Scene I.--HEROIC

THE FEAST OF

BACCHUS

A Study in Dramatic Atmosphere

BY

ERNEST G. HENHAM

BROWN, LANGHAM & CO., LTD.,

78, New Bond Street, London, W.

1907

CONTENTS

Prelude

Overture

Act I.

Scene I. Satiric

Scene II. Sketch

Scene III. Tragedy

Interlude

Act II.

Scene I. Comedy

Scene II. Mystery

Scene III. Musical Comedy

Entr’acte

Act III.

Scene I. Heroic

Scene II. Pastoral

Scene III. Extravaganza

Scene IV. Sentimental Comedy

Scene V. Pageant

Scene VI. Melodrama

Scene VII. Idyll

Incidental

Act IV.

Scene I. Puppenspiele

Scene II. Lyrical Dithyramb

Scene-Shifting

Act V.

Scene I. Morality

Scene II. Masque

Proscenium

Exode

The Feast of Bacchus

PRELUDE

When an unnatural idea possesses a woman bitterness flows from her

tongue.--_Euripides_.

The silence upon the river was broken by a vivacious voice,--

“My lady, out of the depths of your wisdom define for me the word

asymptote.”

“Spell it,” murmured beauty in laziness, from a heap of pink cushions.

The vivacious voice did so, inaccurately.

“Never heard of the thing,” said indolence.

“Then I must search in the dictionary,” answered vivacity.

A moment later the punt lurched violently, there was a splash of water

under the bank, a nodding of tall rushes; and beauty in pink closed

her pretty eyes and tried to forget she was Maude Juxon, wife of a

rich stockbroker, and mother of a three year old child whom she had

not seen for more than six months.

Some evening clouds were reflected in the smooth river. Swallows

darted to and fro, and fish were splashing after ambrosial gnats. The

atmosphere was languorous. A single jarring note, necessary to make

the surroundings earthly, was supplied by an impatient owl hooting

from an elm before its time. Down to the river sloped the garden of

widowed Mrs. Neill, burning with the flowers of June. The sleepy

occupant of the punt heard far-away the snip of the gardener’s iron

scissors. This, the only, sound of human labour made her more

contented with the lot which had fallen to her in an easy ground.

The punt lurched still more violently and Mrs. Juxon was again

awakened to the troublesome world. Flora Neill, the widow’s only

child, and bosom friend of the little lady in pink, settled herself,

at the other end of the boat, and balanced a drab volume upon her

knees.

“Will you be pleased to refrain from sleep for a few minutes, my

lady?” she asked. “Because I have a desire to talk.”

“Don’t call me my lady,” said Mrs. Juxon irritably. “If you do I will

go to sleep at once. Have you found out what that thing is?”

“I am just going to,” said Flora, who was a tall fair-haired girl,

endowed with more than average good looks, but unmistakably “narrow

atween the eyen,” and possessing a chin which her bluff old uncle, the

vicar of Kingsmore, had described as a walnut-cracker. “Before I begin

you may look into this letter which has just come. And, Maude, I found

mother reading an incoherent epistle from uncle. It appears I am

expected to make my annual appearance at Kingsmore, the week after

next, to criticise pigs and bring the scent of the footlights over the

hay for the benefit of my reverend relative who is about as much at

home in London as you or I would be in Timbuctoo. Here! catch your

letter.” Flora tossed the missive across the punt, and her indolent

friend was sufficiently curious to lift her head and glance at the

handwriting.

“Only from Herbert,” she sighed disappointedly. “What a ridiculous

thing it is to have a husband who writes to you every day! I know

exactly what he says,” she droned, pulling the envelope open.

“When are you coming home? I find the evenings very dull without you.

Couldn’t you have Peggy at home now? I don’t like the idea of her

being farmed out. She isn’t farmed out,” cried Mrs. Juxon indignantly.

“What a nasty objectionable phrase to use! Peggy is with a very good

nurse, who will bring her up much better than I ever should. What is

the good of being a rich woman if you are to be bothered with your

baby? And as for going home--well, I’m quite happy here.”

“You would rush into matrimony and motherhood, my child,” said the

fair-haired girl, who was not more than four years Maude’s junior. “I

warned you, and now--”

“I’m driving my husband to drink, prophetess,” laughed the pink lady.

“Or to some other woman.”

Mrs. Juxon tore the letter into fragments which she snowed daintily

over the water with a tiny white hand.

“I couldn’t have worked for my living,” she said. “And nice men are

poor. What’s that you are reading?”

“An asymptote,” read Flora, “is a line which approaches nearer and

nearer to a given curve, but does not meet it within a finite

distance. It is an astronomical phrase. Now do you know what an

asymptote is, Maude?”

“It is a line,” recited the pink lady, in her frivolous way,

“which--which does something or other to a curve.”

“Don’t worry that little head,” said the maiden. “I won’t ask you to

repeat the definition. I wanted to see if you would be personal. My

dear, I have been called an asymptote, and no longer ago than

yesterday.”

“I can’t think out things,” said Maude pettishly. “It makes my head

ache. Who ever called you that thing? I can’t pronounce it.”

“I overheard the compliment,” Flora answered. “So I went up to the

culprit, a wicked old clergyman who dabbles in astronomy, and demanded

an explanation. He laughed, and said, ‘It is a mathematical way of

calling a lady a flirt.’”

“Do explain,” said a voice which suggested slumber.

“I will, if you listen,” said Flora. “Are you awake, Maude?”

“I will be, if it is not going to be too hard,” said the pink lady.

“It is quite easy,” said Flora. Then she began to read,--

“The asymptote is more than a mere scientific expression. It is a term

which may be applied to many of Eve’s daughters. The human asymptote

has her being amongst us both in country and in town. The observer is

made to feel her presence, as she may be seen approaching nearer and

nearer the man who is her given curve for the time being, he prepared

to respond to the influence, and she equally determined never to meet

him until they reach infinity together. She is no beautiful figure,

despite all her surface charms. Her blood never responds to the

natural call of sex. But admiration is to her as the breath of life,

and she will beguile as wantonly as any of the Sirens of old. Equipped

with a ready brain, which has never been dulled by the mastery of

love, her power of seduction is complete. She throws down a cold heart

and a scheming brain to challenge a true nature and real affection.

But so soon as the human curve leaps out of hyperbola to meet his

asymptote repulsion assuredly must follow.

“Our asymptote may be graceless, but she is never a fool. She knows

indeed all that a girl can know. She has opened all the books of

dangerous knowledge and loves to indulge in unrestrained speech. She

will discuss the tenderest relations flippantly, because they are

nothing to her. She will converse upon matrimonial matters with the

carelessness of the child blowing soap bubbles. She passes through

life lonely, though to an outsider she may appear the centre of a

crowd. She is happy enough to all outward seeming, and finds a vast

deal to interest her. She is not often dangerous, because when all is

said she remains little more than a rattle, and if she marries at all

it is late in life, and then not because she has met her curve--for

that is scientifically impossible--but rather because she finds she

must have a man of her own to plague. When thus settled she may still,

if the fates be kind, happen upon some foolish youth ready to play the

curve to her asymptote. One does not pity her; but a sigh may well be

spared for her husband.”

Flora gazed thoughtfully along the river, her mouth determined, and a

strong light in her eyes. Her companion, who was by this time wide

awake, had no imagination; but she could not help feeling that behind

that face there was a will which might carry its owner rather too far.

“Are you really like that?” Maude demanded, nodding in the direction

of the book of knowledge.

Flora nodded seriously.

“Then I think you are a wicked person,” said Mrs. Juxon virtuously.

“My dear little Maude! Do you really believe what I have just read?”

laughed the fair-haired girl. “It is rubbish. It’s a fairy-tale

written, as a warning for very young men, by some snuffy old

philosopher who never found a woman with whom he could agree. You

needn’t stare at me with those big blue baby eyes. I am a far better

girl than you will ever be. I don’t meet my curves, but you have

become hopelessly entangled in yours.”

“I am not an--I can’t pronounce it,” protested the pink lady. “It’s

nonsense to rail against matrimony. A girl without money must either

earn her own living, which is altogether disgusting and impossible, or

she must marry.”

“Suppose she shrinks from the idea, as you would from a cold bath on a

winter’s morning?”

“Flora, a girl must marry if she wants comfort and liberty. Of course

it’s silly to marry for love. That doesn’t last long after marriage

anyhow. You may say what you like, but matrimony will always be a

girl’s one aim in life, besides it is nice and proper. Really,” little

Mrs. Juxon concluded, “I am quite clever this evening.”

“Your wisdom has not supplied you with an answer to my question,”

Flora went on. “It’s true I shrink from the thought of matrimony, but

I won’t be called an incomplete woman, though I have my one little

antipathy. I cannot touch or smell a rose. But that’s a matter of

temperament. In other things I am as complete as you are. I love

admiration, but what girl does not? Perhaps my blood is a little bit

cold, but then men and women no longer meet only on the ground of sex.

Thank Heaven for that. I really think that in time I might love--in a

spiritual sense.”

“Men don’t appreciate that kind of love,” said Mrs. Juxon decisively.

“Because they have never been properly educated. We shall train them

to higher things in time. Why, Maude, the spiritual union is the

perfect state. We are not animals, to increase and multiply, at this

stage of the world’s history. We are nervous sympathetic beings, and

love properly developed should be a reaching out of the soul for

larger and wider sympathies. And a man will hold and squeeze a girl,

and call her idiotic names, if she will let him. Call that spiritual

love! The state of the man and woman in the garden was the sympathy I

crave for.”

“And they fell from it at once,” cried the other joyously.

“Because they were ignorant. The world is older now and we are wiser.

We shall advance to platonic marriage. Matrimony, as it exists to-day,

deadens the sympathies. The state of the soul which demands a perfect

union cannot under present circumstances be attained. In your case, my

dear, nature, after attaining her end, has snatched away the veil

which hid the coarse reality, and you know you don’t love your

husband. As a matter of fact you never did love him.”

“Herbert has always been good to me,” argued the pink lady. “And he is

so well off that I should have been very silly if I had refused him.

Mother assured me love would come after marriage. It didn’t, but that

is not my fault. I am quite a model wife; I don’t quarrel with my

husband, I let him kiss me sometimes, and I never interfere with his

business. When he gives a dinner he shows me off with ridiculous

pride. And when he is unreasonable I come away and visit my friends,

while he writes every day for me to go back. You see it is not a bad

marriage.”

“What has the soul got to do with it?” demanded Flora.

“Nothing,” Mrs. Juxon laughed lazily. “This little body is quite

enough for me. I don’t worry about souls or sympathies.”

“The sympathies will not be ignored,” the fair-haired girl threatened.

“If you are married without love some state of the soul will assert

itself. That is always the punishment for a marriage of convenience.”

“I won’t sit here and be persecuted,” said Mrs. Juxon with some

spirit. But, while she rebelled, her face became sad and her eyes full

of thought; because she could not help recalling the memory of one in

particular with whom she had once experienced, as she thought, that

state of the soul, and in whose arms she had cried to say farewell.

“Why have you such a rooted objection to matrimony?” she went on

quickly.

“Because it is abominable and tyrannic,” said Flora. “Because the

wretched girl becomes completely absorbed by her husband, if she gives

herself up to him entirely as she is supposed to do. She has not even

her identity left. She is compelled to think as the inferior half of

somebody else’s mind. She actually grows to resemble her husband in

face and manner. The man takes everything from her, not only her name

and her individuality, but her health and her beauty--”

“Flora, I won’t listen. You are horrid and coarse. You’ll be saying it

is wicked to have children next.”

“It is sometimes,” the out-spoken young woman retorted. “You remember

what a beauty Gertrude Norton was, and how everyone used to rave over

her?”

“Yes,” admitted the stockbroker’s wife.

“She has been married only three years, but who would rave over her

now? Nobody would call her even nice-looking. Only a few seasons ago

she won a tennis championship, or something equally good, and she

would think nothing of cycling fifty miles or more in one day. Now she

is the mother of twins, and a confirmed invalid. She is a model wife,

I daresay, and a perfect pattern of motherhood, but her dancing days

and her tennis playing are over. And she is not twenty-five.”

“Her husband is very fond of her,” said Mrs. Juxon pathetically.

“I know a man who says he is very fond of me,” replied the fair-haired

girl. “But I do not intend to spoil my life while I retain my senses.”

“He wouldn’t be fond of you if he could hear you now. I declare,”

shivered the little lady, “I’m getting quite afraid of you. I wonder

what you really think of me. Am I falling off at all, Flora?”

“Horribly,” said the girl, rising and swaying the punt. “It is nearly

dinner time and it is getting chilly. Let us go in.”

“I am beginning to feel not only cold but old,” said the pink lady, as

she gathered in her skirts to step ashore. “But I cannot be ugly.

Whatever may happen I cannot be ugly. It is heavenly to feel upon

coming into a drawing-room that men cannot take their eyes off you.

What is the secret of preserving beauty, Flora?”

“You must be spiritual,” said Miss Neill.

“I have Peggy,” murmured Mrs. Juxon, as she stepped upon the bank with

her studied daintiness of motion. “I really have done my duty as a

wife and a mother.”

“Do you hear the owl?” exclaimed Flora, as they walked away from the

lazy river.

“Yes, the beast!” replied Maude spitefully. “I am always superstitious

when I hear owls!”

OVERTURE

Inasmuch as Nature tells us there are Gods, and we know, by reason,

what they must be like, so, with the consent of all rational beings,

we believe souls to endure everlastingly; where, however, these

spirits exist, and what they are like, we must discover by

investigation.--_Cicero_.

The reverend Doctor Berry concluded to his satisfaction the single

paragraph which was the result of a morning’s thought, wiped his pen,

fingered the sheet of manuscript tenderly, and placed it carefully in

a drawer of his desk, then rose and walked across to the open window.

The sun was setting upon beech woods, and a deep haze flecked with

dust and white butterflies shimmered across a strip of garden, bright

with poppies and cornflowers, which divided the rectory from the

churchyard; the main portion of the garden stretched away behind the

house, down a slope which ended in an orchard where a stream ran

bounding the glebe in that direction. A crumbling wall, completely

covered with ivy, marked the line where the consecrated ground ended;

on the rectory side grew docks and nettles and red sorrels among the

altar-tombs and mossy slabs, with here and there a black yew striking

its roots deeply into the resting places of the dead. An unfrequented

road passed beside the church, to become a mere cart-track upon the

downs, where the white-thorn was being shed like snow and the shadows

of the beech wood were lengthening fast.

“It is a glorious evening,” the rector whispered, “I will go and walk

in the garden of the Strath.”

Taking a great key from an oak bracket he walked out of his study,

placed a straw hat upon his silvered hair, and stepped into the

glories of the failing day.

The ecclesiastical parish of Thorlund, scarcely worthy of being

dignified by the title of hamlet, consisted of a wooded valley watered

by a stream. Far down and buried amid elms were tiny church and

parsonage; and hard by rose the inexplicable house, its garden

surrounded by a time-worn wall, known to all as the Strath. A few

cottages upon the Kingsmore road were passing into an advanced stage

of decay. A few in a more habitable state were dotted singly, or in

pairs, beside the grass by-paths or upon the lower ridges of the

downs. The entire parish was moribund. Nothing flourished except the

trees and strong-scented wayside weeds. No dignitary of the church had

entered the valley for hard upon a century. A deadening influence

prevailed over the church, pastor, and people. There were not thirty

adults in the parish all told, and the nearest school was at Kingsmore

four miles distant across the downs. A few peasant farmers clung to

the chalky slopes because they lacked the means to go. The labourers

were agricultural machines; the wives went out to work afield beside

their husbands; and by day the sun smote across an altogether deserted

prospect, where a lone cat slept on the dusty green, and a caged

blackbird listened sadly and silently to its free brethren singing in

the weird garden of the Strath.

Thorlund had in common with the world the sun which warmed it, the

moon which ruled its night, the rain which coursed in milky rivulets

down its stony roads, and the storm which broke its beeches and its

elms--but nothing more. It was a peaceful, but not a happy valley. Its

sleep was not a healthy one. Once, no doubt, Thorlund had lived, and

in a sense flourished, then death came, but a spark of vital element

had crept back to the body, diffusing itself throughout its entire

system, and lending to it a semblance of life. It was from the long

abandoned house known as the Strath that this vital and dramatic

element proceeded. Dr. Berry served as the intermediary between the

incomprehensible spirit of the Strath and those human beings who had

their habitations near. He had remained untouched by the noise and

trouble of the world. His life had moved smoothly from the cradle, and

promised so to continue down to the grave. He had always been happier

apart from others, living his own life which consisted in striving to

materialize rather than dispel that atmosphere of mysticism which

gathers around a scholar’s solitary existence. At Oxford he had worked

for classical honours, not for the sake of reputation, but for the

pure love of knowledge; and when at the age of twenty-five he had been

offered the living of Thorlund, which nobody else could be induced to

accept, he had merely asked, “What is the population of the parish?”

The answer, “Fifty at the last census,” which had frightened away

every one else, satisfied him. The stipend of forty-five pounds per

annum was not a serious consideration, as he possessed means of his

own. After passing through the divinity school with his customary

display of polished scholarship, he accepted the “benefice”; and

thirty years had passed him there, as so many uneventful weeks, while

he built up slowly the work which it was his intention to bequeath to

posterity as a justification for his existence, an analysis of the

lyrical poetry of the Aeolians.

A drowsy rustling of foliage was blown with the chalk dust across the

unused road to the parish church, as the scholar made his way through

the churchyard towards an old oak door set into the grey wall, nearly

twenty feet in height, with a coping of tiles the majority of which

time and storm had worked awry. Pushing the key into the antique lock

he opened the door communicating with the churchyard, and immediately

found himself standing in the shadows of the old garden of the Strath.

Neither building nor grounds had been touched by the hand of man for

more than a century. The romantic house, which bore the date 1670

above the arms of an extinct family graven upon a stone let into the

masonry above the hall door, was of no great size; high rather than

wide, and completely enveloped in ivy and other creepers from cellars

to chimney stacks. The garden and orchard comprised six acres, bound

by that great wall which had in no place fallen completely out of

repair. The grass waved like corn along what had once been the drive,

and the iron gates leading from the Kingsmore road were red and glued

together with rust. Through these gates children often peered to catch

glimpses of the sad house through the tangled growths; to watch the

birds and insects sporting as in another and a stranger and more

restless world. No one ever entered there except the rector. That wall

could not be climbed. The old people of the hamlet would stare through

the forbidding gates, and observe to each other that the flowers were

extraordinary that season in the Strath--there were blooms in those

jungles such as they had never seen elsewhere--or that the odour of

the garden was wonderful, or that the Strath was noisy; and when the

latter statement was in their mouths they realised dimly they were

hinting at what they could not understand.

Yet the place had no evil reputation; the reverse rather. Mothers

would quiet fractious children by promising that they should enter the

mysterious garden some day, or threaten that if they were not good

they could never hope to go to the Strath when they died. No wild

stories dealing with phantasms or spirit lights were passed upon the

village green. Not a tongue had ever been so bold as to suggest that

the spiritual world had acquired a perpetual tenancy of the wild old

place. The Strath had simply remained unentered and unused for over a

century. The flowers and weeds fought together, the trees increased,

the bushes spread, fruit formed, ripened, and dropped to rot year

after year. And yet there was something about the place which made it

unlike other deserted houses; something which did not appear to have

its origin in the weedy circlet of water--for the Strath was a moated

grange--nor in the jungle-like garden, nor in the damp and darkened

house itself; but which had its being in the air, and in the clouds

above, and in the wind around.

“No, Sir,” said Simcox the sexton, when Dr. Berry questioned him many

years ago. “There ain’t nothing what you wight call gruesome about the

old place that I’ve heard tell on. But it seems to me, Sir, that

sometimes when the sun is bright ’tis wonderful happy in there, and

when the wind is noisy ’tis awful solemn-like. I’ve been cutting that

nettle patch along churchyard wall in summer, and had to stop and

laugh out loud, and all for nought, Sir. And I’ve been sweeping leaves

in autumn under the wall, and felt that miserable I could almost have

cut my throat, or maybe somebody else’s throat, begging your

reverence’s pardon for saying it.”

The young rector nodded his head gravely, and because he had a strong

desire to obtain entrance into the mysterious garden, instituted a

search for its owner. He succeeded in part. A firm of land agents in

the neighbouring town supplied him with the address of a London

lawyer; and when next in the metropolis Mr. Berry, as he then was,

found his way into a stuffy office hard by Goldsmith’s memorial, where

he was received by an old fashioned attorney, who replied in the

affirmative when the rector of Thorlund asked whether he represented

the owner of the Strath. As a result of that interview the rector was

granted permission to enter the garden by the gate from the

churchyard, on the condition that he would not lend the key, which was

given him for that purpose, to others. He also received the

information that the owner was abroad, and that the house was neither

to be sold nor let.

“I will write to the owner, informing him that I have given you

permission to use the garden,” the lawyer had said, as he accompanied

his visitor to the door, “and if he objects you shall hear from me.”

Years went by, but the lawyer never wrote; and Dr. Berry walked in the

garden every day, until the glamour of the place made him its slave;

and after walking there, as along the unknown ways of another world,

his work on Aeolian poetry escaped from the trammels of prose and

became itself poetry, pierced through and through by the strange

lights of romance; and he became still more a recluse; and the present

world went away from him and was shrouded in the mists of unreality.

On many a bright day, when nature was revealed at her best, the poet

would laugh and applaud, and even dance grotesquely along the paths of

the Strath, his feet in time to a music which was in his brain but not

in his ears. Was this mere animal enjoyment of life, or was it

influence? Decidedly the latter. The odour of flowers and the giddy

dance of insects were also controlled by that vital and dramatic

element, to which the scholar could only give the name of comedy, a

happiness tinged slightly with the knowledge of mortality. And when

the day was sad with wind, the opposing note of tragedy was struck

throughout the garden; and that fatality which dominated the Attic

drama, the struggle of terrible human passions in the wind and rain,

the falling of life before unpitying destiny, controlled his sensitive

mind. Dr. Berry had suffered when the elements fought above his head,

blending with the influence, which bade him seek out the man hated by

the immortals and slay him without shame. Then was the knowledge swept

upon the poet that he was an intermediary between seen and unseen, and

thus an agent for the effectual working out of the tragedy of justice.

The influence at work within the high wall which fastened about the

Strath was therefore twofold, that of the sun, and that of the storm;

the former a comedy, elevating if bizarre, tempered by a sentiment

suggesting the presence of melancholy beneath the motley; the latter a

tragedy, wild and extravagant as the passions of a Lear, yet redeemed

from absolute despair by the thread of hope chased through the scheme.

Comedy was in the air that evening, a riotous happiness which

inebriated like wine. Singing noisily, although unconscious of it, Dr.

Berry gambolled towards the house, under the rose bowers, along the

track which his own feet had worn into the semblance of a path, beside

the acacias with their grape-like bunches of bloom bursting into pink

or white. He passed below the sun-dial, which rose altar-like above a

mass of tottering masonry coloured with flowers, through the herb

garden, and on until the jasmine and the honeysuckle wafted their

fragrance at him from the worm-eaten porch. A blackbird flew past

screaming. He looked up, annoyed at the interruption, and straightway

shivered, because he saw the figure of a man standing among the high

grass near the front of the house. Indignation possessed the dreamer’s

mind when he beheld a material presence in his garden. His life had

become so intimately connected with that of the Strath that he was

unable to think of the garden as another man’s property. So, he

reflected, the iron gates had been forced apart at last, and a master

was visiting the bewildered place after the silence of a hundred

years--for the thinker was convinced that the elderly man, standing in

the ripening grass, was the owner--and now the garden was to be his no

longer, and his dreams were to be brought to an end. The stranger

lifted his hat and bowed grotesquely. The rector returned this

compliment, after a more dignified manner, and they approached, making

old-fashioned salutes at every step.

“The learned and distinguished Doctor Berry?” said the stranger,

holding out his hand, and laughing with what beyond the wall might

have appeared to be unreasonable mirth.

The scholar laughed also as he replied, shaking the hand offered him

in conscious tune to the persistent music in his brain.

“My lawyer has told me about you. I am Henry Reed, the owner and

master of the Strath. It pleases me that you should have used my

garden. I trust that the inspiration of the place has benefited you.”

It was the first occasion on which Dr. Berry had spoken to a

fellow-being in the garden. He could not rid himself of the fantastic

idea that he and the man before him were characters of a comedy

playing the parts which had been assigned to them.

“I assure you I have found this place a veritable wonder-world,” he

replied. “It has made another man of me--”

“The Strath has made you a dreamer,” broke in the owner sharply. “Men

who dream perform nothing. What an overpowering atmosphere is here!”

he went on, removing his hat and laughing again. “I can scarcely

breathe. Only a few minutes ago I entered upon this property of mine,

a tired and solemn man, and now I am as merry as a clown. Do the bees

always buzz so musically? Are the flowers always sending forth this

fragrance? Ah, you laugh at me.”

“I laughed in spite of myself,” the rector answered. “No, the music is

not always soft, as it is this evening. When the wind changes, and the

sky becomes dark, and the clouds fall low, you shall perceive a

difference.”

“The place is haunted,” the owner shouted.

“Not so,” said the rector happily. “There is nothing here which could

terrify a child. Like us the Strath has its moods. Sometimes it is

happy, and often it is sorrowful. It must either laugh or groan. And

now you will change it all,” he went on bitterly. “You will restore

the house, dig up the garden, prune the orchard, mow the lawns, gravel

the paths, and lay the Strath out like a dead body.”

Again the owner laughed. “Let me set your mind at ease,” he cried,

turning himself as though he would address the house. “Even if I

desired to destroy this picture I could not, for I am a poor man, and

the expense of restoration is beyond my means. I have come to live

here, but I beg you to use my garden as you have done in the past. And

now shall we enter the house?”

Very gladly the rector accepted the invitation. He had often pushed

aside the creepers, to stare at the windows, heavily obscured with

dirt and blinded by close-fastened shutters, longing to visit the

rooms which were in darkness beyond. He passed with the owner of the

Strath towards the bridge which spanned the black water; and as they

walked they went on laughing.

“Will the bridge bear us?” questioned the master, testing the damp

green wood with a nervous foot.

“Let me cross first to convince you,” said the scholar.

Reed’s mood changed when they stood beside the door; and it was with

signs of fear he produced a key, a feather, and a small bottle of oil.

“The light is fading rapidly,” he muttered as he lubricated the lock.

“And I have brought no lamp.”

“There may be candles inside the house,” the rector murmured, although

he had no good reason for saying so.

The bolt crawled back with a scream, and wood dust rained upon their

heads as the door creaked open. They passed side by side into the

dampness of the hall, while the master muttered, “This house has not

been entered for a hundred years.”

“So it is furnished, as I have seen it in my dreams,” the rector

murmured.

Their feet sank into the dust, which in places had drifted to a depth

of several inches. Stairs, carpets, and pictures were coated and

muffled; a mildewed growth shewed in patches on the walls; a stunted

nightshade struggled around a quaint eight-legged table, its roots

sucking nutriment from the damp rottenness of the wood. A circle of

fungi occupied the centre of the hall, and some bats flickered up and

down the stairway.

“My inheritance,” said Reed, shivering as he ploughed his fingers

through the silky dust.

“The garden is your inheritance,” replied his companion. “That is the

soul of the Strath. This is the dry body.”

Walking as he spoke to a door, before which a moth-eaten curtain hung

in shreds, he sought for the handle and pushed inward. The door gave

unwillingly, pressing the dust into a high ridge, and the rector

groped forward holding a lighted match above his head. Their eyes

encountered no repulsive sight; and yet they hesitated before making

an entry, because the past was brought before them, and it is the

custom of men to waver when they open a tomb.

They looked into a dining-room and saw a long table, decked out with

plate and glass, with what had been flowers and fruit, and decanters

caked with wine; around the table chairs were grouped, or pushed

aside, as their former occupants had left them. They beheld the

concluding course of a dinner one hundred years old, as the long dead

diners had left it, interrupted and startled by the arrival of ill

news.

“I will go in and open the shutters,” said the rector firmly.

“You hear nothing?” muttered the owner. “Nothing?”

“There is nothing to hear, except the chirping of the birds.”

“I thought I heard footsteps, and a woman’s voice.”

“No,” said the scholar. “There will be no tragedy while this weather

lasts.” He went on hurriedly, feeling Reed’s eyes upon him, “Your

imagination is playing with you. You think you hear voices of the men

and women who have dined. They are not here. Their bodies are as the

dust which lies upon their table and their chairs.”

Lighting another match he passed in, and leaning over the table dug

out the wicks of the candles and lighted one after another, until he

had converted each of the seven-branched candlesticks into a row of

stars. Then he turned and beheld Reed at his side, staring up and

down, sweeping the cloth with his great beard.

“You are my guest,” he laughed with a hollow note. “In the face of

your knowledge of this place I had almost forgotten that I am master

here. Will you sit down at my table and taste my old wine?”

“Let us have air,” said the rector.

Unfastening the shutters he drew them back, and immediately a tawny

glow mingled with the candle-light. The windows were encrusted with

dirt, and black ivy stems were matted against the glass. The iron

window catch was rotten and snapped when the rector tried to force it

back. He strained at the casement, but the hinge remained immovable.

Reed stood beside the table, fingering one article after another. That

heap of dust had been once a flower, that was an orange shrivelled to

the size of a walnut; here was a snuff-box standing open, there a

half-smoked pipe leaning against a box which still contained bon-bons.

Near him a glass had been overturned in the days when it was the

custom of men to drink hard, and when he cleared away the dust with

the flat of his hand he could distinguish the stain of wine upon the

yellow cloth. He picked up a lady’s glove, black and full of holes,

and bringing it to his face detected the faint fragrance of her who

had dropped it. Another pile of dust resolved itself into a powder

puff, and yet another became a scrap of paper. These had presumably

been dropped together. Reed unfolded the paper, shook it, and holding

it near the candles read as much as he could decipher aloud:--

“I will wait near the sun-dial until you come. Do not wear a mask.

Dear, do not tempt fate by even thinking of a mask here.… to father,

if there be a storm this night… Thomas flogging a horse, and I felt no

pity… This atmosphere is… to rejoin my ship… Nelson against the

French. I shall not be at dinner.… later on.”

“What does it mean?” cried the rector, as he stumbled towards the

table.

“I cannot trace the signature,” muttered Reed. “It means, doctor,” he

went on, “that the Strath is controlled by some unholy influence which

has kept it empty all these years.”

“No,” cried Dr. Berry fervently. “That is not true. Consider how safe,

and happy we are. Neither you nor I suffer the slightest sense of

fear. Hardly a day has passed and not found me in the garden during

these past thirty years, and I am a wiser man than when I came. It is

true I have felt at times the influence which that dead hand suggests.

But it has done me no harm.”

“It has aged and saddened you,” said Reed curtly. “It has caused you

to forget how a man should live.”

“The Strath has been my happiness, my pleasure, as well as my

inspiration,” said the scholar, clutching the back of a chair, and

scarcely noticing when it broke away in his hands. “You will admit as

much when you read my translations and restorations of Sappho. No

unholy influence could have prompted me to that work. Knowledge has

come to me while walking through the garden, amid the fragrance of the

flowers, the song of the insects, the music in the air--”

The master of the Strath interrupted with a shout of discovery.

Following the guidance of his hand the rector saw a dark face grinning

at them from the opposite wall, over the glow of candles and the tawny

light from the half sealed window, through the grime that a hundred

years had placed upon it.

Dr. Berry hurried forward, mounted a chair, and removed from the wall

what proved to be merely a grotesque ornament, a brown mask, with the

leering mouth, great nose, grinning eye-sockets, and arched brows of

comedy. The mask was made of wood, stained a deep brown, and inside

cut upon the surface appeared the words, “Copied at Nuremberg by Jos.

Falk.”

An impulse, which could not be controlled, seized both men, and they

laughed until the old house rang.

ACT I.

Scene I.--SATIRIC

Bah! I do hate bainting and boetry.--_King George II_.

The influence changed, as was usual at the approach of darkness. The

power compelling them forth became irresistible. It was a new

sensation for the scholar, but his sensitive nature suggested that the

resentful force was directed against his companion, and not against

himself. He extinguished the candles and walked lingeringly to the

hall door, following Reed who had escaped into the twilight of the

garden, having no desire to explore further that night. Nor had the

owner any intention then of sleeping in the house. He had indeed when

proposing it to himself forgotten that every room would be buried deep

in dirt. When the scholar joined him with a hospitable invitation to

the rectory he accepted gladly. They passed together towards the iron

gates.

A few country folk had assembled upon the road, to discuss that great

event the opening of the gates of the Strath. One man stood leaning

upon an iron bar, which he had used at Reed’s request to force those

gates apart. Their voices ceased when the rector was seen wading

through the grass, and gnarled hands went up to pull gravely at the

brims of dilapidated and picturesque headgear.

After having engaged two men for the next day, to wrench open doors

and windows, to cut away the creepers, and to clear the interior from

its accumulated dirt, Reed secured the chain, locked the padlock with

his own hands, and giving a good night to the rustics turned away. For

a hundred yards not a word was spoken, then Reed pulled himself

upright, and brushed the dust from his heavy beard.

“It’s all nonsense,” he said roughly, and his companion shrank at the

change in the stranger’s voice and manner. “It’s sheer folly to

suppose that the Strath is different from any other old place, apart,

of course, from the fact that it has not been inhabited within the

recollection of living man. I’m just thinking I may have made a fool

of myself when we were in that garden, Professor. I don’t know what

possessed me. I’m a practical man, level-headed as the best of ’em

ordinarily, but in there I felt--well, I’m not much of a talker, and

hang me if I can explain it, but I felt as if I had taken a little

more drink than I could manage. I might have been playing a part. Ah,

that’s it! I might have been an actor, spouting words that some other

fellow had written down for me.”

“You need not explain,” said the rector gently. “I can enter into your

feelings.”

“Well, I’m going to change all that,” went on Reed. “I’ll clean the

place out from cellar to attic, sell off the old stuff, get in some

decent furniture, tear down the creepers, cut the garden up, sell the

hay for what it is worth, and get the place into as good shape as I

can afford. I mean to start a small poultry farm and make a bit that

way. I come from America, Professor, and I’m not afraid of work. Lucky

I’m not, for I reckon it will take all my time to get that garden into

anything like order this summer.”

The rector shuddered. The stranger had chanced indeed now that the

influence of the Strath had loosened its hold upon him.

“You said you would not alter the place,” he reminded him quietly.

“Did I say so?” Reed answered with a hoarse laugh. “Well, I must have

been crazy. I’m not in a position to spend money, but I’ll soon show

you what one pair of hands can do. Before autumn you won’t recognise

the rotten old property. I shall start with the house to-morrow, and

when that is clean I’ll root up the bushes, drain the moat, and go for

in fruit and poultry.”

“The Strath will not let you,” the rector cried.

“What’s that?” said Reed.

“You are not strong enough to fight the place,” replied the rector

boldly.

Reed regarded his companion with open-mouthed astonishment, and

presently his beard began to wag with laughter. “’Scuse me,

Professor,” he said. “Hope you haven’t got the idea into your head

that it is not legal for a man to make his own house habitable? I tell

you what it is,” he went on in his blunt fashion. “You have lived out

of the world too long, and have roamed around that old wilderness of

mine until you have picked up some queer notions. Wait until I show

you how to breed turkeys.”

Then Dr. Berry realised that he hated this little bearded man who had

come to destroy his happiness. He wished with all his heart he had met

him in the first instance outside the Strath and there discovered his

true character. Had that happened he would assuredly never have

invited him to the rectory. Gazing ahead at the wooden spire of his

little church he said quickly:

“There is the rectory. You see I am a very near neighbour. I have

always been accustomed to enter your garden by the churchyard, through

that gate which you see yonder in the wall.”

Reed shrugged his shoulders, and, muttering into his beard, followed

his host into the cool house.

A very plain supper was the evening meal at Thorlund rectory; and

afterwards the poet sat in his garden to dream upon matters which were

too great for him. That evening he brought two chairs upon the lawn.

When they were seated Reed plunged at once into business and asked the

rector if he could recommend a suitable housekeeper and a man with

some knowledge of poultry. “Poultry and poetry sound a bit alike, eh,

Professor?” he said jocosely. “But there’s a heap more money in my

line than in yours.”

The rector shrank from the jest as from a blow. He answered the

questions of his thick-skinned guest as fully as he could. Then,

prompted by curiosity, he asked Reed how long the Strath had been in

his family, and why it had remained desolate for so long.

The other pulled at his pipe with a frown, as though resenting the

other’s natural desire for information. At last he put up his hand,

stroked his beard, expectorated--again Dr. Berry shrank from him--and

said:

“I don’t know much about yonder place. The Strath was owned in the

first place by a family called Hooper. You can see their arms carved

upon a stone over the entrance. They held the property until the

middle of the eighteenth century. The owner was then a baronet who

lived there alone. He was a pretty bad lot, I’ve been told, and was

hanged at last for murdering his servant.”

“There was another and more serious charge against him, according to

the opinion of a time when gentlemen were permitted to use their

servants like dogs,” the rector interposed. “Sir John was certainly

hanged, but it was for highway robbery. Local tradition declares that

the rope which was used for his execution is now used for ringing the

single bell of Thorlund church. If this statement were to be proved I

should certainly have the rope removed. But I do not consider that it

has been proved.”

“You know more about the Strath than I do. Perhaps you can tell me how

it came by its queer-sounding name?” said Reed; and he raised his pipe

to his mouth as a hint that the rector might proceed.

“About the name there is nothing remarkable,” came the answer. “Strath

is a gaelic word signifying a broad valley. For a time, I have no

doubt, the whole of this neighbourhood was known as the Strath; though

glen, also a gaelic word and meaning a narrow valley, would have been

more accurate nomenclature, as you may see for yourself by ascending

one of the hills and looking down. There is an ancient, although

undated, document among the parish records which alludes to the

village of Strath hard by King’s Moor. The name of Thorlund, which

means the sacred grove of Thor or the Thunder God, was at some later

date attached to the hamlet, the name of Strath being retained by the

manor house alone. But to return to the Hoopers. According to oral

tradition, which I have generally found reliable, Sir John became a

notorious highwayman after his wife’s death. It is said he had one

child, a daughter who lived with him at the Strath, but whose name is

not mentioned in the register of deaths. It is also said that he

treated her most cruelly. Indeed, if report concerning him be true,

Sir John was altogether bad, a robber and a drunkard in his country

life, and when in town a habitual frequenter of the gaming houses

which at that time were plentiful in the neighbourhood of St. James’s.

Probably his midnight escapades upon the road were instituted to

obtain money for the payment of debts thus contracted. One night Sir

John was tracked to his house after a more daring venture than usual;

his reeking mare was found in the stable; his body servant, one Thomas

Reed, was discovered in the saloon mortally wounded, the baronet

believing, it is supposed, that the man had informed upon him. The old

fox had fled, having escaped by crawling out of an attic window and

letting himself down the side of the house by means of the creepers,

but he was found that same night hiding in a hollow tree. In due

course he was hanged. What happened to the daughter I have never been

able to discover.”

“I suppose you want to know how we came into the property. You will

have guessed I am a descendant of the murdered servant,” said Reed.

“Well, I’ll tell you. The Strath doesn’t legally belong to me. It is,

or it was, Crown property. But as by some oversight, the Crown never

seized it, the Reeds did. They were on the spot, you see, and when

they saw the place was abandoned they thought they would have

compensation for Thomas’s murder, and so they stepped in. They were

never turned out, and no questions were asked. But the Reeds were only

village folk, and couldn’t afford to occupy the place. So they let it

to a man named Biron who had spent most of his life in Germany. When

he gave it up the Strath was taken by a family called Branscombe who

for some reason left suddenly. It would be the last dinner party of

the Branscombes that is still set out in that dining-room. Since their

time not a soul--” he paused, then added with a grin, “I should say

not a body, has entered the place until this evening.”

“But what have the Reeds been doing all these years?” asked the

rector.

“They emigrated. My grandfather took no interest in the place. My

father sent over enough money every year to satisfy the local rates,

always hoping he would make enough to enable him to retire and come

back and play the gentleman. The old man died twelve years ago at the

age of eighty, and I went on with the business until it was ruined by

a trust. Then I realised, and shipped back with the notion of spending

the rest of my life at the Strath.”

“Were there no attempts made to let the property?”

“Not for the last fifty years,” Reed answered. “After the Branscombes

left, and why they did so before their time I can’t tell you, the

place had a bad reputation, and no one would go near it. But I have

come at last,” he went on in his coarse voice which sounded

unpleasantly through the garden. “I’ll soon clear away all that

unhealthy nonsense. We Americans don’t hold with the conservatism of

this old country, which makes everybody tumble into a trade error or a

crazy belief one after the other, like sheep following the bell-wether

through a hole in the fence. I’m not a gentleman in your sense, and I

don’t pretend to be. I’m a practical man, the great-grandson of a farm

labourer, and a free-thinker from my youth. I don’t believe in what

you call occult influences, and if I can’t take up my quarters at the

Strath and do what I like with the place I’ll eat my hat. And now,

Professor,” Reed concluded in his familiar manner, “what do you say to

a small glass of whisky?”

The rector rose without a word, and went into the house to find the

bottle of spirits which he kept for use in an emergency; but while he

groped in the cupboard there was a mist upon his eyes, and his usually

gentle spirit was shaken with disgust and anger as he murmured, “He

shall not lay a hand upon that garden. I hate the man. He has

inherited my Paradise, and would take it from me and make it a

desert.”

Early in the morning the visitor left for the Strath, entering the

grounds by the gate in the churchyard, and the rector did not see him

again until evening. He did not receive any invitation to accompany

the master in these explorations; and the key, his property for the

past thirty years, had been taken away. During the afternoon he walked

along the front, noticed that the iron gates were ajar, and breathed

more easily when he saw the long grass still waving in the wind.

Returning, he fell in with one of the men in Reed’s employ, who

touched his hat and would have walked on; but the rector stopped him

and enquired what he had done.

“Opened the doors and windows in yonder, Sir,” said the man. “Some of

they frames were that rotten they broke like paper. I scraped the dirt

from the panes, and cut off nigh a truck-load of ivy to let in the

light. But I ain’t going in there again, Sir.”

The rector asked for an explanation.

“Well, Sir, it’s what they’ve always said about the Strath,” the man

went on, “It ain’t healthy in there. I don’t know whether ’tis because

such a powerful lot of strong-smelling plants grow there, or what it

is, Sir, but I do know a man can’t help making a fool of hisself when

he’s there. I was a-laughing and a-singing while I worked, and feeling

just as though I was tipsy, though, as you know, I’m a sober man, Sir,

and when I looked inside there was this Mr. Reed laughing at summat

like to hurt hisself, and I don’t know if you’ll believe me, Sir, but

I saw him join ’ands with Bill Vyner, and them two danced round the

room, kicking up the dust awful. They seemed to be fair enjoying of

themselves, Sir, but now I come to think quiet-like it was a horrid

kind of sight, though I liked it well enough at the time, and stood in

the door whistling a tune for them to dance to. You see, Sir, it ain’t

proper for a gentleman like Mr. Reed to be so familiar with such as me

and Bill. And Bill says he ain’t going there no more neither.”

Dr. Berry resumed his walk with a dreamy smile upon his handsome face.

His sensitive mouth quivered as he repeated the famous satire of

Archilochus addressed to his own soul. “Nature does not change,” he

murmured. “The lampoons of Archilochus caused the daughters of

Lycambes to hang themselves for shame. How will the influence of the

Strath use Henry Reed?”

It was twilight when the man came to the rectory, sullen and

discontented. He had little information to give, and when the doctor

enquired whether the work of restoration had begun he curtly replied,

“Not yet,” and went on to ask whether he might spend another night

under the parsonage roof.

“I will try him,” said the rector to himself when they had supped; and

going to his study he extracted from a drawer his little manuscript

book of translations. “I will see if this man has a soul which can

respond to the unseen world. If so there is a chance for him; if not

the Strath must conquer.”

He came out upon the lawn where his guest was chewing the stem of his

pipe restlessly.

“Allow me to read you a translation of mine,” he said; then seating

himself a little behind his guest he read the description of peaceful

night written by Alcman the Lydian slave and poet, who lived and sang

a hundred years before Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall for

the lord of Babylon.

As the poet concluded, dropping his musical voice to a whisper over

the last iambic, he drew forward, watching and excited, his own spirit

thrilled by the magic of those lines. Reed appeared to be abstracted;

with wild hope the scholar put out his hand and touched him.

“Oh, done?” muttered the bearded man. “Queer, fellows should waste

their time writing that stuff, ain’t it? Suppose they’re good for

nothing else though. I was thinking while you were talking that what

my place wants is better air. It’s too much shut in, you see, and no

one can live without lots of fresh air. I shall cut down the elms

along the road. It will be all profit to me, as the timber is big, and

ought to sell at a good price. Have you any idea what figure elm is

fetching now?”

The rector groaned as he pushed the book of treasures into his pocket.

He had been prepared to follow up any success he might have gained by

reciting a song of Arion, who, the legends say, was brought into

Taenarum on the backs of dolphins. But his test had failed. The man

beside him was base earth, with a mind impervious to the world’s

music.

“Will you permit me to say something?” he asked nervously.

Reed swung his head round, and his small eyes twinkled maliciously.

“Whatever you like, Professor. I can guess what it is. You want me to

spare those trees. Well, I tell you right now they must go.”

“I do not ask you to spare the trees,” said Dr. Berry earnestly. “The

genius of the place can take care of them. I am going to entreat you

to save yourself.”

“What?” ejaculated Reed. He frowned and crumpled his beard. “What

foolery in this?” he muttered testily.

“You will not understand me,” the scholar went on. “You laugh at my

warnings. Remember I have studied the Strath for thirty years. It has

been kind to me, and more than kind, because there is sympathy between

us. We are both dreamers. I have been the sole character of its drama

all these years. I have tried to be its friend, and it has regarded me

as such. But you--you are opposing it. You are its enemy.”

Reed dropped his pipe and planted each hand firmly upon his knees.

“I’m an ignorant man from your point of view,” he said in a grating

voice. “I can’t write or talk about busy bees forgetting their daily

toil and feathered tribes hanging their drooping wings, and I’ll be

hanged if I want to. I can go better than that, Professor. Put you and

me down in the world to live by wits, and I would build up a business,

while you would sink to the poor-house. Ignorance? Well, maybe. Have

you ever heard of a millionaire who could read Greek? I don’t follow

you in your talk about dreams and warnings, and if you will excuse my

saying so I don’t intend to listen to any more of it. If you have any

suggestion to make about the property I’ll be glad to listen. But when

you say that a man can’t live on his own place because it has taken a

dislike to him--well, Professor. It’s moonshine.”

“Explain to me one thing,” Dr. Berry urged.

“Tell me how it was when I came upon you in the garden yesterday

evening you were as different from your present self as my house is

different from the Strath?”

Reed stirred uncomfortably. That question rankled.

“If we were sitting in that garden now,” impressed the rector, taking

his mild revenge, “and I were to read you those lines of Alcman, which

you despise, you would listen eagerly. Explain why your mood should be

different there?”

“Maybe it is you that change,” suggested the other unamiably.

“Come into the garden with me now.”

But Reed declined emphatically.

“You and I have got to be friends, Professor,” he went on with

attempted heartiness. “You’re the parson and I’m the squire, and it

seems there is no one handy to act as peacemaker. We had better not

quarrel, and if we are not going to quarrel we must agree to differ.”

“I have done my duty,” said the rector quietly.

“I had to warn you that if you insist upon opposing the Strath you

will be made to suffer. If you refuse to be persuaded I cannot help

you.”

Reed stretched out for the bottle and helped himself generously.

“How in the name of common sense can I be made to suffer?” he

muttered; but there was in his voice for the first time a definite

note of awe.

“There will come upon you the last punishment which can befall any

man,” Dr. Berry answered.

“The Strath will destroy you.”

Then he removed his hat and wiped his forehead; and walked slowly into

the house.

Scene II.--SKETCH

He sette not his benefice to hire,

And lette his shepe acombred in the mire,

And ran unto London, unto Seint Poules,

To seken him a chanterie for soules,

Or with a brotherhede to be withold;

But dwelt at home, and kepte wel his fold.--_Chaucer_.

Dr. Berry never learnt whether any phenomena occurred within or around

the Manor of Thorlund immediately subsequent to that evening when he

had been constrained to issue his warnings, because Reed came no more

to the rectory. The scholar reasoned that it was not any feeling of

indignation which kept the so called master of the Strath away; nor

was it fear lest he might be compelled to listen to more ominous

forebodings; it was, more probably, shame at defeat.

The gate which admitted from the churchyard was open to the rector no

longer; but every day he passed along the front, both at morning and

evening, anxious to see if the work of demolition had been commenced,

and from each of these walks he returned with the same triumphant

smile. Not a tuft of grass had been mown, nor had the axe been laid at

the root of any of the elms; not a bush had been removed, not a flower

or weed uprooted. The garden remained unaltered in all outward

essentials, except that a pathway had become beaten out from the iron

gates to the bridge across the moat.

When the rector questioned sexton or shepherd he learnt what he might

have guessed, namely that the owner hardly ever left the place; that

he had given up searching for men to work there; that he lived alone,

attending to his own requirements in colonial fashion; that his

baggage had been brought from the distant station across the hills and

taken by the carrier into the house; and the tradesmen of the small

market town seven miles away had been instructed to call for orders

not more than once a week.

“Will he also become a dreamer?” the scholar wondered, as he gazed

longingly upon the old grey wall. “Can it be possible for the Strath

to give him a soul and take him to itself as it received me? Will his

poultry farming become poetry making after all?”

He laughed sleepily at the quaint idea and approaching the oak door

turned the handle and pushed timidly. He had done so every evening

since Reed had left him, hoping rather than expecting to feel the

barrier yield. It was the same then as upon other nights; the door was

locked.

During the tension of that long week, when the garden was closed to

him, Dr. Berry for the first time realised the loneliness of the

Thorlund valley.

His single churchwarden, a peasant farmer who signed his name with

difficulty and without legibility, had his dwelling place almost a

mile from the church. The nearest gentlefolk lived four miles away at

Kingsmore across the white road of the downs. The only houses in the

valley were the rectory and the Strath. Half ruined barns, standing in

a disused yard which sloped towards a pond where sheep were sometimes

scoured, hedges, grass-roads, and a triangular green where a

whipping-post was preserved, comprised the remainder of the hamlet. In

such a place the talented Greek scholar had been content to pass his

time upon earth.

The rector found himself using that past tense unconsciously while he

mourned for his lost Eden. After thirty years of a strange sleep he

felt stirring within him a desire for more breadth and motion and some

human sympathy. The small voice of the world was calling him; the

natural human passions, long latent and drugged by the influence which

had dominated his life, struggled to reach the surface. The sluggish

calm had been disturbed by expulsion from the garden. He had entered

there to dream; and now that the gate was closed he became conscious

of the thorns and thistles of the world.

This restless mood grew upon the scholar as the days passed, the long

dry days of midsummer when the spirit of comedy prevailed around him.

His belief in the ultimate triumph of destiny was as deeply-rooted as

that of any ancient Greek. The Strath had long ago suggested to him

the theatre with its rites and mysteries and the open stage where

characters came and went, speaking their messages through either the

comic or the tragic mask. He himself represented the chorus, and had

merely played his part of exarchus in warning Reed. He did not require

to turn to his Aeschylus, or to his Sophocles, to learn the fate of

that man who thinks himself strong enough to fight destiny. Reed’s

fate was fixed, as assuredly as Agamemnon was doomed to death when he

returned to his palace in Argos. But destiny must strike with mortal

weapons; and it was impossible to believe that any human instrument in

the neighbourhood of sleepy Thorlund could be so wrought upon as to

strike the fatal blow.

Although the scholar had never been a sociable being, he felt it a

relief when Mr. Price, vicar and squire of Kingsmore, rode over on the

Saturday and invited himself to lunch. This reverend neighbour was a

simple-minded man of seventy, bow-legged with much riding, hearty in

manner, an excellent judge of beasts, and somewhat of a connoisseur in

wine. He would shout a jest at every rustic, and touch his

disreputable hat to every dame in his village, address his labourers

as equals, and throw coppers to the children who passed him as he

rode. He had long ago forgotten what little learning he had acquired;

and it was to be feared that, good man though he was, his farming

interests were not infrequently placed in front of his spiritual

duties. He could indicate all the good points in a horse at a glance;

but it might be doubted whether he could have quoted verbatim any one

of the thirty-nine articles.

“Good-day to you, Berry,” he shouted in his hearty manner, as he

crossed the rectory lawn while his dogs hunted the scholar’s cat into

the shrubberies. “I was saying to myself this morning that it was a

long time since I had eaten roast beef at your table, and as I know

you have a sirloin on Saturdays I thought I would ride over and help

with the under-cut. So the owner of the manor has turned up at last.

My village is full of families with his name. The place was a swamp

originally, I’m told, and they say the name came into existence on

account of the number of reeds which grew there. Any truth in that, do

you think? I believe in tradition. It’s the only thing I do believe in

nowadays. If your squire turns out to be connected with our Reeds, as

they say he is, I’m afraid he won’t be much of an acquisition.”

“He is connected,” said Dr. Berry. “However you may be able to agree

with him better than I can ever hope to do,” he went on with

unintentional maladroitness. “He has actually proposed to me a plan

for altering the Strath and breeding poultry there.”

“God bless my soul,” exclaimed his brother cleric, pushing an end of

his soiled white tie beneath his collar. “There’s no money to be made

out of poultry in this part of the world. I can’t dispose of mine so

as to cover expenses. He should go in for pigs. I’ll call on him after

luncheon, and tell him there’s money to be made in pigs. I have some

good sows for sale.”

“Pigs!” murmured Dr. Berry in anguish. “Pigs at the Strath!”

“They ought to do well,” said the farmer-vicar of Kingsmore. “There’s

plenty of grass at the manor, and pigs do well on grass. Ah, you’re

afraid of the smell. But pigs don’t smell, if they are properly kept.

We will call on Mr. Reed this afternoon. I am very anxious to see the

inside of the place.”

“I cannot accompany you,” said the rector of Thorlund a trifle coldly.

“Mr. Reed and I have not made any considerable advance towards

friendship.”

“That won’t do,” said the other, shaking his head seriously. “You must

pull it off with your squire, even if you do have to lower yourself a

bit. You and he are alone here, and when two men are cast upon a

desert island they can’t afford to quarrel. Now I’m quite prepared to

call on Mr. Reed, and be friendly, though he is distantly connected, I

suspect, with my head-carter. Every man is a vote, as my dear uncle,

who was member for this division under Lord Derby’s administration,

used to say; by which he meant, I fancy, that every man can do you

either good or harm, and you may as well earn the good at the

sacrifice of a little pride. But look here, Berry. For the hundredth

time I want to know whether things are as they should be at the

manor?”

The scholar smiled somewhat feebly as he replied, “Is it possible that

everything should be in order with a house that has stood deserted for

a century?”

“You know what I mean,” said Mr. Price. “I have asked you many a time

if the place is haunted, and I have never been satisfied with your

answers. I believe in haunted houses, because I once owned a farm

which was troubled by a tiresome old woman in a plaid shawl and a poke

bonnet, and I had to pull the house down to get rid of her. You have

always declared that the manor is free from anything of that sort; but

I think there must be something you have kept from me.”

“Come indoors,” said the doctor. “It is hot out here, and dinner will

soon be ready. I will tell you what I know about the Strath.”

The old gentleman followed his reverend brother into the study, and

seating himself beside the window listened to what he had to say, his

white head on one side, and his eyes blinking incredulously.

“Berry,” he said gravely, when his mind had been sufficiently

perplexed. “If this is what our progress has brought us to I am glad I

am nearly seventy-one. I have always said that the world is going

ahead too fast. When I was a boy we lived very much the same as they

did a couple of thousand years before, and then in just fifty years

the whole world changed. First came steam, and after it the telegraph

and electricity, and now we have reached a stage when we can send a

message from one end of the earth to the other in about the time it

takes to write it, and hear the voices of dead men speaking out of

phonographs, and we are talking of travelling a hundred miles in the

hour, and there is no hell and very little fear of death nowadays,

and--God bless my soul! we can’t even have a respectable ghost, but

our old houses are to be haunted for the future by this electricity

and magnetism; and they say messages are coming from people who are

dead and ought to be decently at rest, and we are learning something

about the next stage of existence, and a future state can be proved,

we are told, not through the Bible, which was good enough for everyone

in my young days, but by certain phases of human consciousness which

I refuse to believe in and don’t profess to understand, and--I’m very

glad I shan’t live much longer.”

“There is surely nothing much older than the idea of a house permeated

with some essence of mystery,” the scholar continued quietly. “Read

again your Greek drama, and refresh your memory by the references of

Aeschylus to the palace of Argos, whence odours issued like the breath

of graves. There you have a house, haunted, to use your word, like the

Strath by an inexplicable and invisible presence working its influence

upon the affairs of men.”

“You go beyond me,” said Mr. Price perplexedly. “I never could

translate Aeschylus, and the only way I got through at Oxford was by

learning the crib by heart and getting the selection right by luck. I

always thought it a waste of time to learn Greek, and I think so

still. Give a boy a good commercial education. Teach him French and

German, and elementary science, and American methods. Give him a

chance to make his way in the world.”

“And deprive him of the finest literature of all time, and the

knowledge of human nature as it is revealed to us through the

classics,” added the scholar quietly. “Is that fair?”

“Bah,” said Mr. Price. “There are always translations if they are

wanted, and there are Shakspere and our grand old Bible.”

“Shakspere could only model his tragedies upon the Greek drama,” the

scholar protested. “All that he could do was to clothe the old

thoughts with his own unrivalled speech and introduce additional

characters and scenic effects. The dark thread of influence runs

through all his tragedies. We know from the outset that Lear must die,

that Hamlet must fail, that Othello must fall through his frightful

error. As for the Bible permit me, with all reverence, to say that

much of its early lore is apocryphal, and much more of later date

derived from the thinkers and writers of ancient Greece. You talk of

sustaining your student with stagnant water taken far from the

fountain head.”

“I never could argue with you,” said Mr. Price sadly. “You swim right

away, while I sink like a stone. Though I am an old-fashioned

Englishman I do my best to be modern. I have recently bought a

mechanical foster-mother to rear my poultry, I have stocked my farm

with American implements, and now I’m seriously thinking of employing

gramaphones to frighten the pigeons from my peas. It’s no use trying

to fight progress, as the savage who charged a locomotive discovered,

and destiny, or whatever you call the thing that is haunting the

manor, will find that out. This Reed comes from America. If I were a

betting man, I would lay you what you like that he will improve the

place according to his plans, and clear away that atmosphere which you

say has settled over it. The Strath wants a thunderstorm to freshen

its air, and I wouldn’t mind wagering that the American will play the

part of thunderstorm to perfection.”

“If I were a betting man, to borrow your expression, I would take

you,” rejoined Dr. Berry with a strained smile. “But now let us go and

eat our beef.”

“Talking of thunder-storms,” said the squarson of Kingsmore, as he

followed his host into the dining-room. “I am reminded that the glass

was falling very rapidly when I left home, so I shall pay my call upon

friend Reed and get away as quickly as possible.”

Scene III.--TRAGEDY

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal

right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.--_Sir. T. Browne_.

While the two clergymen were in the dining-room the expected change in

the weather occurred. When Mr. Price rode away, having decided to

postpone his visit to the Strath, the sun was wrapped up in dense

clouds, there was no sky, and the light was fading rapidly.

For some time Dr. Berry sat with a book in his study. Then he ventured

upon the lawn to observe the heaving clouds, which each moment

threatened to burst into lightning. There was not a breath of wind.

The trees in the garden beyond were entirely without motion; the walls

appeared to have no substance, and the very house seemed to float away

into unreality. Afar the watcher sighted the chalk-pits on the downs,

their white sides glowing fiercely against a sombre background.

“It is the hour of tragedy,” he murmured.

Here, as in the ancient drama, the actors played their parts in the

open air, in order that their passions might blend with the fury of

the elements. The proscenium, as in old time, was made by nature. The

wall of the Strath formed the back-scene; the theatre was the garden;

the orchestra that mound on which the sun-dial stood. Already the

storm-cocks were chattering there, and their notes came into the

doctor’s ears like the piping of flute-players.

“I must go,” said the dreamer with a slight shiver.

Passing back to the house he quickly reappeared carrying a small

wooden box. He crossed the churchyard, where the sexton was digging a

grave, singing hoarsely as he shovelled up the dirt. The man touched

his hat and said, “Looks like a storm coming up yonder, sir. But the

sun shines above Kingsmore.”

The rector hesitated, and asked absently, “Whose grave is that?”

“’Tis for old Jim Reeve, sir. Him as died a Tuesday, and is to be

buried to-morrow.”

“Ah yes,” the doctor murmured, adding to himself as he passed on, “I

thought it might be the grave of Henry Reed.”

The door in the wall was unlocked. Dr. Berry had felt assured that it

would be so. He entered and stood within the influence of the garden.

The air no longer thrilled with the note of mirth, the intoxicating

happiness and the exuberant laughter were gone. Instead of the

sunshine sorrow brooded, and the flowers were shut, and a moaning came

from the rotten gables of the house. The tragic note was dominant, and

all the grotesque sounds of mirth were stilled.

Fully possessed by the influence, the priest ascended the mound and

extended his white hands over the dial, which represented to him no

longer a recorder of the flight of time, but an altar sacred to

Bacchus. He opened his box, scattered its contents upon the metal

slab, and applied a light. Then, as a filmy cloud of incense rose in a

long thread into the gloom, he tramped slowly round the knoll reciting

an Argive song.

No sane voice spoke from his inner consciousness to remind him that

this was worse than folly; that he was offering sacrifice to a

mythical deity. He was merely playing the part which had been allotted

him, and reciting those words which were suitable to the occasion as

they presented themselves to his memory. The impending storm was, he

believed, about to break upon the house; and it was not to be

dispelled until the last words had been spoken, the tragedy

accomplished, and the stage abandoned.

The rain came, and the lightning, and then strong wind which sent

leaves whirling across the knoll. But there came no sound from the

house. Through the rain and the thunder and the wind moved the old

atmosphere of fate and despair and the conquest of unbending human

will. The Thymele streamed and smoked no more; but the elements fought

on as the accompaniment of the drama, and the piping of the invisible

storm-cocks became shriller and more stern.

Again the mood changed, and Dr. Berry was driven forth like a villain

to the hisses of the wind. Instead of returning home he took the field

path which led beside the beech wood; and ascended until he reached

the summit of a grass hill where larches were odorous in the hot

sunshine. Pausing there he looked out, and saw the growth of sable

cloud above Thorlund and the lightning crossing it and the white steam

of the rain ascending.

A rabbit bounded among the larches into the open, and after it came a

female figure, young and lithe, her face tanned by exposure to the

weather, her great eyes unashamed. At first sight she was beautiful;

at the second pathetic, because the light in her eyes lacked reason.

She bounded up to the rector, flung herself at his knees, and burst

into a noisy incoherent prayer.

“Get up, girl,” cried the scholar, dragging her almost roughly from

the grass. “How often must I tell you this is wrong?”

“Here are flowers for you,” cried the girl, pressing a quantity of

pale-blue and white harebells, warm and withering, into his hand.

“They are always ringing, and I am tired of their noise. Take them and

curse them. They will stop that wild nodding of their heads for you.

Why will you not let me touch you? There is force coming out of your

fingers, and when I hold your hand I see no longer the strange things

in the wind. I have been among the larches, and in the white

chalk-pits, and down by the stream, and in the cold churchyard, but I

still see the strange things coming down the wind. And you too walk

alone. Do you see figures? Have you seen the masked man running, and

the white woman crying into the lilies? Do you see them in the garden

in the valley?”

This girl, a well-known character of the neighbourhood, lived at

Kingsmore with her grandparents, but was seldom to be found within the

cottage of her relatives. Her real home was upon the grass hills, or

in the dry beech wood, or down in the valley. Nancy Reed, Lone Nance

as the villagers called her, passed about the country like a will o’

the wisp, talking to the birds and the creatures of her imagination,

revelling in wind and shouting through storm. Yet for all her wild

speech she was as gentle as a child, although perfect reason had been

witheld from her all the twenty-four years of her life. She was sane

enough to know that she was not as others, and her one desire was to

become perfect and womanly; but relentless nature continued to bear

her from place to place against her will, flinging her body about the

hills like drift wood tossed upon the sea.

“You go into that garden with a book in your hand,” she cried,

pointing into the vapours. “I watched you come out, your lips moving,

and your face as white as that chalk. You saw and heard a great deal

in that garden, and you were wondering what you had missed. If I had

been nearer I would have told you.”

“You have never been in that garden,” said Dr. Berry sternly. “And you

must never go.”

The girl laughed noisily into his face.

“That house is filled with sounds which you cannot understand. But if

you go there much more, and sit under its shadow a few more years, you

will begin to understand. And then you will come out and call for me,

and we shall chase the sunbeams into the valley.”

The rector drew away from her. The note of inspiration was there and

he had recognised it. It was true he had felt a slow unloosening of

mind from body, an exaltation of the brain, and a tingling of each

sense, while he had tarried in that garden. He had called this the

birth of higher knowledge and the stirring of genius; but when the

girl spoke he remembered that the bridge which separates the inspired

from the diseased mind is perilously narrow and frail.

“I cannot keep away from the place,” he muttered, forgetful that Lone

Nance was his listener. “I cannot stop my ears. I must go there, to

sink into sleep and dream. It is good for me. The Aeolian poets walk

at my side. I can describe their land, their speech, and their

manners, as though I had lived in that far off time. Their language is

as familiar to me as my own. I can enter into their moods. I can see

where history has erred. I can make the crooked places straight. I can

see the outlines of their figures and describe the very texture of

their raiment. I can even detect the odour of Sappho’s anointed hair

as she passes along the road to Mytilene.”

He stopped, remembering the status of the wild girl. She was looking

beyond him into vacancy, her hands locked behind her back. The dark

clouds were lifting from Thorlund, but the vapour still ascended like

the mist of the genie from the fisherman’s vessel.

Twilight was trailing over the land as Dr. Berry descended, and the

beech wood became a black sea, tossing and moaning with the voices of

life. A labourer cutting hay stopped from his work and leaning upon

his two-handled knife pulled at the brim of his hat as he peered down

from the strong-smelling rick.

The rector looked closely at the man, until his sluggish memory awoke

and suggested a name.

“Was it not your father who was taken ill? How is he now?” he asked,

with a dim feeling that he had neglected his very inconsiderable

parochial duties of late.

“Broke,” said the hay-cutter, abruptly and hoarsely. “Broke a week ago

and been took. Sixty-one he wur, a good age for the likes of we.”

“I do not remember burying him. When was it?” Dr. Berry asked.

“’E didn’t not ’xactly die,” the man explained. “’E was took to the

’ouse, and so ’e be done to we. Us all get broke, some sooner, some

later. Us can’t last for always. Father broke quick when ’e started,

but ’is brother, my Uncle Tom as was, ’e took a terrible time. Us all

said every fall, ‘’e’ll get broke this time for sure,’ but ’e’d pull

through and laugh at us. ’E went sudden at the last. ’E’d been

threshing all day, and ’bout evening ’e couldn’t carry. Tried time and

time ’e did, but couldn’t carry. ’E walked ’ome, and sat down ’e did

aside the fire, and ’e said, ‘I be broke.’ ’E was took that month.”

“Is he still alive?” the rector asked.

“Ay, sir. I saw ’im one day walkin’ the yard, when I druve the waggon

by, but I didn’t want ’im to see I. When they gets broke they don’t

come back no more. Some on ’em lasts a powerful time yonder too. But

they ain’t of no account, and us don’t talk on ’em. Us ain’t got

nothing to do wi’ they. I’ll get broke in my time. Us don’t think on’t

till it comes.”

“Would it not have been possible for you to have kept your father out

of the workhouse?” protested Dr. Berry. “You are in regular work with

good wages, and an old man does not cost much to keep.”

The hay-cutter looked perplexed, and a trifle puzzled, at the

scholar’s lack of very ordinary knowledge.

“Father wur broke, sir. ’E couldn’t earn no wages,” he explained.

“So I understand,” said Dr. Berry. “But did it never occur to you that

you might maintain him? It should surely be the son’s duty to support

the father in his old age.”

The labourer smiled more and more at the rector’s ignorance.

“They that be broke be took, sir,” he said heavily. “When I be broke

I’ll be took, and my son will say, ‘Good-bye, father,’ and wait for

’is turn. Wife and me ’ave six children, and another comin’ ’fore

harvest. I gets twelve shillun, and pays ’alf-a-crown rent and

sixpence club money, and my wife and me live clear of charity. There

ain’t no room for old folk along wi’ a big fambly. ’Sides, sir, it

ain’t proper. Them that be broke, be took. And them that works get

wages.”

“Good-night,” said Dr. Berry abruptly.

“Good-e’en, sir,” replied the hay-cutter gruffly.

“Broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel,” the scholar muttered as he

walked away. “As we cast the sherds of shattered utensils from our

houses, so are these men cast forth from their homes when their

strength breaks and their utility as machines passes. There is matter

for the thinker here, but it is colourless and cold. It lacks the

warmth and glamour of the past.”

One last sunbeam passed over the hills and slanted across the Strath.

From a point, where the grass road swung round, a side of the old

house became visible, and a single window blinking in the middle of

the light. Dr. Berry watched with shaded eyes, and suddenly came to a

stop. There was a white figure bending across the window, and as he

saw it the question of the wild girl flashed back: “Have you seen the

white woman crying into the lilies?”

The same minute he was smiling, because a breath of wind had passed,

shaking the foliage, and the white figure rocked in unison and

vanished, as the sunlight died away. The shape had been caused by the

ivy and a certain arrangement of the boughs of an elm acted upon by

the white ray. The rector breathed more easily when the window became

blank.

Yet he knew that the people of the hamlet would be saying that

evening, “It is noisy in the Strath.” They who behold a tragedy see

only the outward passions of the actors; of the influence which is

behind they can see nothing. So one may watch the tree tormented by

the wind, but not see the wind.

Supper was awaiting the poet, and he ate and drank mechanically. Then

entering his study he spread his translations before him, and

straightway became an Athenian, floating delicately through most

pellucid air.

The poetic mountains breathed their influence into him over the deeps

of time. Fragrant odours were in his nostrils, and in his ears the

murmur of bees upon Hymettus. He passed restlessly to Olympus where

the Gods were in council, and saw the Father aiming his thunderbolt,

and like Menippus sat at the door whence issued the supplications of

the world, and heard the petitions for wealth, honour, and long life

repeated in shameless monotony. He heard also the prayer of Reed

entreating that the terrible atmosphere might be dispelled, and he

felt no sorrow when the frown on the thunderer’s brow remained

unrelaxed. Through all the shifting figures he dimly perceived the

table before him and the passionate iambics of Archilochus spread upon

paper by his hand, and aloud he read, “My soul, my soul care-worn,

bereft of rest.” And at that his head sank forward upon his breast.

The study window remained open, and moths and beetles blundered

through to bombard the globe of the scholar’s lamp.

It was ten o’clock when the housekeeper knocked as usual at the door,

and receiving no answer entered softly with her master’s bedroom

candle and a cup of cocoa. Dr. Berry was leaning forward over the

table, his face hidden upon his folded arms, a disabled ghost-moth

floundering across his left hand. The woman noticed that the muscles

of her master’s hands were standing out like cords.

“Your reverence,” she said.

The rector did not stir, and after repeating her call she muttered

gently, “He’s been and tired himself again.” Then she turned down the

flame of the lamp, drew it further from the sleeper, and retired

softly, leaving the door ajar.

The tragedy was over; and the tired exarchus slept.

The next morning it became known about Thorlund and its neighbourhood

that the owner of the Strath was dead. The woman who supplied him with

milk had discovered the body lying across the threshold, its head

towards the garden. Henry Reed had pitted his strength against the

Strath; and the influence of the house had triumphed.

INTERLUDE

He was nothing better than a consumer of the fruits of the earth.

“Dost thou then,” quoth I, “imply that we should name such a creature

as this--as we do the drone in the bee-hive--a blot upon the

community, a mere drone at home, and abroad a disgrace to the state?”

“Even so, Socrates,” said he.--_Plato_.

The houses, which compose a street at no great distance from the trees

of Gray’s Inn, are for the most part occupied by authors, artists,

actors, and architects engaged, like Icarus, in making wings.

The first letter of our alphabet originated it is said from the

hieroglyphic picture of an eagle. Followers of the four professions

beginning with that letter are, strictly speaking, not wanted.

Everybody must need letter B as represented by baker and butcher. But

letter A suggests luxuries. The picture of the eagle is therefore

appropriate. Authors, artists, actors, and architects must learn first

to fly, and then to soar well above smaller birds, before they can win

success.

The side posts of each door are studded with an amazing number of

brass knobs, intended originally to be in communication with bells

upon every floor, but at present restricted seemingly to the duty of

exposing lilliputian milk-cans to the public view. These great houses,

which in the time of the Georges were occupied by people of title,

have become brick-and-mortar masks, hiding the sunken eye and hollow

cheek of poverty, in addition to the shame of rake and harlot, from

the view of the town. On the ground floor of Number 15 a middle-aged

man was brushing a long-haired terrier beside the open window of a

wide room panelled with oak. It was close upon ten o’clock, but

breakfast was still waiting. The interior was moderately well

furnished, although with the typical middle-class disregard for art.

The pictures were for the most part prints depicting scenes of sport.

There were also a few German photographs in doubtful taste, and one or

two engravings of river scenery in blurred and fly-spotted frames.

There was not a book to be seen, except one which was open upon the

sofa, and that to judge by its broken back was in continual use. Its

title was Ruff’s Guide to the Turf.

A well-built man of not more than thirty years, unbecomingly attired

in a yellow dressing-gown and scarlet slippers entered the room. His

haggard face, listless attitude, and general appearance of disgust

with himself and his surroundings, suggested that he had been in the

habit of guiding his life according to the traditions of the house. As

the middle-aged man turned to welcome him, the profligate yawned

profoundly and lowering himself into a chair pushed the hair off his

forehead with an irritated gesture.

“So you’re here again,” he muttered. “Drayton, you’re a regular

vampire, always after money or food. I suppose you would suck my blood

literally, if you weren’t afraid of poisoning yourself. What is it

this morning? Breakfast I suppose?”

The other--he was a poor scribbler, who made a precarious livelihood

by contributing paragraphs to popular penny weeklies--stroked his

stubbly chin, laughed, and removed the dog from the chair as carefully

as through the animal had been made of precious porcelain.

“As a simple statement of fact I have slept upon your premises,” he

said, indicating the sofa. “Have you forgotten who guided your weary

footsteps homeward during the early hours of the morning?”

The profligate bent over the table and picked up a letter which was

addressed to “Charles Conway, Esquire,” in copper-plate handwriting.

He tore open the envelope, yawned again, and inquired of his companion

whether at the time specified he, the questioner, had been very

grossly drunk.

“A gentleman of private means never gets drunk,” said the parasite.

“We apply that term to costermongers and coal-heavers. But you were, I

fancy, rapidly approximating towards that Bacchic state which in

classical language is described as _vino gravatus_. Even the policeman

at the corner of the street, whom for some reason best known to

yourself you insisted upon greeting most fraternally, would never, I

am sure, admit that you were more than foot-sore; but then you

presented him with a shilling, thereby obtaining your commission as

captain. You wasted that shilling. I would have installed you as a

Field Marshal for half the amount.”

“Eat the breakfast,” said Conway, as he transferred himself wearily to

the sofa and unfolded his letter. “And don’t talk so much. My head is

tender.”

Drayton hurried to the table and surrounded himself with victuals; but

before beginning he looked across and suggested, “Better have

something. Try a kidney and a piece of toast?”

“You can get me a bottle of beer and an apple,” said Conway in his

jaded manner.

Drayton bustled to a cupboard, bent his rheumatic knees, and after an

interval approached the sofa in the capacity of waiter, bearing the

desired refreshment.

“A glass of milk would be more appropriate, considering the time of

day, only you might insist upon having whiskey in it,” he said. “You

will soon resemble Lord John Hervey, who, in this neighbourhood, and

perhaps in this very room, breakfasted on an emetic, dined on a

biscuit, and regaled himself once a week with an apple. Here is your

ale--all white and yellow! You can imagine it is a poached egg.”

The younger man gave no heed to the parasite’s chatter. He was

studying his letter with a frown. When it was finished he leaned back,

drank his refreshment, looked at his watch, then read the letter

again.

“Bring me the newspaper,” he commanded.

The scribbler was making famine in the land. He believed in eating

well, entirely mistrusting the French proverb, which associates a good

stomach with a bad heart, and pinning his faith rather upon the creed

which teaches that virtuous folk have hearty appetites. His own poor

line of business rarely afforded him the means for more than one

substantial meal in the course of the day, and too often not that; so

when opportunity was given to kill a hearty appetite without

lightening his pocket he was never wont to be backward.

Rising obediently Drayton opened the newspaper, folded it with the

sporting intelligence outward, and so handed it to his patron with the

remark, “There is no change in the betting.”

Conway did not even glance at the sheet, which had been presented as a

matter of course; but turning to the general news searched each column

carefully. For several minutes there was silence, while the scribbler

made ruin of the breakfast. Then Conway threw the paper down and

resumed his former attitude.

“Give me a cigarette,” he ordered.

The other briskly left the table, complied with the demand, and as

briskly returned. A coal cart rumbled by, and the Stentor in charge

announced his business by a long ear-shattering yell.

The noise seemed to stir Conway into life. He paced across the room

and set his back against the door. “Drayton,” he said, “I have heard

some extraordinary news this morning. My uncle has been murdered.”

“Great Heavens!” exclaimed the writer, his jaws ceasing from their

labours.

“Don’t worry your brain to find condolences,” said the other coolly.

“I have never to my knowledge seen this particular relative, so I am

in no need of sympathy, especially since I benefit by his death. But I

want to know whether you have read anything of the murder of a Henry

Reed? I see there is no mention in to-day’s paper.”

“Sympathy apart, it’s an awful business,” said Drayton, pouring

himself out another cup of tea. “No, I don’t remember to have heard

anything. How did it happen?”

“It seems, from the bare narrative here, to have been a remarkable

affair altogether,” Conway answered. “My uncle returned from America

only a few weeks ago, to take up his residence in an old house

belonging to him which had not been occupied for ages. Last Sunday

morning he was discovered by the milk-woman, lying dead across the

threshold of the hall-door. It appears that the house has a queer sort

of reputation, and it was at first supposed he had died of fright. But

at the inquest it was shown that he had been strangled. And the

curious part of it is that no stranger had been seen in the place, and

it is impossible to suspect any of the inhabitants of the village.”

“The mystery of the haunted house,” muttered Drayton professionally.

“Perhaps there will be a chance for me to do something here. Where is

the place, Mr. Conway?”

The younger man came away from the door without answering and walked

up and down, swinging the tassels of his dressing-gown. Suddenly he

sat down at the table and poured himself out some tea.

“That’s right,” said the scribbler approvingly. “Nothing half so

stimulating as tea. I hope I have left enough.”

Conway filled a cup and drank off the contents. While doing so he kept

his eyes fixed upon two grotesque objects above the chimney-piece, one

on either side of a picture which depicted Isinglass winning the

Derby; and when he set the cup down he remained in the same posture,

staring at a pair of brown masks representing Comedy and Tragedy.

“My head is full of wheels,” he muttered. “Come and hit me, Drayton,

that I may be sure I am alive. I must have played the fool badly last

night. I remember coming back from Sandown, and driving to some

restaurant in the Strand. The next thing I can recall is groping round

my room for a drink of water. My body aches and pricks, and my head

feels as heavy as lead, and my eyes--Great Heavens! are those faces

laughing at me?”

The elder man had finished eating at last. He came round the table and

placed his hand soothingly upon the profligate’s arm.

“Come over to the window and get some air,” he said quietly. “You have

been making a hot pace these last few months. You’ll be breaking if

you don’t hold up.”

“Look!” muttered Conway, pointing at the masks.

“Turn your back on them,” said the scribbler. “What are you going to

do about your uncle’s death?”

Again Conway disregarded the question. Turning from the wall to the

furrowed features of his poverty-stricken companion, he exclaimed

thickly, “Sit down, Drayton, and don’t bother me. Do you know why I

have those masks hanging there? They are family heirlooms, copies I

have been told of a pair made in Nuremburg, during the eighteenth

century, by a crazy toy-seller. These belonged to my mother before her

marriage, and her father had a pair like them.”

“Where are the originals?” inquired the listener.

“They have been destroyed. There was something uncanny about them, but

beyond that I know nothing. This is the crest of the Reeds.”

Conway drew a ring from his little finger and held it out with an

unsteady hand. The other took it and saw a white cameo, showing two

masks, leaning together, a cap and bells over the forehead of the one,

a dagger over the other. He returned the ring, with the grave remark,

“But you are not a Reed.”

“My mother was. The family emigrated to America, and there my mother

married into the Conway family, and returned with her husband to

England. My uncle leaves his property to me, not because he could have

loved me, but I suppose there was no one else to whom he could leave

it.”

“Go down and see the place. The change will pick you up,” suggested

the elder man. “It isn’t probable you will live there?”

“What, give up London to rot away in a lonely country house?” said

Conway contemptuously. “Is it likely? If I cannot let the place I

shall try to sell it. What are you doing with yourself to-day?”

“The usual thing,” replied the man who lived by his poor wits. “The

British Museum reading-room, in chase of a guinea. I have earned

nothing this week.”

“You shall have a guinea, if you will pack my bag and take it to

Paddington. I am going to see my late uncle’s lawyer, and will meet

you at the station about noon. You can occupy these rooms until I come

back.”

The literary adventurer closed with this offer promptly; and a few

minutes after mid-day a train drew out of London, carrying the

profligate Conway towards the influence of the Strath.

ACT II.

Scene I.--COMEDY

Drink, be merry! Life is mortal, short is the time on earth.--_Amphis_.

It so happened that the exit of Henry Reed made no stir beyond being

the wonder of a week in the neighbourhood of Kingsmore. An inquest was

held at the Load of Mischief, a wayside beer-house standing before an

unworked chalk-pit at the entrance to Thorlund parish; the customary

verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown had

been returned; and there the matter appeared to end, so far as the

inhabitants were concerned. Officials whose duty it became to detect

the criminal made a thorough investigation. They searched the house

and grounds--the Strath being in its sunniest mood--and the entire

district for material upon which to work, but not a particle of

success crowned their efforts. The medical evidence clearly showed

that the unfortunate man had been strangled by a strong pair of hands;

the locals testified that no stranger had entered the valley; the

principal witness, Dr. Berry, declared that he was the only resident

who had been in the habit of using the garden. He admitted, in answer

to a question by the foreman, that he had spent very much of his time

beside the lonely house; and so soon as he had spoken the coroner

inquired whether he had been upon good terms with the deceased.

“When in his garden we had no difficulty in agreeing,” the scholar

replied. “When in mine we differed, but without quarrelling.”

“How do you account for that?”

“I attribute it to the influence of the Strath.”

“The influence of your garden is then less elevating?”

“My garden is in the commonplace world,” said Dr. Berry, speaking what

was in his mind, and shrinking when he perceived the half-pitying

smile with which his answer was received.

It was not until his housekeeper had given evidence that her master

had not left the rectory during the evening that Dr. Berry realised,

with a thrill of horror, that distrust had certainly rested, if only

for a few moments, upon himself. And yet he was the only man upon whom

suspicion could fall. The sensitive scholar was exceedingly pained

that he should have been questioned at all. He could not remember ever

having purposely deprived a living thing of life; he had refrained

from digging in his garden after having inadvertently severed a worm

with his spade; and he had passed a troubled week deciding how he

might act without cruelty when a lazy cuckoo had deposited her egg in

a favourite hedge-sparrow’s nest.

Days passed, and already grass was flourishing upon a fresh mound

beside the churchyard wall where rested the shell of the stubborn

little man who had fought against the Strath and had died in the

attempt. The master of the manor had quitted the scene unmourned. The

sun went on shining in the valley, the old house settled back into a

triumphant silence, the church bell jangled its summons on Sunday, and

the incumbent soared in rhetorical flights above the souls of his tiny

congregation. There was no change. Yet it seemed to the rector that

his step was not so firm as formerly; and when he glanced into his

bedroom glass he detected a whiteness above his brow which had not

been obvious before the coming of Henry Reed.

One evening a young man, with dissipation signed upon an otherwise

good-looking face, called and introduced himself as the dead man’s

heir. He went on to ask for the keys, which his agent had instructed

him were deposited for convenience at the rectory. Dr. Berry

surrendered his charge with a nervous glance at the new-comer, and

after begging to be excused from accompanying him went on to ask

permission to retain, as he had always done, the key of the gate in

the churchyard wall. The young man’s hearty consent thrilled him

gratefully; and though, after his late experience, he dared not invite

any relative of Reed to take up his quarters at the rectory, he

remarked in his courteous manner that he would be pleased to make the

further acquaintance of his new squire. Conway in boisterous slang

replied that he would be delighted to have someone to speak to during

his visit, and after promising to look in later that evening retired

to glance over his property and to engage a room at the Load of

Mischief.

That day was made notable by other arrivals. Flora Neill came from her

riverside home to pay her annual visit upon her reverend uncle the

squire of Kingsmore; and as dusk was settling upon the hills a line of

dingy caravans proceeded at a walking pace along the bending road,

accompanied by swarthy gipsies and the paraphernalia of the pleasure

fair. These nomads invaded Kingsmore that night, and the following day

all the village folk were making holiday; it being Mr. Price’s kindly

custom to follow a precedent established by his ancestors, and to free

his farm hands from their usual duties upon that particular day.

Shooting-booths, swings, and trial of strength machines occupied waste

spaces by the roadside, while a merry-go-round discoursed blatant

music upon a triangular patch of turf where the parish stocks were

still religiously preserved. The Kingsmore fair was as degenerate as

it was harmless. There was neither dancing-horse, elephants playing at

ball, Italian marionette, nor booth of classical play. But

posturising, grinning through horse-collars, eating of hot puddings

were to be witnessed, besides such natural monstrosities as a calf

with five legs and a lady of prodigious adiposity.

During the afternoon the squarson himself drove into the midst of the

animated scene, accompanied by his niece, with a view to discovering

whether the pleasures of his people were as innocent as stated, or

whether this was to be positively the last occasion on which he could

allow the fair to take place. The rustics, who were compelled to give

him their allegiance, were not in the least afraid of the old man,

whose nature was very nearly as simple as their own. Mr. Price was one

of the last of the plain country squires. He permitted his servants to

address him with familiarity. From his position in the chancel he

would scan his congregation and record the number of heads before

commencing service. Should a grey beard nod in the course of his

sermon, the vicar would break off his discourse and order that the

sinner should be awakened. The tramp on the road he would greet as a

worthless rascal and soften the charge with a shilling; and at

Christmas he took care that no cottage should be without its beef and

beer. As he then glanced at the swarthy faces of the proprietors of

booths and stalls he felt certainly “in some doubt whether he should

not exert the justice of the peace upon such a band of lawless

vagabonds.” But when it came to the test his heart was too kind to

deprive anyone of his livelihood, or his own people of their pleasure.

He was no new man, anxious to assert himself. Mr. Price knew his

power, and therefore had little temptation to use it.

“Uncle!” Flora exclaimed. “Who is that man throwing at the cocoa-nuts?

He was my travelling companion yesterday from the junction.”

Mr. Price fumbled in the deep pockets of his disreputable driving coat

for his spectacles; and when they were produced, together with a

sample of wool and a bunch of twine, he pushed them on his nose.

“Where?” he asked. “Do you mean that elderly man in the brown gaiters?

He is a sheep-farmer from the other side of Queensmore.”

“No--the young man to his left. There! He’s just going to throw.”

“Why, that is Mr. Conway, the new owner of the Strath, I do declare,”

exclaimed Mr. Price, who having been called out on duty the previous

evening had looked in at Thorlund rectory on his way home, to condole

with his reverend brother upon his recent ordeal at the inquest, and

there had made the acquaintance of the young man from town. “I am

surprised to find him here, so soon after that terrible affair too.

The squire of Thorlund throwing for cocoa-nuts! And not a stitch of

mourning for his uncle--and smoking--and shouting! God bless my soul,

Flora, the man’s no gentleman!”

“He is young,” said Flora indulgently.

“All the more reason why I should show him his duty,” said the old

squire.

He summoned a passing labourer to hold the horse’s head; but as he was

about to step down Conway sighted the dog-cart, and hurried across the

dusty grass in the happy mood of a schoolboy enjoying a half holiday.

Mr. Price sank back to his seat with an exceedingly guilty expression,

and caught up the reins.

“So you are taking in the variety show,” the young man cried, with an

appalling bonhomie that set the immediate neighbourhood grinning. “I

had no idea one could find such sport in a village,” he went on. “I’ve

been throwing for an old chap, who came to me with a penny, and said

he wanted to take a nut back to his grandson, and couldn’t throw

himself, so would I? He kept his penny while I spent a shilling before

I knocked down a nut. You seem to breed good business men down here.”

“I am here to satisfy myself that no objectionable features have been

introduced to corrupt my people,” said Mr. Price severely. “I hope you

will not mind an outspoken remark from an old man, Mr. Conway, but I

feel that when one comes to take up a position in the country it is

very necessary to keep up appearances. These simple people readily

form a wrong estimate of character. Ah, yes! This is my niece, Miss

Neill.”

“Do you enjoy this sort of thing?” asked Flora directly she had been

introduced.

“It’s something fresh to a Londoner,” the young man replied. “I have

been round all the shows, I have smashed bottles, tried my strength

and my luck, and found I haven’t much of either, seen the fat woman,

pinched her leg--”

“Did you sleep at the Strath last night?” broke in Mr. Price.

“No, I went to the pub. It’s an awful hole,” said Conway. “I started

out to call upon you, as you were good enough to ask me to come, but

when I got here I yielded to the temptation of the fair. If you are on

your way back, I may as well walk on to the house,” he added coolly.

“Mr. Conway might drive back with us,” Flora suggested. “There is

plenty of room behind.”

Courtesy hindered the squire from objecting. The young man neither

acted nor spoke according to his old-fashioned ideas of a gentleman.

He appeared to be neither temperate nor well-bred. And here was Flora

making herself agreeable, solely because there did not happen to be

another man handy. The smoke from Conway’s cigar passed across his

face, and the old gentleman, whose constitution prevented him from

appreciating tobacco in any form, coughed disgustedly.

It was a long mile from the centre of the village to the vicarage. As

the cart jolted along the road Mr. Price shouted his customary little

jokes to the people who passed on pleasure intent; while his niece

sustained a running conversation with the new owner of the Strath.

“Uncle has told me all kinds of stories about your house,” Flora was

saying. “I have often wanted to see the inside of it. But I should be

sorry to have to spend a night there.”

“The parson at Thorlund swears it isn’t haunted,” said Conway eagerly.

“I just looked in last night for a few minutes. It did make me feel a

bit queer to see all the eighteenth century fixings which haven’t been

touched for the Lord knows how long. The old garden by itself is

enough to make a fellow imagine all sorts of things.”

“Your poor uncle was not strangled,” said Mr. Price, breaking into the

conversation with a note of strong conviction. “That was only doctor’s

evidence to give the jury a chance. I shall always maintain that Mr.

Reed was killed by fright.”

“I do not believe that fright has ever killed a man,” objected Flora.

“Nonsense, child. What do you know about fear?” said the vicar

sharply. “At your time of life you ought to be asking questions,

instead of arguing with your betters. If the Strath were mine down it

would come,” he went on, turning to Conway. “Of course it is haunted.

You remember, Flora, my farmhouse and its spook of an old dame in a

poke bonnet? Well, I had the place down, and out went the lady. You

can’t strike a bargain with unrepentant souls. You must employ drastic

measures, and the only way of getting rid of a spiritual nuisance is

by using fresh bricks and mortar.”

Now that Mr. Price was mounted upon his hobby he talked freely, and

the young people were compelled to remain tongue-tied until the

vicarage was reached. There tea awaited them, a meal which Mr. Price

took seriously, and when he was satisfied Flora asked Conway if he

would care to see the garden. The townsman rose at once and

accompanied the tall girl along the grass paths, above the valley and

the stream winding in the distance, while the vicar uprooted plantains

from his lawn, with an old table-knife. It was all delightfully

old-world and simple. The profligate felt the charm of the soft

evening and began to understand the pleasures of country life, as

Flora, bare-headed and handsome, talked freely upon his limited

subjects and laughed at his somewhat vulgar jokes. It was the sound of

this laughter which caused Mr. Price to straighten himself and

remember that he was the guardian of his fatherless niece, and that

his guest might be able to claim some distant sort of relationship

with his head-carter.

“Uncle,” said Flora, who always insisted upon managing the affairs of

the house during her stay, as the old gentleman approached them. “Mr.

Conway will stop and have supper with us.”

“I really think I ought to go back,” the young man said, conscious

that it would not be wise to outstay his welcome.

“What, back to your Load of Mischief? No, you must follow the custom

of the country. We will feed you and send you off to Thorlund by a

poetic moonlight. Uncle, do go and wash your hands. They look as if

you had been making dirt pies.”

“A man has no need to be ashamed of soiled hands,” said Mr. Price

somewhat sharply, because he resented any allusion to his

peculiarities. “I shall be pleased if you will share our evening meal,

Mr. Conway,” he added, turning to the young man. Directly he had

spoken he went to his threadbare knees and expelled a huge dandelion

from a bed of larkspurs.

“Mr. Conway wants us to go over to Thorlund to-morrow,” Flora went on.

“You will take me, won’t you, uncle? I am longing to see the Strath,

and he has promised to give us tea.”

“I am not at all sure whether I shall be able to come,” said Mr.

Price, approaching Conway, with the dinner-knife in one hand, and the

bushy dandelion in the other. “I don’t like leaving Kingsmore while

these fair people are about. They are an ungenerous lot, and sometimes

repay my kindness by appropriating my chickens. But we will come if I

can get away,” he added, because he too was burning with curiosity to

see the interior of the house concerning which he had heard so many

strange tales.

So Conway stopped to supper, and Flora played hostess; while Mr.

Price, his simple face shining from a generous use of soap and hot

water, thawed out under the benign influence of a glass of port, and

told all his anecdotes for his guest’s benefit, studiously avoiding

any reference to the Strath or to the Reed family, until his niece

rose and left them. Then he pushed the decanter across the table, and

from a dissertation upon the iniquitous corn-laws passed at a bound to

the subject of oral tradition, and furtively inquired of his guest

whether there were to his knowledge any letters or memoirs

appertaining to Sir John Hooper in existence at the Strath. Seeing

blank astonishment on Conway’s face he went on to explain his

question, by dealing with the known history of the defunct baronet.

“Never heard of the chap,” declared Conway, assisting himself to wine.

“You may possibly find in your house some of those materials which

help us to a knowledge of history,” went on the old squire, who was by

this time in his most genial mood. “Sir John had a daughter, an only

child, who, it is reputed, was very beautiful, and he treated her,

’tis said, with great cruelty. A tradition exists in my family that on

a certain winter’s night the girl was discovered crying among the elms

in this garden. My ancestor had remarked upon the noise made, as he

supposed, by the owls, until a friend declared that the sound was made

by human voice. They went out and searching in the snow found the

girl. She was huddled against a great dog, and her eyes were fixed

with fear. They carried her to the fire, but directly she found her

strength she was gone. They say she had a lover, and that her father

killed him on the highway.”

“When did this happen?” Conway asked, reaching again for the decanter.

“About the time that Wolfe was chasing Montcalm out of Quebec. Hooper

was hanged upon what is still known as Deadman’s Hill. Any villager

will point out the spot to you. But I want to know what happened to

that poor girl. Tradition in this village suggests that she was often

to be seen, walking at night with the dog, always crying, and always

dressed in white like a bride. It was considered bad luck to meet, or

even to see her, just as it is thought unlucky nowadays to break a

mirror or spill the salt.”

“Is she supposed to haunt the Strath?” inquired the owner with more

interest.

Mr. Price shook his head in a puzzled fashion, and bent low over the

table.

“Your rector, who knows the place better than any man living, declares

there is neither figure to be seen, nor sound to be heard, either in

house or garden,” he said, fingering the ends of his white tie

excitedly. “And I must own that village opinion bears him out to the

letter. Now as regards my farm-house, which was undoubtedly

possessed--I saw the queer old Georgian woman myself, standing by a

hay-rick, one raw winter afternoon--not a labourer would go near the

place, and the stories I heard of red and green lights flashing across

the windows, groans, and gnashing of teeth, though the poor old dame,

I would swear, hadn’t a stump left in her head, made me sympathise

with the psalmist who declared, ‘all men are liars.’ Try the Strath

for a few days, Mr. Conway. Don’t mistake me. I wouldn’t live there

myself. I’m a churchman, but I have a horror of the unseen world. Is

that decanter empty? There is another upon the sideboard. Yes, give

the Strath a fair test. It has always been a place of mystery, but

latterly seems to have broken out, if I may so use the expression.

Enter into the mood of the influence and it will treat you well, Berry

would say. Only don’t let him get too strong a hold upon you, or he

will whisk you back into an atmosphere of prehistoric days.”

Nearly an hour later Flora, weary of her own society and nettled at

being isolated, came glimmering round the house in her white dress,

and played spy at the dining-room window. She saw the two squires, the

old aristocrat and the young plebeian, leaning across the table,

slopping wine amicably into each other’s glass, the one talking

perpetually, the other laughing in approbation. She heard her uncle

announce that his father had died of gout, the blame being on the

speaker’s great-grandfather; and she also heard his companion’s

assertion that Mr. Price might therefore consider himself insured

against the malady. Then she shivered a little at the grotesqueness of

the scene, entered the house through the conservatory, and passing

into the dining-room broke up the conversation by taking Conway out

into the garden.

“If you decide to live in the country,” she told him severely, “you

will have to abandon your London habits. Uncle is an old man,” she

added reprovingly. “And it is wrong of you to excite him into

forgetting himself.”

Conway became penitent and apologetic. “A fellow living alone in

diggings hasn’t much chance of doing himself any good, Miss Neill,” he

said in deep humility. “It’s too lonely of an evening to stay in, and

the means of enjoying yourself are made so jolly convenient. I’m

ashamed of myself--I am really, but your old uncle is such a jolly

good sort. And, you see, I’m not a clever chap, Miss Neill,” he

rambled on. “I haven’t got much learning, and I can’t stand books. I

don’t know Shakspere from Robinson Crusoe. Don’t laugh at me, Miss

Neill. I can’t help being a silly jackass. Perhaps I had better be

going now. But you will come over to-morrow? Do come and see my

house.”

Flora was about to deliver one of her plain-spoken remarks, when she

was interrupted by a loud summons from the dining-room. Leaving the

guest she slipped back into the house, and discovered her uncle,

sitting erect and preternaturally stern, beside his hospitable table,

which had been influenced that night by some subtle nerve of

consciousness deflected from the Strath.

“Flora,” he cried indignantly. “The man’s no gentleman. I forbid you

to contaminate yourself by speaking to him. He has drunk more than is

good for him. And so have I.”

“I fancy you once told me your great-grandfather never went to bed

sober,” said the girl.

“Customs were different then,” snapped the squire. “Send Mr. Reed

away, and remember please, he is related to my head-carter.”

“If you mean Mr. Conway he is just going. Had you not better come into

the drawing-room? The housemaid will be here presently.”

“I shall remain here until to-morrow morning, if necessary,” said the

squire solemnly. “Supper has not agreed with me to-night. The soup was

a failure.”

“If my mother could see you, she would take hold of your poor old

shoulders and shake you,” cried Flora; and with that she ran out and

rejoined the squire of Thorlund, who was standing near the gate,

gazing penitently at the solemn stars.

“Miss Neill,” he said tremulously. “There’s nothing like the country.

I was ill when I came here, but already, thanks to the beautiful fresh

air, I feel a different man. I am going to walk back to Thorlund in

this wonderful moonlight, and I shall admire nature all the way.”

After an earnest appeal to Flora “not to forget to-morrow,” the guest

started off along the shining road. From a distance came up the

mellowed noises of the fair, and the glow of naptha lamps became

reflected against the rolling clouds.

Flora stood, smiling a little, in the shadow, flicking away the gnats

from her forehead.

“That is one of the weakest men I have ever met,” she said to a moth

which hovered for a moment before her. “It would be amusing, and quite

easy, to treat him in this fashion.”

She wound her handkerchief tightly round her little finger, and turned

with the action towards the house.

Scene II.--MYSTERY

Is it possible then that the soul--which is invisible and proceeding

to another place… when it is separated from the body--is at once

dissipated and utterly annihilated, as many men say? It is impossible

to think so.--_Plato_.

When Conway reached the exposed road, leaving Kingsmore behind, a cool

wind sprang up redolent of pines. To feel it the better he took off

his hat and leaned against a moss-clad milestone. The unwonted

exercise of walking along country roads tired him quickly. He watched

the moonbeams playing across the ridges of short grass, and flinging

shadows into the ghastly chalk-pits, until the solitude awed him. He

found himself in a vastly different world from the noisy town which

had surrounded him throughout his life. And yet he found himself

longing for the grapes and pomegranites of his Egypt. He was incapable

of feeling any true admiration for the splendid silence of the hills.

The novelty of the experiment was still upon him; but the artistic

temperament was not, and never had been, his.

Across the brow of the chalk a thin thread of road cut the highway at

right angles, and here a spectral sign-post pointed with three arms;

the fourth had been removed by storm, and its remainder was a sharp

finger-like splinter. Reaching this point Conway crossed the patch of

grass to make a short cut; but in passing the post his foot struck an

obstacle, which proved to be the amputated arm. In idle curiosity he

lifted the rotten board, and holding it in the moonlight made out the

barely legible inscription, “Queensmore. 1 Mile.”

There was nothing to be seen in the direction pointed at by the

splinter, except ragged bushes and white stones, beside a weedy road

which descended in graceful curves from the summit and disappeared far

down in a clump of larches. There was no indication of a village down

beyond; not a voice proceeded from the valley, nor tinkle of

sheep-bell, nor snort of cow or horse at pasture. A barn owl slid

across the firs and shrieked at the enemy; and silence settled down

again.

Presently there sounded a rattle of wheels, a stamp of iron shoes; a

stream of lamplight followed; and then a box-shaped cart topped the

ridge, and came noisily to the rectangular section of the roads, the

horse backing as he felt the decline.

“Like a lift, sir?” inquired a hoarse voice, proceeding from a muffled

figure perched high between two goggle lamps.

Conway recognised the mail-cart making its journey towards the distant

railway. Glad of the invitation he reached the flat roof, with the

driver’s assistance, settled himself upon a bag of newspapers, and,

clinging to the iron rail, closed his eyes when the horse was given

his head, because it appeared that any moment he might be hurled

forward into space. The driver began to chat, and when his head had

ceased revolving Conway found himself able to listen.

“I ain’t allowed to take anyone up,” the man explained. “And I ain’t

supposed to smoke neither, which is what I call a bit of stupid

tyranny. But ’tis lonesome driving along these roads night after

night. Would you mind leaning over a bit, and holding the reins, while

I strike a light? Are you a stranger in these parts, sir?”

Conway replied, without revealing his identity, and as the cart jolted

on he asked the driver to point out the site of Queensmore and the

position of Deadman’s Hill. The man immediately swung round, and

extended his whip in the direction of the rapidly receding clump of

larches.

“Deep down in yonder valley,” he replied. “You ain’t got property

there, I hope, sir?”

“I have not,” Conway answered.

“Queensmore is deserted and broke up. A very old village, they tell

me, sir, built by these Saxons, and full of their remains, leastways

the ground is. Go over and have a look at the place, if so be you can

spare the time. It lies just at the foot of Deadman’s Hill. That there

is the hill, sir. A bit further back you can see the post which marks

where the gallows stood. They do say it ain’t healthy to be along

these ways by night; but I’ve crossed this here country for years in

all weathers, at Midsummer, Hallow’s E’en, and Christmas, and I’ve

seen naught, but only owls and bats and glowworms. Folks let a fancy

get into their heads, and keep it there, and let it grow, until they

come to believe it’s true.”

“How many people live at Queensmore now?” Conway asked.

“Not one. The last inhabitant--an old man, name of Jabez Tooke--died

there five years ago. He wouldn’t leave the place, and having a bit of

money of his own he lived there by himself till he was ninety, and

then he had to go whether he wanted to or not. They buried him in the

old churchyard, and there’s a stone over his grave, saying something

this way, ‘Here lies Jabez Tooke, the last resident in Queensmore, who

wouldn’t be taken from his native village till death took him.’ Kind

of joke on his name, you see, sir. Parson Price was angry when that

stone was put up, they tell me. But it don’t matter now. Queensmore

has had its day, and now the owls have it to themselves. The wind is

pulling it down bit by bit.”

“What made the people leave it?” the townsman asked.

“Well ’tis a bad country for agriculture hereabouts, and when year

after year the sheep did no good the farmers began to get out of it.

Then, of course, the labourers had to move on, and after that the

parish was joined on to Kingsmore, and that was the end of it. It

wasn’t ever what you would call healthy down yonder. Too much stagnant

water, and they couldn’t afford to drain. Flowers did well, but

there’s no money in them. All the village must be just blowing with

roses now, sir, and any one as wants can help themselves. But ’tis a

sad kind of place, with its tumbling cottages, and ruined church, and

nobody seems to care to go near it.”

The driver chatted on, glad of the opportunity to use his tongue,

until the mail-cart approached Thorlund, and the great elms which

surrounded the Strath could be seen against the sky.

“I don’t carry no weapons,” he said, in response to Conway’s question

regarding the dangers of the road. “I wouldn’t know how to handle a

pistol--shoot the old horse as likely as not. There ain’t any real

danger on the road nowadays. I was held up once, when ’twas thought I

was carrying valuables, and I gave my gentleman strong medicine with

this here whip. I’m tidy useful with a whip, and when a man gets a

clean cut across the eyes he’s had enough. Never got a word of thanks

for saving the mail, but if I was seen carrying a gentleman I would be

sure of the sack. I mustn’t do less than my duty, sir, but as much

over as I like. It’s a hard life, because there’s more foul weather

than fair, and never a word of encouragement if I bring in the cart up

to time all the year round. Yonder is Thorlund, and the Strath. Now

that’s an awful mysterious sort of place, if you like, sir, and it’s a

very queer affair about this Mr. Henry Reed.”

“If you don’t mind stopping here, I will get down,” said Conway, when

he discovered that the cart was turning away from the valley. “I am

going to Thorlund.”

“Are you though?” exclaimed the driver, with a sudden direct interest

in his passenger. “Mind that step, sir. It’s dangerous when you don’t

know it. Well there, I’ve been real glad to have your company, and I

didn’t ought to take anything, but thank you very much all the same,

and good-night to you, sir.”

It was not until the ancient yews of the churchyard appeared before

him that Conway perceived he had somewhere made a wrong turn. He saw

ahead a grey wall partly covered with ivy, and in his pocket he felt a

key which would open the hidden door in that wall. A light streamed

across the graves; a window beyond was open, and coming near he saw

Dr. Berry seated at his table, and when he stopped there came upon the

night the scholar’s rich voice chanting a Greek lyric. It was an

unknown tongue to the listener, but he was nevertheless fascinated;

and as he stood, listening, a strange power fell upon him, his mind

succumbed at once, and his feet passed the dark mound which marked the

resting-place of his uncle’s body, and entered the shadow. He fitted

the key into the lock, turned it, and the door opened at a touch.

For an instant he held back. The wonderful garden spread away before

him bathed in moonlight. Then he laughed with a sense of new-found

happiness, and moved forward, drawn on by invisible bonds; and the

door closed into the wall with a gentle vibration; and a hundred

unknown energies made music in his brain. The house called to its new

servant, and he went to it; and the guest’s bedroom in the Load of

Mischief remained unoccupied that night.

As the Aeolian harp is thrilled by every passing breath of wind, so

the consciousness of Dr. Berry responded to every change in the

influence of the Strath. He had not perceived the figure of Conway

passing before the window, neither had he heard the opening nor the

closing of that door in the crumbling wall; and yet he knew a material

being had entered the garden, and he felt more strongly than he had

ever done a power controlling his human organism, prompting him to

take pencil and paper, and write--he knew not what.

The influence of the Strath was again strongly aroused. Since Reed’s

tragical fate the old house had remained quiescent. It appeared to

have exhausted its power for the time. And now in one moment the

scholar’s tongue was silenced as he recited the complaint of Euphron,

“God, as thou hast given us only a short life, why dost thou not allow

us to pass it without sorrow?” and a cold breath went through the

room, and his body began to pass into ecstacy; and he knew by all this

that the power had returned, and that it was kindly and wished him

well.

The impulse to write became overwhelming. Scarcely knowing what he

did, the scholar took a pencil, and immediately the hand supporting it

was guided towards a sheet of paper and there reposed with violent

twitchings. The upper part of his body turned shudderingly away from

the right arm, and settled, a mass of semi-conscious matter, across

the high support afforded by the side of his chair; but the arm, and

especially the hand which clutched the pencil, were impatient, active,

and mobile.

“What is this?” he moaned; for he could feel that his body was in

pain, and there was in his mouth a taste exceeding bitter, as though

he had swallowed hemlock.

And immediately his unconscious hand moved fiercely and rapidly across

the paper, tracing out in ancient Greek the explanation:--

“We cannot command the elements, or would have come near before. Now

you shall recognise our power. Give praise to the Supreme, for the

permission afforded of proving to you the truth of the endlessness of

life.

“We will answer the questions you have written down, though we work

with difficulty, being compelled by the immutable law of Nature to

communicate through your brain and your mind, feeling again, as we

return to earth-state, the pains of our dissolution. The conditions

are exceptional to-night. We have awaited such an opportunity for

long. But being yourself in the body you will desire some proof of the

presence of an objective mind. When you awaken go forth into your

garden. Seven white lilies stand in a line beside the gate. The blooms

upon the fourth we will remove as we pass from hence, leaving the

green stalk bare. We will also read from a book and impress you of a

word. Walk, when you are able, across the room, and your hand shall

seek out a book, which, as you hold it, shall open at the one hundred

and ninetieth page. The last word upon that page is ΚΑΣΣΙΤΕΡΟΙΟ. It is

enough. Thus you shall learn our power over matter.

“What is the meaning, you have asked, of this influence at the Strath?

You have doubted whether this power could arise from the actions of

certain earth-bound spirits. Also you have desired to know how it is

that after years of quiescence the spirit of the house, as you have

called it, should have become in so short a time thus mightily

aroused. We answer you concerning these things. Those spirits, who,

because of their grossness, are imprisoned near the earth, are ever

struggling to make their presence felt. As the sea-bird flutters

towards the light of some lofty tower, so do these discarnate beings

struggle towards that incarnate mind, or towards those material

objects, through whom, or by which, they may exert their will and

proclaim their identity. Some of these spirits are harmless, but many

are dangerous and all are undeveloped. There are in the Strath certain

material objects by means of which these spirits are allowed great

power upon the affairs of mortals who approach the place. You cannot

understand, nor may we explain to you further, how this should be.

Only beware, for there is peril in seeking out this knowledge, and the

body endures not easily nor for long. You know not how the spirit may

work, even through a ring, or a lock of hair, or may seek to impress

its nearness through the bird or the flower. We say again, beware, for

the spirits of the earth-bound, they who in the flesh have done

murder, or violence to themselves, or have succumbed to the bodily

appetite, are jealous of the happiness of those who have led the

spiritual life in your condition. They shall retard your upward

progress if they may.

“And now we answer concerning the present great activity of those who

control the ancient house. It is your desire to seek into hidden

causes which has made it possible for such energies to arise. That

power will not be maintained, but while it continues we have fear for

you, knowing the frailty of the incarnate mind. These undeveloped

spirits have at length become skilled in managing the elements. It is

necessary that a certain combination of circumstances should be

formed, before such manifestations of spiritual power be possible, and

because such a combination is rare you do not often find upon your

sphere that influence, as you call it, which is now filling your mind

with perplexing doubts. It is possible that the combination, which now

exists, may not be made again. We would speak upon other matters, but

your brain is unable to express those greater truths, and your mind is

incapable of receiving them. Be satisfied now, and rest. You have very

much to learn.”

The inert body of the scholar stirred slightly and he groaned deeply

in his trance. But, before he could awaken, his vitalised right arm,

acting so strongly at variance with the remainder of his system, swept

again across the paper, and his hand settled, and his fingers went on

to write:

“A spirit lately arrived desires to communicate, and we are commanded

to permit him. He will use our power to write in his own language, and

will then depart from you, having given the evidence that is

required.”

There the sprawling Greek letters ceased, and the pencil went on to

write in English, forming in illiterate unshaped handwriting the brief

and blasphemous message:

“Damn you, Professor. You were right.”

Some minutes passed before Dr. Berry came to himself and was able to

comprehend what the intelligence had wrought through his undiscerning

brain. It was close upon midnight before the message was deciphered;

for despite his scholarship and skill in reading manuscripts, there

were words and symbols in that script which were new to him. The

communication was written in Attic Greek by an intelligence which

exhibited a perfect command over the finer tones of that perfect

language. No living scholar could have penned those lines, and

possibly few modern Greeks could have translated them into their own

decadent tongue.

Slowly and painfully, for his body was racked and weary, Dr. Berry

approached his bookcase, and immediately his arm was raised and his

hand guided towards a work near the end of the top shelf, a book bound

in drab boards, entitled, “Theatre of the Greeks.” That work was one

of a parcel which had come to him during the previous year and so far

had not been opened. The boards fell apart, but not the pages which he

required, and on bending to discover the cause he found that the

leaves had not been cut. Opening the page quickly with a paper-knife,

his eye sought the concluding word upon page 190. It was ΚΑΣΣΙΤΕΡΟΙΟ.

Lighting a candle, the scholar walked out into the garden and the

still dark night, until he came to a flower-bed, beside the gate which

opened upon the graveyard. Six tall Madonna lilies lifted their heads

of white bloom before the fence where at sunset seven had stood.

Approaching, the scholar raised the candle above his head, and before

a moth blundered against the wick and extinguished the flame, he

perceived that the central lily, the fourth from whichever side the

plants were counted, stood a bare green stalk, denuded of its blooms.

Scene III.--MUSICAL COMEDY

Light quirks of music, broken and uneven.--_Pope_.

When Flora awoke she discovered a pink envelope addressed in Maude’s

careless caligraphy, lying beside her morning cup of tea. She hurried

over her toilet, made her way into the garden; and seating herself

luxuriously in an easy chair beneath an arch of honeysuckle, read and

laughed over the selfish sentences inscribed upon two sheets of

perfumed paper.

The little lady was very miserable. London was dusty and desolate. She

had read the new books, seen the new pictures, and heard the new

plays; she had done everything and enjoyed nothing, because she was

losing all her prettiness. Lately no one had admired her, at least no

one had told her so, and it was because she was growing old. She felt

perfectly convinced she would never attract anybody again. What would

happen to her if she became a widow she dared not contemplate. As for

Herbert, he was always in the city, which was of course the proper

place for him, but he was bad-tempered when he did come home, and

always declaring money was dreadfully scarce, which she didn’t

believe, but he had always been fearfully stingy. And he declared he

would not take her into the country, so she had made up her mind to go

away by herself, before her health was completely wrecked. And if

Flora was staying for any time at Kingsmore, would she look out for a

furnished cottage, upon rather high ground, but not in an exposed

spot, well away from standing water, with a nice garden, which could

be guaranteed free from toads and owls, with plenty of lavender

bushes, and green blinds to all the windows, but not Venetians, which

always broke directly they were touched…

Then a bell jangled in the house, and Flora rose at once, because she

desired to find her uncle in a good humour; and she knew nothing upset

the old gentleman more than being kept waiting for his breakfast.

Because it had been the custom of his ancestors, and Mr. Price was an

ardent conservative, a service was held for the labourers early every

morning in one of the barns. The squire had not only accomplished this

duty, but had ridden round the farm and signed the death-warrant of

several pigs, before entering the dining-room where his niece

immediately joined him. The old gentleman kissed the girl on both

cheeks, according to custom, and plunged into discursive talk which

had nothing to do with the guest of the previous night, or the empty

decanters upon the sideboard; while Flora, so soon as she was allowed

the opportunity, told him of Mrs. Juxon’s requirements, and read such

extracts from the letter as were fit for publication.

“Bless my soul,” exclaimed the squire, as he dropped a drumstick of

cold chicken noisily into his plate. “What more will the woman ask

for? Why does she not say at once that she intends to have the entire

scheme of nature altered to suit her convenience, and engage angels

for landscape gardeners. Lavender bushes and green blinds! I hope she

may get them.”

After sundry remarks on Flora’s part Mr. Price stumbled into his

niece’s snare, and suggested that she should take the light cart and

drive round the neighbourhood, with a view to finding a cottage

sufficiently idyllic to suit the spoilt beauty. When this matter had

been settled, Flora placed her elbows on the table, rested her chin

upon her hands, and introduced a fresh topic with the statement, “I

have been thinking, uncle.”

“Have you, my dear?” the squire replied, adding with a chuckle, “You

look none the worse for it.”

“I think mother would be willing to let our house this year,” Flora

went on. “We have heaps of applications, on account of the river. And

then she could come here, and keep house for you all the summer.”

“Before agreeing, I shall require an undertaking that my liberty is

not to be interfered with,” answered the squire, who was in very good

spirits that morning, despite the excesses of the previous night. As a

matter of fact Flora’s suggestion was entirely after his heart, and

had been made by himself without success in former years. “You know,

child, I will never consent to have my study tidied,” he went on, “and

the privilege of the latchkey I must retain. Your dear mother has a

weakness for what she calls order, therefore, before admitting her

into this house, I shall require a signed agreement granting me full

licence to continue in my untidy ways.”

“Oh, you shall have all your old privileges,” said Flora. “I will

write to mother at once, and then go cottage-hunting for Maude.

Remember,” she added carelessly, as she rose to go, “we are due at

Thorlund this afternoon.”

Flora had her way. At half-past-four the Kingsmore carriage entered

the valley of Thorlund, bringing the vicar and his niece to visit the

Strath. The old gentleman wore his best coat, which had left the

tailor’s hands not more than five years back. He had also put on a

fresh white tie, which was already showing finger-marks, and had

brought out his dusty silk hat, the wearing of which when visiting a

neighbouring squire being a point of etiquette upon which he was

particular. During the journey across the four miles of chalk hills he

talked sheep and turnips, and was continually putting his head out of

the window, to examine the state of the road, or to shout a simple

joke for the appreciation of some passing son of toil.

As the coachman was unwilling to venture with the carriage through the

high grass, which completely obliterated what had been the drive, the

visitors alighted at the iron gates, and made their way along a

faintly defined path to the house. The front door stood open, but

there was no sign of any occupant, and their attempts to ring were

frustrated by the corroded bell-knob, which remained immovable. Mr.

Price shouted and stamped, and, when no one put in an appearance,

stepped into the hall. He was the first squire of Kingsmore to enter

the Strath since the beginning of the period styled by historians

modern England. At the opposite side of the hall a huge fireplace

yawned blackly, its iron dogs red with rust. Some old tables,

stiff-back chairs, and sofas of tapestry, with a couple of tarnished

sconces holding blackened candles, and a curious clock its dial made

of white flowered glass, were the principal articles of furniture. The

hall was paved with stone. Above, a rectangular wooden balustrade,

sadly in need of repair, went round the building, and a few sombre

pictures could be seen against the damp stained walls of the first

floor. The frames were as black as dead walnut-leaves.

“It will cost the young man a great deal to restore the place,” Mr.

Price whispered.

“But where is he?” returned Flora. “I wonder if he is in here.”

She led the way boldly into the drawing-room or saloon, the walls of

which were hung with tattered crimson velvet. This room had been

cleaned by the late owner with a good deal of care, until traces of

what must formerly have been a richly gilded cornice had become here

and there apparent. The extinct Hoopers had furnished their home well.

There were tables and chairs made of mahogany, a new and expensive

wood in the eighteenth century. Cabinets filled with old china

occupied the corners, and grotesque footstools with sprawling legs of

acanthus pattern were placed before each chair. Mirrors were greatly

in evidence, all handsomely framed, the majority bearing sconces which

still contained black sticks of wax. Upon a walnut sideboard a massive

candelabrum threw out seven silver arms. Above the fireplace were

arranged several bizarre ornaments of Indian make, intermingled with

porcelain vases painted with gross designs after Giulio Romano. The

pictures, which had evidently been lately rehung after having fallen

from their original positions, were numerous, but of little artistic

worth. The subjects were generally unpleasant, or suggestive; such as

Actaeon watching Diana, the loves of Jupiter and Leda, of Venus and

Adonis, of Aaron and Tamora, with coloured copies of Hogarth’s

Marriage _à la mode_. Upon a Louis Quinze table a fan was sprawling,

the scenes of The Harlot’s Progress painted upon its mounts, and

beside it a box containing patches. The escutcheon of the Hoopers, set

into the central window, cast a bar of colour across the rotten

carpet. The squire gazed upon his surroundings without any sense of

amazement, but with a distinct fascination, until he discovered

himself putting up a hand to adjust the periwig which was not there.

Both uncle and niece had altogether forgotten their absent host.

“It seems to be getting rather dark,” the girl said tremulously.

“The sun has gone behind the trees, and the creepers are thick against

the window,” replied the squire with extraordinary light-heartedness.

“Look here, Flora! A French horn, such as is used upon our coaches.

And here a bent sword, twisted I doubt not by our host when in town

while defending himself against the Mohawks, and here one of the

furred caps which we old men wear while our wigs are with the barber.

And now let me hear you draw some music out of this beautiful

harpsichord.”

The girl laughed, waking echoes in that strange place, and saying

lightly, “I will endeavour, my respected relative, to give you the

gratification which you desire,” drew up a chair, and sat down before

the impossible instrument.

“By God! what a place for a dance,” cried the reverend squire, cutting

a fantastic caper, then bounding after his hat as it rolled across the

room. “Look at these boards, where they show through the carpet. All

of oak, a foot and more in width, somewhat worm-eaten, but none the

worse for that.” Holding out his coattails, the old gentleman bowed

gravely to his niece, and commenced to dance round her.

There came a sound of heels clicking upon the stones of the hall,

followed by a rich voice:

“Bravo! bravissimo! That step was worthy of a dancing-master. If I had

but a fiddle I would play you a measure which should set you

skipping.”

A handsome man strolled into the saloon, an open snuff-box between his

finger and thumb, attired in laced coat and embroidered waistcoat,

silk knee-breeches and stockings, silver-buckled highlows, and a big

white wig. A quantity of lace surrounded his throat, and his smiling

face was highly powdered and his chin patched.

“Why, Sir John! my dear Sir John!” exclaimed Mr. Price, ceasing from

his gambols, and bowing to the new-comer with his toes turned out in

most approved style. “This is a very extraordinary and unexpected

pleasure, I do assure you, good Sir John.”

“Nay, but you are mistaken,” came the answer, as the speaker bowed low

to the lady at the harpsichord. “The humble personage before you is

merely the poor parson of Thorlund parish.”

At that the squire of Kingsmore went very red and awkward; and finally

blurted out the remarkable statement:

“I am totally at a loss to explain why we are here in these

preposterous garments. Flora, my dear, what could your tiring-woman

have been thinking of, to send you out with not an atom of powder to

your head, nor a patch to your face. And I believe we are expected to

drink a dish of tea. Where is our host that I may apologize in a

suitable manner?”

“He has been for some hours in a state of drowsiness,” Dr. Berry

explained, with a careless wave of the snuff-box. “I am unable to

understand what has come over him. He is dressed ready to receive you,

but I cannot keep him awake. I will, however, inform him that you have

arrived. As for your clothes that is a matter which can be easily

attended to. There are, in the rooms upstairs, presses filled with

apparel for both sexes, secure against dust and moth.”

“Pray show me the way,” said the squire with old-fashioned urbanity.

“My charming niece, shall we accompany the learned doctor and make

ourselves presentable?”

The strange characters passed out, making for the stairway and the

unexplored regions above. For them the clock of time had been set

back, or rather the hands were continuing to move at the point where

their progress had been arrested more than a century back. The drama

had been suddenly broken into during the eighteenth century; and now

that figures had come again upon the scene the drama went on, as

though there had been no interval, and those who were present had to

take their cue, and assume the parts of those men and women, Hoopers

or Branscombes, long since driven off that stage.

After a short interval of silence a sound of singing filled the long

saloon. The vocalist was Dr. Berry, who was drawing an accompaniment

of broken music from the harpsichord, while Conway lolled sleepily

upon a sofa, costumed as a _beau_ of a past age. To them entered a

lady and an old man, the latter exceedingly quaint and undignified,

the former tall and handsome; both attired after the best manner of

the time in which they dimly believed they were drawing breath and

inspiration.

“It is certainly growing very dark,” said the squire of Kingsmore, as

he advanced with mincing step into the saloon. “And it is still early

in the evening.”

“The clouds are coming up thickly,” replied the musician. “The windows

are also obscured by ivy, and trees surround this peaceful retreat

upon every side. Our host continues to be drowsy,” he went on,

pointing to the sofa and its silk-clad occupant; and having spoken he

crossed over, shook the sleeper gently by the shoulder, and called,

“Wake, my friend, here are your guests.”

Conway opened his eyes. His face was perfectly pallid, but there were

lines of laughter drawn about his mouth which gave him a curious

resemblance to the mask of comedy, hanging in the room across the

hall. He rose slowly, and with perfect breeding, altogether unlike his

usual manner, bowed silently to his guests. Then he seated himself

again, and became aesthetically engrossed upon a painted vase.

Flora came forward, and asked, “Are you tired, Mr. Conway?”

“I have still a sleepy humour upon me,” the owner of the Strath

replied, passing as he spoke a hand across his forehead.

Dr. Berry was posing before one of the mirrors.

“Shall we play?” Conway suggested, stretching out his arms and smiling

vacantly.

“By all means let us play,” assented the old squire, admitting into

his nostrils a pinch of dust which had no doubt been choice _rappee_ a

hundred years before.

A small sane voice whispered to these mummers that they were playing

at folly, just as the drunkard may be conscious that he is making a

deplorable exhibition of human frailty, although the knowledge in no

way aids him to act like a sober being. They set out a table,

old-fashioned cards and markers were produced; and they commenced to

play. The silence of the house was only disturbed by a faint moaning

of wind in the chimneys.

“Gott in Himmel! as our gracious king would say. I am scarce able to

read my cards,” cried Mr. Price, after they had played the first hand.

“It is growing damnably dark,” muttered Conway, not ashamed to swear

before the lady because such was the custom of the time. “Set a light

to the candles, doctor. There is a tinder-box upon the mantel. The

king,” he muttered, turning to Mr. Price, the sane intellect

struggling to assert itself. “Who is our king?”

There was a perplexed interval, occupied by a mental conflict between

enlightenment and possession, before Mr. Price replied somewhat

testily, “Why, George the Second. Though ’tis said he has not long to

live. God save our Augustus!”

“Truly the spirit of comedy prevails this evening,” observed the sober

voice of the doctor, who was lighting the ancient candles with a

modern wax vesta.

“Ha!” exclaimed the old squire, picking at the yellow ruffles upon his

wrist. “What is that, doctor? Comedy! Why, to be sure, let us laugh

and sing. Where are the servants? Let us have a bowl of punch and a

few long pipes.”

He stumbled in his big shoes towards the bell-rope, tugged it, and the

cord came away in his hand.

“I have no servants,” said Conway meditatively. “But there is wine in

the house. I will bring you some.”

He left the saloon, and they could hear him laughing across the hall.

Dr. Berry went on lighting the old candles in the sconces, in the

ormolu chandelier, and the candelabrum, until the saloon began to

glitter. He closed the decayed shutters and drew the torn folds of the

crimson curtains, singing a ballad as he worked. The light revealed a

painted ceiling, in the centre of which appeared a nymph entwining the

stem of an apple-tree with garlands of flowers.

“A forest of lights!” cried Mr. Price, standing before the

chimney-glass and lifting his hands in rapture. “The view of this

handsome apartment regarded thus is indeed exquisite. The lights

dazzle and shine from one mirror to another in an endless vista. Ha!

here comes our wine. What elegant glasses, my dear Sir! What a superb

piece of workmanship is this salver!”

They drank, to the health of their dying king, to George William

Frederick, Prince of Wales, to a lord admiral, and a great duke, all

of whom had left the body many generations back. They drank confusion

to the French and prosperity to their country. Then the scholar took

Flora by the hand, and leading her out into the centre of the saloon

danced with her a minuet.

The prosaic figure of a coachman appeared startlingly at the entrance.

Having failed to make himself heard, and finding the front door open,

he had taken the liberty to enter, and now stood struggling with

amazement and some little fear, and yet without finding anything of an

incongruous nature in the scene before him.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, addressing the capering little gentleman

whom he recognised as his master. “Do you want the horses to stand,

sir, or shall I put them up at the Inn?”

Another wave of sanity passed across Mr. Price’s brain. He understood

that it was his duty to leave that present company and go into an

altogether mysterious world. With many apologies, and much

snuff-taking, he approached the master of the house to take his leave.

“I shall see you at Almack’s or White’s, when we are next in town,” he

said after a final warm good-night, glibly repeating the words that

were forced upon his tongue, although feeling them to be absurd.

There was still daylight upon the village. A couple of labourers,

their day’s work done, had proceeded towards the iron gates, attracted

by the Kingsmore carriage, and had been summoned by the coachman to

hold the horses while he went in search of his master. These men stood

craning their necks towards the garden, until they saw in the twilight

two figures approaching; an old gentleman in a monstrous periwig,

handsomely embroidered sack coat, flowing waistcoat, and gleaming silk

stockings, assisting the progress of a young and beautiful lady, with

protruding panier and powdered head, a fan swinging from her wrist,

and a soiled Pamela hat upon her whitened hair.

ENTR’ACTE

An avowal of poverty is a disgrace to no man; but to make no effort to

escape from it is certainly disgraceful.--_Thucydides_.

A fortnight had passed since Conway’s departure from his rooms in

town, and still the profligate gave no sign of his existence. Every

morning, when the postman’s knock sounded along the street, a weary

man crept down a dirty flight of stairs from his attic, praying for a

letter which might cheer his heart, but finding none. After a meagre

breakfast he would venture out to another house, to inquire if there

was anything for Mr. Drayton. The answer was always in the negative.

The hack-writer had been compelled to abandon Conway’s rooms, not so

much because the place was being subjected to a thorough cleansing, as

owing to the fact that the rent was overdue, and the attentions of the

agent had become pressing. Drayton had written several letters to his

patron, acquainting him with this fact. As these letters were not

returned, he concluded they had been received, and yet nothing came

from the distant country to prove that Conway was alive. This

continued silence was becoming a serious matter for Drayton, who at

that time was in a desperate state of poverty. Younger men were

jostling him out of the ranks of an overcrowded profession, his one

suit of clothes was more than threadbare, and his health had begun to

fail for want of sufficient food. He knew that Conway hated country

life, and would never separate himself from the pleasures of town

unless compelled to do so. Concluding that the missing man was ill, or

had met with an accident, Drayton resolved to go down into the country

and find his way to the Strath.

This determination came on a morning when he found himself absolutely

penniless.

Leaving the wretched lodging-house, he passed into the street where

the sun was showering golden favours upon rich and poor alike, let

himself into Conway’s rooms by means of the key which had been left

with him, and searching in a cupboard found to his delight a tin of

biscuits and some apples. Having breakfasted, he passed into the

bedroom and exploited his patron’s wardrobe, remarking as a

justification for the act he contemplated, “Conway has always been

good-natured, and I don’t think he will mind. Anyhow I will play

boldly and take the risk.”

The impecunious writer believed in being thorough in his methods.

Having come to a decision, he discarded his own seedy garments in

favour of one of Conway’s numerous suits, borrowed a pair of boots,

which were not, like his, gaping at the seams, and a change of linen;

and presently returned to the sitting-room better dressed than he had

ever been in his life. There was a jar of whisky in the cupboard.

Drayton helped himself moderately, then sat down to think. As he

contemplated a railway journey it was obviously necessary to be

provided with cash; and to that end it would be equally necessary to

pawn something.

He looked round the room to select a victim. Pictures were too bulky;

an inquisitive policeman might meet him at the door and put

inconvenient questions. There were, however, numerous small

money-bringers, such as a marble clock, a pair of field-glasses, a

handsome tantalus, a silver cup, any of which he might very easily

hypothecate. He selected the clock, and approaching the chimney-piece

had put up his hands to remove it, when the two masks above caught his

eye. Straightway his arms dropped at his sides, and his mind became

possessed by a new and quaint idea.

Five minutes later he was hurrying down the street towards a familiar

pawn-shop, with the pair of grotesque faces wrapped in brown paper

beneath his arm. He felt unusually excited, and somewhat

conscience-stricken at purloining the heirlooms.

At first sight it seemed as though he was to be sharply disillusioned,

for the pawnbroker, who knew Drayton well enough, pushed the parcel

back indignantly.

“Having a lark, ain’t you?” he satirically demanded, noting the

writer’s unusually well-dressed appearance, and jumping at the

conclusion that he had made some money and had spent an undue portion

of it in liquor. “There’s a toy-shop round the corner,” he went on,

endeavouring to repay insult by insult. “Take ’em there. Maybe they’ll

give you a penny for the pair.”

Like many of his profession Drayton was sensitive, and sarcasm hurt

him. Muttering an apology, he caught up the masks and slipped out of

the shop, hot and awkward, with the idea of returning for the clock

that he might convince the pawnbroker of the seriousness of his

intentions; but when again upon the street the former influence

possessed his mind, and there flashed across his vision the picture of

a dusty little shop, a mile westward, beside which he had often

lingered, to glance at the fantastic objects exposed for sale, and to

wonder how the proprietor made a living, because he had never seen a

buyer enter or leave the house. Mechanically he turned his footsteps

towards the mean and dirty street, where the little curio-shop

survived, while more ornate trading ventures went to the wall.

A swarthy little man advanced from a black recess when the writer

entered, and in a guttural voice sought to learn what the gentleman

required. Somewhat nervously Drayton explained the object of his

visit, and opening his parcel placed the masks side by side upon the

counter. The dealer assumed a pair of spectacles, and bent his head to

examine the two brown objects; then, with a muttered apology, he

lifted the models tenderly and carried them towards the light.

“They are worth very little,” he said deliberately, as he looked back.

“I will advance you five shillings upon the pair.”

“That is no good to me,” Drayton replied.

“If you desire to sell I would give you one pound,” the little man

said, his foreign accent becoming more pronounced.

“I do not wish to sell,” said the writer. “I want to borrow five

pounds.”

The curio-dealer said nothing, but his head inclined slightly. Then he

walked away into a back-room and very quickly re-appeared, with five

sovereigns and a scrap of pasteboard on his little crooked hand.

Drayton confessed that he had not a copper on him to pay for the

ticket, whereupon the little man gravely gave him change for one of

the sovereigns, bowed him out of the shop without a word, and then

scurried back into the dark recess, shouting:

“Jacob! Where is that boy? Jacob! Run, my son--run!”

ACT III.

Scene I.--HEROIC

All that thou sayest I can bear unmoved; for thou hast a voice bereft

of power, like a shadow. Thou canst do nought but talk.--_Euripides_.

It was dusk when Drayton entered the parish of Thorlund, after a

wearisome railway journey, and a long tramp of nine miles from the

station. He walked straight to the partly-open iron gate, without

pausing to seek information from a homeward-bound ploughman, the only

being whom he met upon the road. He knew he had reached the Strath. He

felt that he had known the place all his life. To one born and brought

up in the metropolis, to struggle for daily bread, it was a joy to see

that wilderness of flowers, and to breathe the heavy perfume wafted

across the grass. The weary man pushed at the gate and passed in.

Great stagbeetles were droning across the bushes. He removed his hat

reverently, and waded through the tall herbage towards the house.

His eyes were heavy, as though with sleep, when he reached the door

and rapped upon it, gently at first, then loudly, and finally with an

energy akin to fury.

He had no idea how long an interval elapsed, before an old woman

shuffled across the hall, and held up a sharp white face to hear what

he had to say. She was short-sighted, deaf, and asthmatic, incapable

of deep feeling, untroubled by emotions. This poor creature had been

on the eve of being cast out “broke” from the cottage home of her

relatives; and the rector, hearing of it by chance, had rescued her

for a time, and secured her poor services for the owner of the Strath.

The influence of the house failed with her, perhaps because there was

in her so little that was capable of responding to its dramatic power.

“Mr. Conway,” she whined sadly. “He is walking in the orchard.”

Drayton recrossed the weedy moat and walked away, plucking flowers as

he went, pushing them into his button-holes, the brim of his hat,

behind his ears, and even into his hair; and when they fell replacing

them with others.

A ragged hedge appeared before him, and beyond were apple and pear

trees with sparse foliage fluttering and whispering above mossy

trunks. Hearing a human voice, Drayton peered through a gap to behold

the man whom he had come so far to seek, walking through the long

grass among the drooping branches, reading aloud from a book, and

smiling as he read. Pausing close beside the hedge which concealed

Drayton from his view he recited thoughtfully:

“I profess I know not what to think, but still there are some scruples

remaining with me. Is it not certain I see things at a distance? Do we

not perceive the stars and moon, for example, to be a great way off?

Is not this, I say, manifest to the senses?”

“It is manifest,” muttered Drayton, as he tumbled stupidly through the

hedge.

Not a sign of surprise crossed Conway’s white face, when the

apparition fantastically dressed with flowers stood by him in the

fading light. He continued his even paces, after motioning to the

visitor to keep step at his side; and when Drayton obeyed the two men

walked on through the orchard to the music of the evening, regarding

one another, if they considered the matter at all, as spiritual beings

unnecessarily encumbered with flesh.

“Tell me, my friend,” said the late debauchee, who in his former state

had hated the sight of books and the thought of philosophy, “what was

the cause that impelled the rustic mentioned by Horace to lie on the

bank of the stream, waiting until the waters should pass? Have we

there ignorance in its most inexplicable form, or a super-normal

belief in the wonder working power of faith?”

“Or a passionate longing for a revolution of nature’s laws,” Drayton

added in the same gentle manner. “So often had he watched the flow of

the stream that the sight may have wearied him. His wish might have

suggested a half-belief that the source had failed, that the waters

were actually flowing away, that any moment might witness their final

exhaustion. Perhaps again, in monstrous arrogance, the fool believed

that he stood beyond the law and at his word the waters would be

stayed.”

“When the brain has been wrought upon by insanity the sufferer will

lift himself to the plane of godship,” Conway mused, drawing down a

mossy branch and gazing thoughtfully at the little emerald apples.

“But our author assumes that his hero is sane.”

“Yet we are unable to deduce sanity from his actions,” Drayton argued.

“There are limits to the imaginings of ignorance. The most insensate

mortal knows that the apple, if detached from the bough, will fall to

the ground. The observation of countless generations of ancestors has

imbued him with so much knowledge. Instinct alone should advise him

that the river must flow continually.”

“I acknowledge it,” Conway murmured. “The sanest philosopher is also

the humblest. He who loses his reason holds up giants and examines

them through a microscope.”

They continued to pace the orchard through the thickening air; and

Conway still felt no astonishment at finding Drayton by his side,

attired in a suit of his own clothes. As for the latter he had

certainly some dim remembrance of a visit to a pawn-shop, of a

landlord waiting for the overdue rent, and of a back attic in a noisy

street; but such matters were very distant and indistinct. Had he been

told he had pawned the masks a decade ago, or even assured he had not

pledged them at all, he would have assented.

“Is this happiness?” he inquired of his companion.

“Wonderful happiness,” Conway answered. “I sleep much. My head aches a

little, but it is no pain. It is a gentle heaviness, which does not

cloud my vision. When I am awake I read. After supper I will read to

you. The house is full of books.”

“Do you hear voices?”

Conway shook his head with a sleepy smile.

“It is always peaceful here.”

“To-morrow I shall write,” went on the uneducated man confidently.

They went by slow periods to the house.

The deaf old woman had no culinary skill, therefore the meal awaiting

them was of the plainest--thin soup, a piece of mutton, a milk

pudding, and a little fruit. Both men were silent, Conway reading from

a book beside his plate, Drayton already absorbed upon the first act

of a play which he intended to begin at once. When his host rose he

also pushed back his chair, and they stood gazing at one another

foolishly, until Conway pointed towards the flight of stairs. Side by

side they crept up into the darkness.

Passing along the passage they entered a windowless room cumbered with

much furniture and mouldy books; a great bed, heavily draped, occupied

the centre; the carpet had been eaten away, and the rotten planks

crumbled beneath their tread; a sofa and two chairs occupied spaces at

the foot of the bed, and between the chairs stood a marble table, and

upon the table two candles in bronze candlesticks, which when lighted

revealed also a manuscript book in shagreen covers and a floriated

cross. On one arm of this cross some long vanished hand had scratched

the name of Winifred; on the other Geoffrey in similarly tremulous

characters.

Drayton seated himself upon the sofa, and drawing the heavy draperies

apart admitted light across the bed. There was nothing to be seen,

except a mass of tumbled garments, and a black heap which might once

have been a wreath of flowers.

There came a scurrying of rats from beyond the wainscoting, and after

that silence.

“What room is this?” asked Drayton, as he permitted the damp curtains

to fall and close.

“The bedroom of Winifred Hooper,” Conway replied, without raising his

eyes from a closely written page, dated along the margin January 14th,

1742. The writing was fine, and perfectly distinct, sloping from left

to right, blurred occasionally by the damps of time, or perhaps by

tears from the writer’s eyes. The master of the house snuffed the

candles, and said:

“I found this book to-day, in that cupboard beside the fireplace. It

is the journal of one who formerly lived in this house. I will read

you a few pages, and if you grow weary, or desire to sleep, put up

your hand and I will cease.”

Drayton was huddled at the end of the sofa, his arms folded tightly

across his breast, his eyes fixed upon the cross. He made a motion of

assent, and straightway the host began to read:

“I write to you, my Geoffrey, although I know you may never see these

lines, therefore I will not commence with Beloved, or My Love. Such

words spring warmly from my heart, but lie as cold as snow upon these

pages. Yet I write them. ’Tis but a little happiness. I am alone in

the wind. It is so cold a wind. It howls round the house, and enters

this room, to make my candle flicker. Snow has been falling all the

day, and the garden lies buried, and the great tombs in the churchyard

are covered with white sheets. The dead shall sleep to-night more

warmly than I. My father is playing chess with Mr. Blair, the rector

of Thorlund, in the saloon. At the end of their game a summons will

come for me, and I must go down and sing. They say my voice is

beautiful, but that is because I sing to you, and sometimes you seem

so near that tears will come into my eyes, and my voice will tell

again what it has already told, and would so gladly tell again, until

I hear the drunken parson thumping his great shoes upon the floor, and

shouting, ‘My God! She sings like Farinelli.’

“Let me tell you how I have passed this day. In the morning I walked

out. It was so still, and winter fog was lying along the valley. I

heard the horses stamping in the stable, and saw the white mist

steaming off the moat, while I scattered bread for my hungry sparrows.

(Pardon this careful account of my trivial actions, Geoffrey. I could

not write if I did not hope that Providence might place this little

book into your hands some day, perhaps when you are wedded, and I am

in the vault. You will not be false to your wife if you kiss this

page, because my hand has rested for a cold hour upon it.) Then I

walked into the plantation, and beneath the bushes were snowdrops, so

pale and white. They seemed to be shivering and to say, ‘Why does the

sun not shine?’ But I knew that it was I who shivered, because the

snow flowers are children of the winter, and I am made for the

bluebell and the rose. Do you, I wonder, sometimes recall to mind that

daffodil I plucked and gave to you last spring? I planted a chestnut

beside the bulb, and the tiny tree grows strongly and the daffodil

will come up again this spring in just the same spot, and will bear a

bloom like that I gave to you, but you will not be here to take it

from my hand.

“That same day, while walking with me through the plantation, you

stepped upon and crushed a crocus. After you had gone, I went back for

the bulb, and planted it in a box which stands beside me now. The

divided bulb has sent up two little spikes of bloom, but one is very

much stronger than the other. The weak one is mine, the strong is

yours. Mine will flower last and fade first. I cannot water mine

without watering yours, or I would be selfish and make the spears of

equal strength.

“During the afternoon I walked to Queensmore to visit my uncle the

vicar, a man I cannot love, because he is so hard, and I fear a miser

also. The wheels of the coaches had beaten down the snow, but it was

slippery to walk, and once I went down. Had you been there you would

have taken me up, and carried me against my will--so I would have

declared--down Stone Hill, as you carried me once when my foot gave me

pain from the sign-post to the village stocks. A coach passed me, the

guard blowing upon his horn as though to warm himself, the passengers

very cold and miserable, the poor horses sadly weary. A woman in the

basket called, ‘Good-luck, pretty dear,’ and I started when I

understood the good wish was intended for me. It cheered me on my

lonely walk. I am sure the sharp wind had put colour into my face and

brightened my eyes. Perhaps I was pretty then. But I am white again

now, and the mirror opposite tells me that my prettiness was borrowed

after all. It was only for the hour. And, Geoffrey, you were not there

to see it.

“The bushes are covered with berries this winter, and I am glad to

know that my singing-birds will not starve. But I have found some

stiff little bodies upon the road. There is miseltoe in our orchard,

but none has been brought into the house. On Christmas night my father

was out late, and when he returned drank deep, and would have beaten

me, for no fault whatsoever save that I had seen him come home, had I

not run from him and hidden in the lumber-room. No Yule log burnt in

this house; no hackin, nor turkey, nor plum-porridge was served at our

table; the village mummers did not enter this garden; and when I heard

the bells a-ringing I shut myself in my room and tried to be brave. I

had seen woodmen hauling the Yule log merrily towards Kingsmore, and

Mr. Price himself was sitting atop, with a great branch of holly in

his hand, singing a carol with all his might. They are merry folk at

Kingsmore. I could hear their drums and fifes on Christmas Eve, and

Deborah tells me the whole company gambolled and danced all night, and

their boar’s head was one of the largest seen, and their masque the

most diverting, and their ale the finest ever brewed. Happy that ’tis

given to some to spend their lives in giving pleasure to their

fellow-men. Deborah tells me also, or will whisper it rather, how that

she heard the phantom bells in the long pasture between here and

Queensmore.

“But, Geoffrey, I wander. Would you desire to hear of my uncle, whom I

found this afternoon in his study, sitting without a fire, a red cloak

round him, and stiff white gloves upon his hands? I think you would

rather I wrote about myself. I will promise you I am no bigger than

when you saw me last, and then you thought me, I fear, somewhat too

small a person to contain a heart so big with love. But there, wise

sweetheart, you were deceived. My face has not greatly changed. My

eyes are just as blue, but as they look back at me from the mirror

they do not smile. I would not have them try, because happiness cannot

cannot be forced. I see I have written the word cannot twice. I have a

little scar upon my wrist, which was not there when you departed.

Shall I tell you how it came? But, no! I would not have you think me

impatient. I am like the willow tree beside the stream, which yields

to every blast, and rises forgetful of the few weak leaves that the

wind has taken away.

“I have been to the window in the passage. The snow is deep and

smooth, and all the world is silent. What a pitiless thing is this

frost, and yet how kindly does it work! It soothes the unprotected

into sleep, and draws life away, so painlessly, so gently. How

different from cruel man or beast. Yesterday I discovered my cat

playing with a poor mouse. I took the little thing from her, but alas,

it shivered once and died in my hand. I could have cried for it. I

knew!

“My candle is burning out. I would gladly seek warmth in my bed, but

dare not while the noise below continues. Where are you, Geoffrey? Oh,

my love, I know you will play the man amid the wicked society of our

time. I pray you shun the court, the painted faces, the cringing

favourites, shun also the gaming-house, and the cockpit. Nay, I mean

no harm. My father is shouting for me upon the stairs. Ah, Geoffrey!

Come again.”