The Castle by the Sea/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
PERDITA
I HAVE said that I was pleased with the dignity of my chamber, which was too admirably proportioned to seem over large. And as the full light of the morning bathed the grounds, I was more than delighted with its prospect. It stared wide of the lawns, out of two long windows, upon some bright spring beds, and a wilderness of trees. Across the sward a gap in a thick beech hedge broke the way into a tangled wild orchard, which again passed into the trees of the small park; while, over the field of green lawns, was the ever-moving water of the Channel. A huge red thorn danced soberly in the sunshine across the gravel path, and the bastions of the sea were blue and sparkling. My eyes carried from foreground to distance with immense delectation. I dressed in cheerful spirits, anxious to be out and enjoying that fine sea-breeze. And then, unexpectedly, I recalled the adventure of the night, and my glance went to the table by my bed for the little note-book. To my astonishment, it had vanished!
I searched everywhere, hunting in every likely place in the room, but without result. The book had disappeared as absolutely as if it had never existed at all. Well, here was another problem to use my wits on. I was nothing loath, and I started on it. I had certainly left the book in my room when I had gone forth to explore the second time. Ergo: it had been stolen during my absence. I had no doubt in my own mind as to the identity of the thief; yet it threw open an appalling prospect. The burglar had not escaped from the house, but had been in hiding through the night and had reclaimed his property.
There seemed to be no other solution possible, yet I consulted Jackman at breakfast, which he served like the expert servant he was. He was respectfully surprised to hear of the book's disappearance, and was anxious to know if I was sure I had placed it on the table. But he had no alternative solution to offer; nor, so far as I could see, did the idea of the nocturnal thief trouble him as much as it did me. But, then, one never knows what emotions beat under the unruffled exterior of the well-trained servant. He appeared to be much more concerned lest I should not have the marmalade I liked, and the coffee to my taste, than lest Norroy Castle should be rifled of its treasures. And that thought reminded me of the strong-room, diverting my attention from the lost note-book.
"The plate and the jewels must have been the object," I said, wondering at the carelessness which did not entrust such valuables to a bank or safe deposit.
Jackman agreed with me, precipitately for him: "Yes, sir; very likely, sir." But the hinge on which they swung was bound to bring my thoughts back.
"And if the note-book meant nothing, Jackman, why was it stolen from me."
"You don't know what was in it, sir?" suggested Jackman tentatively.
"Why, yes; and that is the strange part of it. It held no deadly or dangerous secrets. It was merely a list of pictures."
"Indeed, sir," Jackman uncovered the dish of kidneys.
"A list, suggesting it was a list of the pictures in the library," I added. "Is there a portrait of Lady Claire Norroy there?"
"Yes, sir, I think there is," said the butler, handing me the toast.
"And is there a Claude."
"Claude, sir?" repeated Jackman, deferentially, but without intelligence.
It was clear that the name of the celebrated painter conveyed no meaning to him. "I don't think there was any Norroy called Claude, sir," he added thoughtfully.
I was, of course, bent on an examination of the library and its treasures by daylight, and immediately after breakfast ascended the staircase. The room had a worn and dilapidated air in the sunshine which was merciless to its shabby furniture. Yet its faded honors clothed it with a certain impressiveness and the pictures redeemed it altogether for dignity. The pictures were not numerous, but some work by great hands decorated the walls. There was the Reynolds of Lady Claire, the Claude beyond doubt, an obvious Velasquez, and a characteristic Rubens. If Lely were not represented, it was a faithful disciple of Lely, and two Van Dycks were not to be overlooked. Altogether it would have been a serviceable little gallery to any amateur collector, and interested me intrinsically, apart from my particular quest. As for that, I saw at the first glance what I wanted; the note-book undoubtedly had contained the beginnings of a catalogue. But why, Heaven alone could say. Jackman, who accompanied me to the gallery, had now a bright suggestion in explanation.
"It must have been one of the tourists," he declared.
"What, have you tourists here—in this remote spot." I asked, remembering my fly-man.
"Yes, sir; they come over sometimes from Kingsbridge or Plymouth," he replied. "The Castle's mentioned in the guide-books."
"Do you get many visitors?" I asked, recalling now the man at the gate with his cigar, and the girl in the park.
"Not many," he admitted. "But sometimes in the summer."
"Had any lately?" I inquired, still with my mind on the young lady.
"Yes, sir—the last two days," he replied promptly.
"A lady?"
"Yes, sir, and a gentleman, sir."
"Together?" I asked.
"No, sir; separately, sir. And it's my belief, sir, that the book belonged to one of them."
"Do you think the lady ventured into my bedroom to steal it at one this morning?" I asked mildly.
Jackman was thrown into polite confusion. "Well, no, sir; I don't know, sir;" adding, "perhaps it will turn up, sir."
I left him, pottered about in the gallery, and at last went down by the other stairway, which gave access to the courtyard. From the courtyard I blundered through a door which communicated by a passage with some furnished rooms; and soon perceived I must be in the quarters occupied by the Jackmans. This information was confirmed by the sound of a man's voice, which reached me in a rumble. Rumble as it was, it had a certain agitant and minatory timbre that penetrated. It was of that sustained monotone that bespeaks the scolding. And suddenly there was silence. Trying to solve the riddle of my position, I broke into the kitchen, and heard the sound of the kettle singing and of a woman sniffing. I looked about, and found Mrs. Jackman with a handkerchief to her eyes by the table.
"Anything the matter, Mrs. Jackman." I asked, and she started up with a cry. "Sorry I startled you," I remarked. "1 've lost my way in. I hope you 're not in trouble."
"Mrs. Jackman has the headache, sir," said a voice behind me. I swept about and met her husband's demure eyes. "She always cries when she has the headache."
"I always cries when I has the headache," sniffed the woman. I glanced from the one to the other. It was no business of mine, yet I was perfectly aware that whether Mrs. Jackman had or had not a headache, it was not the headache that had driven her to tears. I remembered the scolding voice; but Jackman's face was devoid of all anger, annoyance, or any feeling whatever. I passed on with the expression of a casual hope that she might soon recover. And Jackman piloted me into my own apartments.
But I was now for the sunshine that was moving among the May foliage. The short round drum-towers, between which the hall door swung, fronted a paradise of green lawn, spaced with many flowering trees and shrubs. Up one tower crept an ancient wistaria, on which the lavender trusses were opening. Pink hawthorns were sprinkled here and there and the back of the lawn was gay with drooping laburnum. Lilac rose in embowered masses behind the borders, and the white and red candles of the horse-chestnut glittered in the distance. Yet for all these glories, the garden was not elaborate, but rather unpretentious. The pinch of its poverty showed in its flower beds, which were cheaply maintained by herbaceous perennials, none the less beautiful for that. It was a self-respecting garden, decently well-groomed, the economy showing through. It was lavish only in its self-sufficing blossoms, as an impoverished house may display marvellous heirlooms, descended from a more fortunate past. It could not keep pace with nouveaux riches, but was not ashamed of its shabby gentility. It had, so to speak, retired on Nature, leaving to the gardener the job of merely tidying up. His was no longer the work of an artist, but of a housemaid. Yet I would not have exchanged it for a thousand houses of orchids and ferneries and stoves. It grew out of doors and was acclimatized to its air and sunshine. It was as much a part of Norroy Castle as the orchard wilderness, as the long-grown grasses of the park, as the restless sea in the offing.
To this sea I wended my way, by a winding path through a wild garden, which eventually frankly merged in a copse. At the end of the path I found a gate in the wall, and opening it I came out on the sea front. The tide was running out, and betwixt the demesne of the Castle and the receding water was a space of broken rocks and sand. I picked my way to the very edge of the sea, and wheeled my eyes in a semicircle from shore to shore. Eastward a bluff terminated my view, but to the west I could see the rocks rise into a cliff, on which the waters of the Channel still broke with spray. I moved eastward, till I had reached the bluff, and here I caught sight of two men. As they were the only human beings in sight, I gave them the more attention. One was tall, slight and swarthy, and the other of an extreme disparity, being short, rather fair, and somewhat stout. They were conversing together, and gave me the shafts of their eyes when I hove in view. But immediately the little man turned his back upon me, an example which his companion presently followed. They began to walk slowly along the shore.
I am setting down the observations and impressions of this, my first day in Norroy Castle, because of the importance assumed by some of them later. The two walked along the foreshore at a little distance in front of me, and I idly noticed that the smaller man was dressed in some ordinary tweeds, and that his shoulders hunched up about a somewhat neckless head. But beyond that, and the casual recognition of an apparent distinction between the class to which he belonged and that of his companion, I remember no further impressions. I had eyes and ears, indeed, for the sea only, and so we covered the mile or so that lay between the little bluff and the mouth of the inlet. Round the turn of this was a tiny fishing hamlet of some dozen cottages, styled, I discovered subsequently, "The Point," clustering under a rise of the land; and some boats rode at anchor in the stream.
I took the road here that leads up the estuary, and a brisk walk brought me to the superior village of Southington, which I had passed the evening before I vaguely was aware that the two men had halted in the hamlet, and, still more vaguely, on thinking it over subsequently, I had the notion that they went down to the boats.
Southington I found to be a picturesque place, in the sunlight, set at a little height above the water, its cottages furnished with pleasant green gardens, and the village distinguished by a post-office in the grocer's shop and a tidy inn—"The Feathers." Down by the estuary was a small landing-stage and boats, and I soon got into conversation with a seafaring man who was lounging near. It seemed that the boats were his property, and that he let them to summer visitors.
"Do you get many?" I inquired, and gathered that they did not get so many as he wished. But he was a cheerful spirit, and enjoyed a gossip. There were two ladies staying at Mrs. Lane's, he told me with a nod over his shoulder, and a gentleman at the inn; another gentleman, he suddenly recollected, at old Mrs. Turner's. "But there's time yet," he ended philosophically.
The waters of the estuary lapped coolly against the piers of the landing-stage; and the bright sun shimmered in the waving mirror, breaking into a thousand lights. The land here opened in a deep and generous fissure; across the water, half a mile away, rose wooded slopes, and it seemed to me that I could descry islets in the distance. To encourage my sociable acquaintance, I told him to reserve me a boat for the afternoon. I had come down to work, certainly, but I was no galley-slave to begin right away. I looked at my watch and found I had just time to get back for lunch. And so I passed through the village and entered on the road that climbs the hill to the Castle.
You will conceive that I was not a little engaged by the odd circumstances of the night, including the mysterious note-book; yet I was not breaking my wits on the knotty puzzle. The day was too magnificent to waste on such a task, for I take it that sensation rather than reason is the prime avenue of happiness. Well, I was for sensation all the time, and, lest I should overindulge in dreaming, I must add to that, action. This my rowing excursion promised me. I returned to Southington in good time, and launched my fortunes. I put up the sail, which drew lightly, and under an easy breeze from the south I tacked up the estuary, I had resolved on making the village at the head of the water, but I was tempted aside to the wooded shores. This may have been destiny, or it more probably was chance; but at any rate it led to a little adventure. The foreshore descended in a gentle slope to the edge of the estuary, and was thickly grown with trees and bushes and briars, all in the early verdure of spring. As I approached, I was aware of a woman on a patch of sand who was waving her hands, and gesticulating wildly; also of a cry on the air. Was this beauty in distress? I gave the tiller a turn and ran in, beaching on the smooth shore.
"What is it?" I asked.
She came towards me with little quick steps, as though hampered by her skirts, which I noticed were pinned up above a length of pink unstockinged leg.
"There! There!" she pointed, her large eyes wide with horror. "Oh, quick; she will be drowned—and drift out to sea."
I stared; some distance out from the shore was a little boat, but I could see no sign of life in it. My gaze returned to the lady, who was wringing her hands.
"Oh, how can you wait and lose time? It's cruel!" she declared.
"Please, let me understand," I urged. "What is it I am to do
"A lady—in the boat there," she cried breathlessly.
I turned again to look at the skiff. "I see no one," I said.
"She is asleep!" she bleated.
"Asleep!" I echoed, and momentarily questioned the speaker's sanity.
"Oh, yes, can't you understand?" she pleaded. "We rowed here, and it looked nice, and I got out, and she went to sleep, and the boat drifted off."
She positively wailed.
"But she can row back," I suggested.
She dramatically, even tragically, waved her arms to the sculls, that I now observed on the sand. "She has nothing to row with," she cried in despair. "We took them ashore, to make them safe." The idea had a certain originality, but I did not laugh.
"Oh!" I said simply. "Well, no harm's done. We 'll soon pick her up." I edged the boat more conveniently to her that she might enter, and she saw my design, but drew back, suddenly abashed. Now that I had reassured her of her friend's ultimate safety, I think she remembered her tucked-up gown and her bare feet.
"No,—I—I don't think I will go," she stammered, "if you are sure you can save her."
"Certain sure!" I said cheerfully, and I pushed off.
My sail carried me down on the drifting boat pretty quickly, but I still could not see that it contained any one. I dropped the sail, and deftly manœuvred my craft closer, so that the bottom of the skiff was visible. Stretched out, with her head comfortably reposing on a silken pillow, her eyes shut to the green world and the blue heaven above, lay the girl I had seen on the previous evening in the Castle grounds. I recognized her at once, and wondered why. Had I come to note things more closely since my rustication? Even in sleep she had an individual grace, which, I should imagine, was hard to come by; but my experience is limited. My boat bumped gently against hers, but she did not wake, merely threw a delightful arm across the bronze wealth of her hair. I sat observing her. This must be one of the ladies who were lodging at Mrs. Lane's, and my distressed friend was no doubt the other. The boats grazed again, and her eyelids quivered. Then she sat up with a start.
"Why—what—!"
The exclamation passed into a look of dismay and fear, and that in its turn gave way to one of distance.
"I don't understand—" she began coldly.
"A runaway horse," I said smiling, "and no bit to turn it;" I indicated the land, and the intermediate water. A deep flush enlivened her face, as she gradually took it all in.
"I must have—been asleep," she murmured. "And you—"
"A lady sent me in search," I explained.
"Oh! Thank you!" she exclaimed in gasps. "I'm so sorry! What a nuisance I 've been!"
I endeavored to lull that fear, but she paid me little heed. "Did you—are my oars—?" she asked.
"They were carefully landed," said I, gravely, "and very neatly set together."
"Oh, that's so like Isabel!" she broke out. "I suppose she was afraid some one would go off with them. She has a passion for neatness," she added, with the first smile I had seen her wear.
"Well, that being so," I suggested, "you will let me tow you."
By way of assent, she silently passed me a rope, and I made the skiff fast. Then we ran lightly towards the shore. On our arrival no Isabel was to be seen. My waif raised a musical voice for her, and presently a muffled cry issued from the wood. I wondered if there was more distress, and if I was to continue being a knight errant. I did not dislike the rôle so far.
"Perhaps it s a wolf," said I hopefully, and would have darted forward to the rescue, but her cool and decisive voice stopped me.
"I think I will go, if you don't mind," she said, and added, with a little dry sense of humor: "That is Isabel's cry of distress."
I waited, and presently she emerged again from the bushes, and came down to the boats. She searched in her own, and took out demurely a pair of stockings, equipped with which she silently walked back to the wood. I waited still, though I knew I had no right to do so. My duty was done. On her second return, I was busy putting her oars in the boat, in order to account for my stay.
"I am ever so much obliged to you," said she, in a pleasant, informal way; and then seemed for the first time to realize that she too had broken out of taut and trim conventions. She put her hand up to her neck, down which the beautiful hair streamed untidily, but picturesquely, and refastened it without the slightest embarrassment.
"It was good of you to come for me," she said.
"I have often longed for such a chance," said I. "All my life I have indulged in dreams of saving princesses, and now I have awaked to find it true, thank goodness."
She dwelled on me fully and seriously with her eyes for a moment, and then replied:
"Here comes Miss Fuller."
Miss Fuller emerged, and we watched her delicate tread across the sand. She was tall and of a somewhat large frame, but by no means stout, save that her face, which was comely, was rather full. Animation kindled her expressive eyes.
"Oh, I am so thankful, dear Perdita, that it was no worse," she said. "It might have been, if this gentleman had n't kindly—"
"Oh, I 've thanked him," said Perdita, a little curtly, I thought.
Perdita! The name was music in my ears. Miss Fuller struck me as a little on the other side of thirty; Perdita could not have been more than five and twenty. I arranged the oars in the boat. "You will have a stiff pull against the tide," I said.
Perdita glanced at the water indifferently. "Miss Fuller rows very well," she said coolly.
"My dear Perdita, only when I don't catch crabs, explained her companion.
"If you will allow me, I can take you in my boat. I have a sail," I explained.
"Thank you, I think we shall do very well," said Perdita.
She was adorable to look on, but I feared she might have that terrible downrightness of the modern girl, which is a misapprehension of independence.
But Miss Fuller had clearly no hankering after the oars.
"If Mr.—" she hesitated.
"My name is Brabazon; I am living at the Castle," I explained, in the hope of giving my bona fides.
A glance shot between the girls.
"Oh, if Sir—if Mr. Brabazon would be so good, Perdita dear—" began Miss Fuller.
Perdita dear turned away. "Certainly, if you are tired," she said unceremoniously, and then, as if she remembered, "It is very good of you."
The skiff flopping astern, we set sail down the estuary. The breeze from the south still held, and I had to make several tacks to reach the Southington landing-stage. And when we were there, it seemed very natural that I should walk up the beach with them to the village.
At the gate into a trim little garden, with an overarching porch of honeysuckle and clematis, the ladies paused, and Perdita gave me a little informal nod, in dismissal. Her companion, more gracious, smiled kindly at me, and I felt her eyes still following me when I moved on after my salute. It struck me as rather a tame conclusion of what had promised to be an interesting affair. I had got no farther with Perdita's name, though I had the better part of it, and our acquaintance ended abruptly as it had begun. The girl tantalized me, but I admired her gait as she passed up the pathway to the tiled cottage.
As my adventure had ended so early, there was nothing for it but to stroll home, and, as I went by the village pump on the green, I was aware of eyes bent on me from another quarter.
In front of a cottage stood a young man of middle size and spare body, in a rather assertive Norfolk suit, with knickerbockers of a loose riding pattern. The stranger, who was clean-shaven and had a mocking resemblance to a groom, gave me a friendly nod.
"Niceish day!" he commented.
Though I was the tenant of Norroy Castle, I was not proud, and, to say the truth, I leaned towards gossip in my solitude. I stopped, and returned his greeting.
"Staying up at the Castle?" he inquired, nibbling a twig. "Decent old place."
The terms were only roughly adequate, and to be excused because of the speaker's obvious limitations of vocabulary.
"Charming," I corrected.
"Glad you like it," he said briefly, and then looked down the road. "Tolerable looking girls," he observed, classing them thus sacrilegiously together. "But not quite my style."
"Ah, you fly high, doubtless," I remarked, with all my sarcasm in my voice and my civil inclination of the head.
"I suppose I do," he replied simply. "I like a flier—a girl with some go in her. That girl's a bit la-de-da for me. Pretty, though."
Pretty! Why, the nincompoop interested me by his very disqualifications. He spoke lazily, yet with the accent of one who has been brought up on that indefinable but distinctive plane of gentleman. Otherwise, he might have been a jockey, and should.
"She's been here a week or so," he added.
Here was my manifest chance to draw my information from such an obviously amiable and communicative simpleton.
"A pretty girl," I assented, adopting his wretched adjective, "and no doubt a pretty name."
"Don't know her name," says this oaf, and added: "You seem a bit smitten. We can find out at the inn."
I had not come down from London to retain London manners. I was free and unfettered, king of my own actions, and in the country could do as the country evidently did. Nonchalantly I walked down to the inn with my new friend, who, before entering, peered in at a window, sticking up a single eye-glass to do so. It gleamed in a brown freckled face to one side of a large nose.
"Chalmers in!" he said, and entered.
Once inside, I was induced to take a glass with him, which, being warm from my exertions, I was not reluctant to do. We sat in a little parlor at the back of the bar, smelling rankly of stale beer and tobacco. The sheepish innkeeper supplied our wants, and my new friend bluntly made his interrogation.
"Who are the ladies staying at Mrs. Lane's?" he inquired. Chalmers did not know, but amiably volunteered to ask the missus. While he was absent, the gentleman jockey delivered himself of sundry opinions on women, which seemed to him important, and were to me entertaining.
"There ain't much in them, outside looks," he concluded, "and most of that's dress. They 're regularly artful, you know."
Here was a fine cynic, say at eight and twenty! Anxious for further instruction and guidance, I asked questions. "This may all come in useful to me some day," I explained humbly. "One never knows. I gather you 've escaped them so far."
"If I had n't been careful, I should n't," he told me frankly. Never was there such a frank person. "There was a sort of arrangement about a cousin of mine—family arrangement, don't you know. I never had any hand in it, nor she, for that matter. It was sort of patched up when we were kids. But I'm not taking it; nor, I guess, is she. At any rate, we 've never seen each other, and don't want to. I like my liberty," he was good enough to explain, "and I don't buy a pig in a poke."
At this point the innkeeper returned with the halting information that his missus thought the young lady's name was Fuller. Why had it not occurred to me that there were two? And that I did not want particularly to learn the name of the one whose name I already knew?
"Fuller," handed on my jockey politely to me, as who should say, "There, now, are you satisfied?"
Of course I was not, but I seemed at the moment too bashful to say so. I think it was the audience that silenced me. I was ashamed, all of a sudden, to go inquiring for Perdita like a police officer. So, to save the situation, I smiled affably, and turned the point on my companion with a wave of my hand.
"As we 're making out a directory, why not include yourself?" I asked humorously.
He eyed me, taking this in. "My name's Eustace," he ground out, in his slow way. "What's yours?"
"Brabazon," I completed the directory. "I am tenant of the Castle for the present, and glad to welcome you there some day, Mr. Eustace," I added, out of civility.
"Much obliged. Look you up some time, if you don't mind," he got out unceremoniously, and rose.
At that moment there passed the open door into the passage two men, and one glanced in. Their footsteps suddenly halted, and a whispered conversation reached our ears. I moved out with Eustace, and passed the two on the way to the entrance. Their conversation dropped. When we had got a little way from the door, I happened to glance back. The two stood now in the sunlight before the inn, and were staring after us; and one of them I recognized as the short fair man I had seen on the shore that morning. His companion made a step or two as if to hurry in our direction, but the little man's hand suddenly checked him.