The Castle by the Sea/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
THE LEAGUER
I WAS surprised when I reached the Castle, after an amiable exchange with my cockney friend, to hear the sound of a fiddle streaming from the open windows. It ceased as I got to the door, and voices rose in conversation. I entered, and, behold, Mrs. and Miss Harvey! The former greeted me with effusion, but the latter merely nodded pleasantly from her seat where Norroy was instructing her how to put her fingers on the fiddle strings. She made a picture of graceful awkwardness with her large cart-wheel hat and her full draperies. Mrs. Harvey explained that they had come to pay their dinner-call, but she got no assistance from her daughter, who was wrangling prettily with Norroy as to the exact angle of her elbow.
If I put it there it sticks out too much," she declared, as one resolute on harmonies of figure as well as of sound.
"Just chuck your shoulder up a bit," suggested Sir Gilbert, taking command. "Don't mind your angles; they 'll come into the picture somehow."
"Oh, Mr. Eustace!" said Christobel in despair.
The name brought me to. This was Mr. Eustace still, and I had been upon the point of calling him Norroy. The anxious eyes of the elder lady were fixed on me. This was Eustace, homeless, impecunious, and beleagured, and he played the fiddle, and taught a pretty girl to strum! The mother's eyes implored me, as I construed them. I was Sir Gilbert, and this was an interloper, a wastrel, a foundling, a waif on the harsh seas of fortune. Sir Gilbert adjusted his eye-glass and deigned to recognize my presence.
"Hulloa, old chap! Where did you get to? Look here, I've given Mrs. Harvey and Miss Harvey tea."
"I owe you many thanks," I replied, "and much envy."
An interrogation from his pupil drew off his attention from me, and Mrs. Harvey seized the opportunity to enter into talk. I could see she wanted to know about Norroy, and I was able to gratify her in all but his name, which she took for granted. No, he had no profession as far as I knew. I did n't think it followed that he was necessarily a wealthy man. Undoubtedly he was of good family. And he was a most amusing companion. Mrs. Harvey compressed her lips as she regarded her wilful daughter anxiously.
"I don't suppose he'd make a big hole in things in New York," she ventured.
I agreed, adding that if my friend ever went to New York he would expect some one to make a hole for him.
"Our men don't do that," said she, with some acerbity of criticism in her tone. To her Norroy was a hopeless ineligible. I was destined to receive two bombardments that afternoon, for Miss Christobel assailed me a little later, and upon the same topic.
"This is a pretty mystery, Mr. Brabazon," she said. "When I last saw you you were talking in the most gloomy and most tragic manner about Mr. Eustace. And now he's your guest. What's come to the universe?"
"I discovered my error, and am repenting in ashes," I said lightly.
She turned on me her hazel eyes. "Does he know, then?" she asked.
"When I told him I had suspected him of burglary, he laughed, dropped his eye-glass and said, 'how ripping!'"
"He would," she said laughing. "It's just what he would do," she cried approbatively, "and I was right in my instinct after all."
"A woman's instinct," said I, with an air of profundity, "is like a woman's tongue and a woman's face—it never lies."
Miss Harvey considered this inanity. "Mine will—I mean my face—I suppose, when I get about fifty," she said.
"You will never be fifty," I declared.
"I don't know that I want to die young, exactly," said this frank, unself-conscious girl.
"You will never die," I said. "Your age will be immortality."
"That's nice of you," said she. "But tell me honestly what I shall be like at fifty. I believe you have second sight, Mr. Brabazon. There's something uncanny about you."
I bowed to the compliment.
"You 'll sit gracing the bottom of a great table in an ancestral hall," I rambled on, "and your children's children shall call you blessed, and—"
"Why, Mr. Brabazon, I shall only be fifty, not a hundred," she protested.
"But if you marry at twenty," I suggested.
"I'm more than that already," she said pensively. "I'm twenty-five."
"Oh, we must marry you off at once. That's terribly old," I said hastily. "'She was no longer in her first youth' as the old novels used to run. 'She had passed her nineteenth year.'"
She laughed. "I'm not in a hurry, anyway, and I don't know that I fancy ancestral halls so much," she said, with an unconscious glance round the room.
When they had gone, Sir Gilbert stood looking out of the window in a brown study. But all that his meditations brought was the colloquial remark, "That's a ripping girl!"
I pulled him away from the window. "You're exposing yourself to the fire of the enemy," I said, "and after the episode of the butcher-boy we can't afford to take risks. Please remember you are fighting excellent strategists. And let me tell you this, Norroy; you've pulled through so far by luck more than by management. You must regard yourself in the light of a besieged town. You may possibly venture out for air and exercise by night; but in the daytime you're a close prisoner. I wonder at your daring to give tea to the ladies."
"Oh, hang it, one can't shut off everything," protested the prisoner.
"I have been thinking," I went on. "Seeing the lengths these people are prepared to go to, we can't be too particular. Your present room is by no means safe. We must find a more secluded place. Do you know of any?"
He frowned over his reflections. "What about the jewel-room?" he said at last.
"What, the strong-room up-stairs?"
He nodded. "By Jove, that's a thundering good idea. Jacker can put a bed in. Let's have a look."
He jumped off the table on which he was sitting and went up-stairs, with me at his heels. Descending the length of the gallery, with a familiar nod to Mr. Toosey, who was still laboring at his criminal task, Norroy paused in front of the oak door and inserted a Yale key in the lock. It opened, and discovered a small room, fairly well lighted by a slit in the masonry, and surrounded by empty cabinets and shelves. One or two iron safes were set in one corner.
"Why, it's empty," I exclaimed in surprise.
"Hocked!" said Sir Gilbert, sententiously. "Most of it. Of course I have to keep the jewels that are heirlooms. Uncle Ned was an old fathead; he left them by will to my wife, confound him."
"That was pretty of him," I said.
"But I haven't got a wife," grumbled Sir Gilbert, aggrievedly. "There they are," he said in a melancholy voice, indicating with the point of his toe one of the safes in the corner. "Can't do anything with them."
"Don't you think Toosey might copy them," I suggested with mild irony.
He screwed his glass round on me, and guffawed when he realized my intention. "You are a joker," he said. "But this will do, won't it, Brabazon?"
I thought it would do very well. It was quite private, was barred by a fighting Yale lock, and was also easily accessible from the living-rooms. We agreed that Jackman should fit it up at once as a prison cell.
Norroy resigned himself with his imperturbable good nature to this incarceration. He had the faculty of making the best of things when once he was convinced of the necessity. He was, I gathered, difficult to drive, being an obstinate and insensate fellow, but he was comparatively easy to persuade, while you could cajole him without any trouble, unless it was a matter of principle for which he was contending. Principle, you cry! Yes, Sir Gilbert, twelfth baronet, was genuinely inspired by principles, though I will admit you would hardly have recognized them as such. They were, however, all his own, even if you should find them poor things. If he wanted his own way he was as obstinate as a pot-donkey, but you might persuade him that your way was his, and he would follow as docilely as the same animal. I fancy Sir Gilbert's brains were easily confounded, that his wits were without difficulty scattered. He bore no grudges, and he wasted no time in repining. Of a cheerful and optimistic character, he looked forward to a future which must at any rate be different from the present. And as the present was bad why it did not take Sir Gilbert long to see that the future must be better. His logic was of such wholesome simplicity. All he stipulated for was his liberty at night, and that I thought we might contrive, particularly as we had a new ally presently, as you shall now hear.
It appears that Miss Harvey dropped in on her friends in the village and picked up a good deal of news. I had given Perdita my information under no pledge of secrecy, and indeed she would not suppose that what I had told her I designed to keep from her friend. But it may have been Miss Fuller who let out the news. It does not signify. The only thing that mattered was that Miss Harvey arrived by herself at the Castle in a great state of excitement, and bursting with sympathy. She made no difficulty about broaching the subject, which she did in Norroy's presence quite naturally; and he accepted her query as naturally. I think that these two people had something akin in the unashamed honesty which characterized them.
"Yes, it's an awful bore, is n't it?" said Sir Gilbert, modestly. "But Brabazon's no end good about it. He's guarding me like a tiger."
She turned her fine eyes on me. "How nice of him! But tell me; do these horrid people hold many of your bills?"
"More than is comfortable," he said. "They want to sell me up. That's what they're after. Of course I played the fool, but then we all did it. It's heredity," declared Sir Gilbert, with the air of settling the difficulty once and for all.
"Well, if it isn't romantic!" said Miss Harvey. "Then are you shut up here to keep them out
He nodded. "Beastly nuisance, is n't it?"
Miss Harvey mused. "It is n't good for the health," she said.
"I'm going to climb out at nights," explained Norroy.
"You must n't let them get you," she adjured eagerly.
"Not me!" said Norroy, valiantly.
Miss Harvey rose to go, and offered a parting nod of encouragement to the baronet.
"Don't you mind too much," she advised. Sir Gilbert admired her through his eye-glass. "Old Jake Simmons, a friend of papa's, went bankrupt three times, and he came out on top in the end. Ever been bankrupt before?"
Sir Gilbert shook his head. "I don't cotton to the notion, somehow," he said. "The fellows ask you all sorts of rude questions, what? They want to know if you had champagne for lunch, and to whom you gave presents, and that sort of thing."
"Old Jake used to say it was the foundation of his fortunes," said Miss Harvey, by way of stimulus. "He owns a big dry-goods store in Chicago."
"I've sometimes thought of starting a shop myself," said Sir Gilbert, adding pensively; "But I'm more fitted for a book-maker, I suppose."
Miss Harvey said good-bye cheerfully. "I 'll come round and see how you 're getting on in the fortress," she promised. "I 've got to come over in a few days to see Miss Forrest."
The rustle of her petticoats was still in my ear when Norroy remarked sadly: "That's a ripping girl, what?"
I agreed, wondering at his doleful visage, and he resumed a moment later. "I wish I was not running under a false name, old chap."
"You can easily alter that," I told him. "You can retire behind the curtain, emerge with a bow and to a full orchestral salutation—Sir Gilbert Norroy."
"You see," he said, as if it explained matters, "my name's Gilbert Eustace Norroy; so it was all right."
"Not a doubt of it," I agreed. "Moreover the substitution was for so excellent a purpose."
"Yes, of course, there's that," he said. "But, hang it, I don't like masquerading. I don't do it for fun."
"This is dead earnest," I assured him, "and we run risks for it."
He cheered up. "Miss Harvey says she's coming in a day or two. I wish I could make a bit of money." He got up briskly. "I 'll go and see how old Toosey's getting on," he said hopefully.
No event broke the monotony of the following day, at least until the evening. In the evening I felt that we might almost call a truce. We were aware of the leaguers about us, but it did not trouble us greatly. We had spirit enough to test it. Norroy sagely affirmed that writs could not be served after dark, and I argued that it did not much matter if they could. There was no danger in the night from our entrenched foes. In fact I had the mind to turn the tables on them by a sally.
We issued bravely forth from the Castle walls near nine o'clock. The air was flowing softly, and the dark and broken sky-line of the trees stood out against the lighter clouds in the west. We paced the lawn for a time, enjoying our cigars and the beautiful evening, and, in a way, each other's company. It was odd how attracted I was by this amiable and witless young man. Differentiated from me by gulfs, as I conceived it, in intellect and taste and ethics, he yet claimed affinity by a subtle appeal to some accepted standard. His exterior manners were without finesse, but we met upon the same platform of behavior, and there was much more than behavior that drew me to him—a sort of good-humored individuality which might be typical of a fine animal. The darkness slowly invested the lawn and the borders, leaving the paths in a higher light. The limes muttered in the air, like those fabled "gossips of the prime." Norroy broke silence.
"Let's go down to the lower garden and the copse," he suggested.
Accordingly we made our way thither, and without interference. Once in the shelter of the copse we felt safe, and, reaching the sea-wall, leaned over it and watched the darkling sea heaving itself on the rocks.
"I don't know but I could live here, Brabazon," remarked the owner at last. "It's not lively, but it's got its points. Full of little nooks," he added sentimentally.
I wondered what must be the issue from the clash of sentiment with primitive instincts in that generous chamber of his heart. But he had room for both and was unconscious of any incongruity. In a comfortable reverie he dreamed till at last he shook himself out of wonderland into the practical world again. I was watching the foreshore merging into the night, and was conscious, too, of a deeper shadow that moved. Yet it might be nothing. I strolled on westward towards the ascent in the grounds where the cliffs rose sheer from the high tides of the sea. I had not visited this part of the gardens before. We got to the top, and, crossing the wall, advanced to the edge of the cliff and looked down. The tide was high, and still rolling in some fifty feet below us. The water drew inshore with a low harsh mutter of sound, till it reached the narrowing buttresses of the rocks immediately below; then its voice grew hollower; a hundred echoes from the faces of the cliff overtook it and reinforced it; it swelled to a loud sonorous volume, and then burst with drums of thunder in the invisible caverns beneath, dying into rumbles and ghosts of sound and infinite whisperings in those secret depths within.
I returned from the contemplation of this incessant warfare, and laid my hand on Sir Gilbert's arm. The man had no single defective drop of blood in his healthy animal body. His feet were on the very verge of the precipice, and he dreamed as he looked down. The retreating waves left me space for a voice which was not a shout.
"Look to the left," I said.
He turned his head. "Is he—what?"
"I noticed him down on the beach just now," I replied.
"Damn! let's heave him over," he suggested.
"Norroy, I may wink at throwing a dun out of my own house—or yours," I said with mock indignation, "but I know where to draw the line. It's about time we went back."
He obeyed me, and we climbed the wall, the black figure offering no molestation.
"Let's try t'other side," said Norroy. "This is a lark."
We crossed the Castle grounds and essayed the wall on the north side some hundreds of yards from the gates. Norroy burst out laughing. "Blessed if they ain't spry," he said. "Here's another beggar already."
I discerned a figure running in the darkness. Norroy drew back. "All right, I'm not taking any," he said. "Look here, Brabazon," he said more earnestly when he had got down, and he took my arm, "what the devil do they want? Did you ever hear of a case like this?"
I was bound to confess that I had not, and I had no suggestion to offer by way of solution.
"Damned rum!" he muttered, as we strolled back. "Can't get the hang of it."
If we had only been furnished with an answer to the riddle we should have been more patient. As it was, the situation uninterpreted began to get on my nerves, and on Mr. Toosey's. He, however, seemed to rejoice in its mystery, while he thrilled at its possibilities. He had already insisted on regarding himself as one of the besieged, and was at the most elaborate precautions to avoid notice in his own coming and going. He skulked in the shrubberies, scared Mrs. Jackman out of her wits by leaping out of one at an alarm, and had many preposterous plans to proffer for victualling the fortress. I explained that there was no fear of our lacking supplies, but he was resolved that we might some day come to a grip with starvation, and matured his schemes with that end in view. Above all, he kept a wary eye open for duns and strangers. This led to a rather unfortunate episode.
The rule in favor of admitting visitors to see the pictures had not been abrogated, merely because it had occurred to none of us to think of it. As a matter of fact, no visitor had presented himself at the Castle since Norroy had taken up his quarters there. And, no doubt, in my absence, Jackman found himself in a difficulty, when a tourist did present his card. He was an immaculate gentleman with an immaculate address, very stout, and with a politeness that was almost excessive, and he waved a huge Panama hat to cool his fevered brow after the exertion of getting up-stairs. Jackman, I conclude, had thought him over and admitted him, pending orders; but, like a good and patient servant, he hung about in the proximity of the visitor with a watchful eye. The stout gentleman inspected the pictures slowly, and with gravity, and made notes in a book. This was, apparently, what arrested the indignant attention of Mr. Peter Toosey, who rose in his wrath and followed the visitor. With this satellite in his train the stout man toured the gallery with growing discomfort and growing suspicions. These culminated when Mr. Toosey's own suspicions reached their height at seeing the long pause made by the stranger before the door into the strong-room. Behind that barrier slumbered or rested the innocent master of the Castle. Mr. Toosey's doubts swelled to a head. He advanced with limber step, brush in hand.
"If I were you, I should go," he breathed with polite malevolence in the stout visitor's ear. The stout visitor (as I had the story from Jackman) cast a glance of trepidation at his interlocutor, and his ferocious garb of daubs.
"If I were you I should go—hook it—clear out!" repeated Mr. Toosey, with a crescendo of advice. The stout man endeavored for awhile to ignore this, tried to rivet his attention on the portrait by Van Dyck on the door, and to pretend that there was no one else in the room, and managed to drop his spectacles in his increasing agitation. As he stooped painfully to pick them up, a low but savage voice breathed over his scanty hair in accents of extreme and forbidding menace.
"If I were you I should hook it, vamoose, levant, skip," it hissed ferociously. These alternatives, I conceive, were selected by Mr. Toosey with care, in order that one at least of them might carry significance and conviction to the mind of this obdurate party.
The manœuvre was wholly successful. With a cry of alarm the corpulent stranger recovered himself, trod his glasses to flinders in the act, and backed in open distress towards the door. His withdrawal was hastened by threatened approaches of the supposed lunatic with the paint brush; and when I arrived on the scene he was well out into the drive waddling away for dear life. I pieced together the fragments of this tragedy from the communications of Jackman and the hero himself. It was then that the former got his orders, that henceforth no visitors should be admitted.
Well, at least, by this ordinance, we barred out the innocent visitors.