. The little subterranean room, dark as a crypt, contained negative odors of mold and dust and air-tight staleness; but through these, not quite gone though very faint, a vanishing aura of something positive, the smell of onions.
"Your dear wayside posies in his tunic!" said George, solemnly. "The precious little stinkards! My lad, you never did a better hand's turn than yesterday's at the Bottle of Hay." He snatched up his ax, spun it dangerously in the air, and caught it like a drum major. "Now," he cried with joyful emphasis, "we know! Come on upstairs!"
They stood in the paneled room, and the fire, generously rebuilt, was blazing high, before they spoke again. Each man had remained busy with his own thoughts. Leonard put on his jacket, now dry and warm.
"You didn't lock that door after us, below," said he.
"A-purpose," George replied. "Our friends will call again. We don't want to leave any obstacles in their way, do we? On the contrary—welcome little strangers: walk into our parlor. They're bound to come soon."
The mere prospect was enough to rouse and rejuvenate him. He laughed.
"To think o' that Amalekite!" he crowed. "Carrying your nosegay round the house with him, your forget-me-nots, eh? But sit down. You've not finished your snack."
Over the interrupted meal on the loo table, and—when this was in part cleared away—over their pipes by the fireside, the two men sat talking, exchanging plans, ordering a mode of life for their next few days together. In the upshot it proved a simple mode: they had only to stay there, loaf, Grayland said, take their ease, and wait for whatever should arrive. Outwardly, all was to go on as before. People would know that Laurence Corsant, returned home but now, broken in health and ordered to rest, was living there quietly. His caretaker George would be seen to go errands hither and yon as always, but especially to leave the house before dark.
"I won't go far," said George. "Soon as our old woman's out of the house, back I slip. We'll burn candles half an hour In a bedroom, then blow 'em out: like Mr. Laurence gone to bed, you see. House dark. But meantime we'll be camping right here In this room. A good booby trap, I call it. What do you say?"
Leonard approved. They dismissed the subject, forgot all cares, and spent what remained of the afternoon in random lazy talk. Forty-odd years of roving had made George, whatever else he was, most admirable company for a rainy day. Leaning backward with his long shanks outspread toward the fire, his nose pointed at the ceiling, and his black eyes half shut as they dreamily watched cloud after cloud of tobacco smoke ascend, he recalled an amazing diversity of this world's creatures and told many curious true tales. His language was often rough, but his judgment of persons unfailingly gentle. The man himself, his own doing, appeared in the narratives only by chance now and then, to fix the year of an action or supply an attendant circumstance. Corsant heard all with delight, but above all privately treasured these glimpses Into his friend's life. Such a thing had happened when George was a ragged boy running about the hedgerows, selling colored whirligigs and paper flowers; such another when he was in trouble for stealing a deer; still other things, when he had been a sailor, or doing all by numbers in the army, or observing mimosa juice and steel on Lord What's-Name's Riviera estate, or ringing bells to earn his chow, or catching rough-haired seals from Louie Pierpold's canoe, or serving his Mr. Laurence in a desert, or traveling with a circus through India and learning Pashto pretty good. The hours went all too quickly.
"Well, cheer-o for the present." George rose, yawned, tweaked his cap out from between two red morocco tomes on a book-shelf, and strolled away. "Speak loud to the old girl," he added, in the doorway. "She's deaf, poor soul. And got no more sense than Gammer Vangs, anyhow."
It was In fact both a deaf and stupid old woman who, when Corsant had sat dozing for a long time in the twilight, came and summoned him to dinner. He ate alone in a dark, chilly room, at the head of a long table on which two candles burned forlorn In a many-branched candlestick, like a massive silver tree bared of nearly all its leaves. This wintry light showed him nothing but dusk, outside the glossy expanse of polished wood where his knives and forks and dishes rested on their reflections, all double, as though floating in a pool. The china was old and good, the silver worn but heavy, fashioned like tools for the serious work of many generations. The fish slice, he thought, would have served to lay bricks with. The food, plainly cooked, had substance abounding, and a pint of excellent claret, well warmed, stood at his hand. Yet beyond these cheerful solidities, all remained in shadow, hovering, unaccountable. Whenever the woman approached, he saw her as a hard-featured dame, tough, wiry, and anxious, with little whiskered warts or moles dotting her face, and the look of deafness in her watchful eyes; but whenever she retired, the darkness changed her silence and her care into something grim. She seemed to haunt rather than to attend him.
He was glad when the meal ended, and he could seek the fire again in his own room which he knew so well. Another great silver tree stood on a table here. It was full, this one, of candles. He lighted them all, and after pacing the floor for pastime, bethought him of a book. The volumes on the shelves, however, he found to be chiefly collected sermons and Latin discourses on divinity. Of these he was turning the pages without enthusiasm, when footsteps crunched on gravel under the garden windows.
"That's not George."
Bearing the candlestick, he went to the front door, opened it, and peered out.
He saw only a bent figure hooded in waterproof trudging off through the rain like a black penitent. It was their deaf woman going home for the night. The lamps of some wagon or cart awaiting her blinked among the wet leaves by the gate.
Leonard shut himself in, and returned to his fire. The noise of the rain continued, was now and again swept under by a prolonged rush of wind, began afresh, dropped almost to silence through an interval of calm, and so went on, splashing in gusts or sunk to a moody drumming.
"George takes his time," thought the young man. "Must have gone farther than he intended."
That seemed nothing to complain of. As he sat alone in the house, Leonard felt thoroughly contented, even luxurious by that bright hearth, as much at home for the moment as though he belonged there. He grew warm and sleepy. Whatever might happen later would be fun. Meantime to bask and wait and smoke was pleasant enough.
Yet while he waited, a slow uneasiness crept into his reverie. It was not apprehension; it certainly was not boredom. He could neither name it nor shrug it off. There might have been a new sound in the room; but if so, he had not truly heard it. There might have been a vague movement. Once or twice Leonard turned to look behind him. Nothing was there but his silver burning bush of candles, and above them the carven Devil's Nose like an imp's head in a nightcap. He had not expected anything. Nevertheless he acknowledged the nameless fancy: it was as if someone stood behind him waiting to speak, and when he turned, was gone.