THE MORNING CALL
No red light showed itself at Miss Duggan's window that night--though
Cleek sat up until the soft fingers of the dawn were wreathing the sky
with lavender veils and the face of the morning peeped through, like
some goddess stepped down from Olympus to smile upon her lesser fellows.
And it was then, and then only, that he sought his bed and the comfort
of cool sheets at last.
Dollops, knowing his plan, did not disturb him. And so it came about
that the clock upon the mantel had chimed out ten before he opened an
eye and looked about him, sleep still dimming his vision and making the
unfamiliar room doubly strange.
"What the--how the--Gad! if it isn't ten o'clock, and I've been sleeping
like a noodle ever since dawn," he said, springing out of bed and
donning dressing-gown and slippers to have a first glimpse out of the
window at that "fairy sight" which Mr. Fairnish had promised him with
his cup of tea. "Well, she _is_ a beauty and no mistake! Good morning to
you, fair Palace of the Mists. What secrets are locked away in your
breast this morning, I wonder? Well, the night has passed tranquilly
enough to be sure, and that poor girl's terrors are stilled for the
present twelve hours, at any rate. I'll call there after breakfast and
scrape acquaintance with the lot of 'em, and judge if Mr. Robert
Fairnish is as good an observer as he is a talker."
And directly after breakfast that was exactly what he did do. Dollops,
armed with fishing-tackle and rods, received his marching orders in full
sight and sound of the inn's proprietor, knowing full well that within
five minutes of that time all that he had said and done would be ablaze
over the village, if he knew aught of that garrulous tongue of his.
"Be off with you, Dollops, and have a look at the river," said Cleek
from the shelter of the open doorway, as Dollops wended his way slowly
down the path to the wicket-gate which led out on to the road. "And see
what fish be in those waters. And if you don't come home with a
twenty-pounder, you're no angler, my lad!"
Dollops nodded and winked.
"Right you are, sir. As Mr. Asquith says, better 'wait and see.' And if
I don't bring 'ome a twenty-pounder, I'll bring 'ome a twenty-yarder, at
any rate. Fer I'm a fair dabster for eels every time."
"Sounds more like boa constrictors and the jungle than Highland rivers
and modest eels," retorted Cleek, laughing heartily. "And I'm paying a
call at the Castle and making my respects to Miss Duggan. So if I'm not
back for lunch, Dollops, don't fancy dreadful things and imagine I've
been consumed by the ghost-lady who haunts those lovely turrets and
towers, but come home and wait for me."
Dollops stopped in his tracks and sucked in his breath hard, and the
freckled brown of his Cockney countenance took on a queer drabbish
shade. He came back again along the path and stopped in front of his
master, mouth hanging open, eyes wide.
"Ghosts, sir! Did I 'ear you use the word _ghosts_?" he ejaculated with
a perceptible shiver. "Br-r-rh. I doesn't mind dealin' wiv any kind of
_'uman_--but wiv them in'uman species I'm a reg'lar goner! You ain't
arskin' me ter meet the lidy, are yer, sir?"
"Not yet, my boy," returned Cleek, with a laugh and a shake of the head.
"So you needn't worry yourself about that. And if I do ask, you may be
sure I'll be asking nothing that I would not--and will not--partake of
myself. Get along with you, and don't bother your head. When I want you
to call, I'll come, too. You can count upon that."
"Well, so long as I don't 'ave to call alone I doesn't mind so much,"
retorted Dollops. Then, swinging round in his tracks, he went off down
the pathway, whistling that very hackneyed but popular tune, "Pack Up
Your Troubles in Your Ole Kit-Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile!" While
Cleek, watching him for a moment, felt a sudden warmth of feeling
toward the rough-mannered but warm-hearted youth who had followed
him--willy-nilly--ever since they two had met upon that memorable
far-off day when Cleek had made himself responsible for the boy's
safety.
A leisurely cigarette smoked in company with the worthy host, and then
Cleek took up his soft "squash" hat, seized hold of his blackthorn
stick, and with a nod and a smile to Mr. Fairnish, swung out into the
roadway, monocle screwed into left eye, well-cut tweeds setting off the
splendid figure of him, and looking for all the world like the leisured,
perfectly turned-out exquisite who journeys so far out of his beaten
track only in pursuit of a sport which vastly amuses him, and to whom
Bond Street and the very outer edge of the Western Highlands are all one
and the same thing, so long as he can get a day's amusement out of them.
The walk to the Castle was not as long as he expected. It was, in fact,
but a brief fifteen minutes over a rough, hilly road which in parts was
little more than a track, and which swung up and down so unevenly over
the moor that walking was at times difficult. Halfway there, as Cleek
turned the corner of a little ravine and came out upon a full view of
the valley, with the Inn of the Three Fishers to the left of him and
the Castle to the right, he heard the _thud-thud_ of a horse's hoofs,
and in a moment more, drawing up against the bank to allow whoever was
coming to pass, he saw a rider approach from the right and go through a
gate which led apparently to the Castle grounds. As the rider passed,
Cleek stepped out into the path with a sudden impulse and raised his
hat.
"I say," said he in his London drawl, as the rider dismounted and,
removing his hat, stood before him--a fine figure of a man in Scotch
tweeds, measuring a good six-feet-two of staunch muscle and bone, with
the shoulders of a giant and a big-featured, kindly face, and the blue
eyes and high hooked nose of the typical Scotsman; the all-observing eye
of Cleek noticed that one of the stranger's fingers was bandaged, as if
it had recently been cut. Cleek instinctively liked him. "Can you tell
me," he said--"awfully sorry to stop you and all that--but can you
possibly tell me if this is Aygon Castle? Looks like it from the
pictures, b' Jove, but photography's frightfully deceptive--what? Friend
of mine--a Miss Duggan--Miss Maud Duggan, I think the name is--lives
there, doesn't she? I happened to come up here yesterday for the
fishin'--awfully fond of it and that sort of thing--and promised to call
whenever I was out this way. I'm right, am I not?"
"Perfectly right." Cleek liked the deep, ringing voice which answered
him, as he liked the shrewd blue eyes that travelled so rapidly over his
tweeds. Liked, too, the hard, grim mouth which broke into such a
charming smile, transfiguring the whole face as though a light had been
set behind it. "And Miss Duggan does live here. You're keen on fishing,
I take it. Well, so am I. It's a man's sport, and there's few Scotsmen
who don't like it. My name's Tavish--James Tavish--and I'm agent for Sir
Andrew Duggan's estates. We'll possibly meet each other up the river
some time, for I spend most of my spare time there."
"Thanks. I'd like it immensely. Fishin's a lonesome game alone. And
though I've brought my man with me, and he's a dab hand with the tackle,
one gets a bit bored sometimes. I'll probably see you up at the Castle,
Mr. Tavish, and we'll improve our acquaintance. Many thanks for your
courtesy."
So saying, Cleek passed on up the rough road, while his new friend
remounted the little chestnut mare he rode so magnificently, and went
galloping off up the incline, making a fine picture against the rugged
scenery of which he seemed such an inseparable part.
Cleek reached the Castle gates at last, rang the huge bell, and waited
while the lodge-keeper unfastened them for him and inquired his name,
went with him up the long sweep of gravelled driveway with its
bordering of yews and young pine trees lending an air of picturesque
gloom to the place even upon that bright morning. And having reached the
great oaken front door--a monstrous affair scarred by the ruthless hand
of Time as much as by the mailed fists which must have thudded upon it
in far-off days, or by the spears and battle-axes of past Duggans who in
this fashion had left something more definite than a memory for their
ancestors to cherish--pulled the chain of the bell, and waited while the
jangling echoes of its noise died away into silence before his summons
was answered.
At length the door opened. He caught a glimpse of a dim interior, lofty
as a church and dark with the panellings of old oak which flanked it
upon all four sides, and then gave his name to the pompous old butler,
and was taken into a little ante-room redolent of age--that mothy,
curtained odour as of a room but rarely opened and still more rarely
used--and within a moment or two Miss Duggan was standing there before
him.
"Mr. Deland! How good of you to have come so soon--how very good!" she
said warmly, extending a hand to him in greeting. "You must surely stay
and lunch with us, now that you have come all this distance. And I want
you to meet my father." Her voice dropped a tone or two. "Paula is with
him now, going over the housekeeping accounts--it is a daily matter upon
which he is very insistent. Ross is in the laboratory, tinkering over
something to do with the lights, but he'll be out in a minute. I told
him I had met you on the train, and that we had got into conversation
and found we were congenial friends through Ailsa Lorne. You know her
well, don't you, Mr. Deland?"
He smiled, and for a moment his eyes softened.
"Rather well, I fancy, as she has consented some day to throw in her lot
with me and marry me," he returned in a happy, low-pitched voice. "And
that is why any friend of hers, you know, must be a friend of mine as
well. I'd like very much to have a look at the Castle, if I might be so
permitted. Architecture interests me immensely. It's a hobby of mine.
And this is surely one of the grandest old stately homes that Scotland
possesses!"
"Isn't it?--isn't it? I can see you have the love of Home and Race in
you, too, Mr. Deland, just as I have it in me," she responded, with a
little happy sigh. "And if only I had not this other trouble which hangs
over me like the sword of Damocles itself, life would be a very happy
thing, indeed. For when one loves and is loved----" Her voice trailed
off into silence, and she stood a moment looking out of the window, eyes
alight, face aglow.
"Oho!" thought Cleek, with upflung brows. "So Love finds its way even
into these Highland fastnesses. First James Tavish and Lady Paula's
companion (if what Mr. Fairnish said was true), and now Miss Duggan
herself."
"Who is the happy man?" he said smilingly, as she sighed and turned
toward him.
"How did you know there was one?"
"How does any one know that any one loves any one else--when oneself
loves?" he returned enigmatically. "Remember I, too, belong to the happy
band. He lives close here, Miss Duggan?"
"Yes. Only a couple of miles away. But, alas! my father will hear
nothing of him, and has even forbidden him the house."
"And may I ask why?"
"Certainly. Because he is poor. Father's god is Mammon, Mr. Deland. He
knows and acknowledges no other. And Angus Macdonald has received very
little at the hands of that god."
"But a good deal at the hands of the only God that matters, I take it,"
put in Cleek softly, with a smile at her. "Well, they say that Love
laughs at locksmiths, and always finds a way. Time will give you your
chance, Miss Duggan, and you'll have to be brave enough to take it....
There's someone coming, I think."
There _was_ someone coming, for even as Cleek spoke the door swung open
and a tall, gaunt, white-haired old man, with a back like a ramrod and a
face of granite, and with eyes that shone like pin-points of steel in
the smooth pallor of it, came into the room, followed by a dark-eyed,
dark-haired, sallow-complexioned woman with the long nose of the Italian
and the brand of the true coquette stamped all over her.
Cleek recognized them at once. Here were the chief actors in the little
comedy of what was at present a girl's imaginings, and which he
sincerely hoped would never become anything else. What a hard face the
man had! What a trap-like mouth! What a merciless, seeking eye! And the
woman with him--all soft curves and roundness, with those luminous eyes
of southern Italy looking out at him from the frame of her pale,
ivory-tinted face, with already a hint of coquetry in their velvet
depths for any well-dressed, well-apportioned specimen of mankind.
Beside the something rugged and clear-cut in Maud Duggan's
personality--the something Scotch and enduring which is the birthright
of those born beyond the boundary-line of England--this woman's pale
suavity fell into a kittenish foolishness, became instantly trivial and
beyond recognizance.
At sound of their approach Maud Duggan turned hurriedly and waved a hand
toward Cleek.
"Father," said she in her low, level-toned voice, "this is Mr. Deland of
whom I told you last night. Mr. Deland is engaged to Ailsa Lorne, my old
school friend at the convent in Paris--and he has come down for the
fishing, and did me the honour to call upon me the very first thing. I
have asked him to stay and lunch with us."
Sir Andrew bowed stiffly and then extended a blue-veined and tremulous
hand. Cleek took it and bent over it like a courtier.
"Very pleased indeed to see you, Mr. Deland," said Sir Andrew, in a
deep, full-throated voice that spoke more of the man he had been than of
the man he was now. "You are welcome to our hospitality now and at any
other time."
"I am deeply grateful, sir, and during my short stay in these parts I
shall hope to make fuller acquaintance of you and your family--your
wife? How do you do, Lady Paula? I am enamoured of your charming
surroundings and your glorious home. May I be permitted to congratulate
you upon both?"
A fleet look flashed from her eyes, a swift warmth of friendship for
this stranger who made her so much _one_ of them who had never yet been
made one by the family themselves.
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" Smooth as velvet her voice, warm, subtle,
alluring as the country that gave her birth. "I love it--_how_ I love
it! Even though I am not of the Scotch blood, yet have I that birthright
of my nation--home-love. Maud, dear, take Mr. Deland round, won't you? I
have still some matters to arrange with your father, so you must do the
honours in my stead. And when Sir Andrew and I have finished with our
little _personal_ matters"--she smiled suddenly, showing a flash of
snowy teeth between the warm red lips which Time had not yet cooled to
the more even tenor of England's blood--"then we will join you upon the
terrace. And be sure and show Mr. Deland the electric-lighting plant,
dear. He will be interested."
Maud Duggan flashed her a look of absolute hatred at this, for she saw
the darkening shade upon her father's face, and noted the sudden
clenching of the hand upon his stick.
"Cursed modernism and all its extravagant ways!" said the old gentleman
in a bitter voice. "Spending that which he should have saved, sir, upon
a ridiculous experiment which has ruined the atmosphere of the place
entirely. Wayward fool!"
"But it has improved your reading faculties, anyhow, Father," put in
Miss Duggan in a quiet, resolute voice. "Paula is not nearly so busy
nowadays, when you can read your own papers----"
"As though I _ever_ wanted to do anything but wait upon him--dear man!"
struck in Lady Paula reproachfully, and with an arch glance at Cleek
which did not go unrewarded. "Your father is not so old a man as to be
in his dotage. And if there _is_ twenty years between us, Maud, it is
hardly kind of you to bring the matter up like this. Perfect love should
have no age nor yet youth. It should be as ageless as Eternity, as
boundless as the sea, as high as Heaven itself.... Are you ready,
Andrew dear?"
She bent toward the flattered and fluttered old man with that something
in her gesture which has been the gift of every woman of her type all
down the long ages since Scylla tempted Ulysses and Charybdis sent his
head whirling with her lure.
Maud Duggan led Cleek from the room at that, and once out of earshot of
this ill-assorted pair, whirled round upon him, a spot of anger showing
in each cheek.
"You see, Mr. Deland, you see?" she rapped out excitedly, "how she
misleads everything we say, and turns it all to her own ends? Oh, how I
hate her--hate her! and have done so ever since she first set foot in
this dear old home of ours. And Father--did you notice how worn and ill
he looks? How his hand shakes so that he cannot steady it? Three months
ago his hand was like a rock; his colour was as healthy as yours or
mine. And yet your Mr. Narkom would say that a woman's intuition leads
to nothing but her own foolish imaginings!"
"Hush, my dear young lady--have a care!" threw in Cleek quickly, at the
sound of footsteps hurrying toward them, his lips tightening in a way
that suggested that he, too, thought there might be "something in it."
"We don't want the whole place to suspect my mission. That is our
secret, if you please. Now, show me the Castle, if you will--and
whatever of interest which you think has bearing upon the case. Where is
Lady Paula's son? Does he live here, or is he away at school just now?"
Miss Duggan shook her head.
"No--Cyril is a delicate boy, and the doctor has advised Father to let
him stay home for a year and just run wild. He is generally with Ross."
"With _Ross_?"
"Yes, the two are sworn friends. Cyril's heart is wrapped up in Ross,
Mr. Deland. He never for one moment suspects what his mother is trying
to do--wrest Ross's inheritance from him so that he, Cyril, should have
it instead. It would break his heart, I think. Wherever Ross is to be
found you may be sure Cyril will be there also."
"Damon and Pythias, eh? Strange that the son loves what the mother
hates, isn't it? I should like to meet this boy."
"You shall--when we reach the laboratory. He's sure to be there helping
Ross. He is like his shadow, that child."
"And he is sixteen, you say?"
"Next October. And a firm believer in our ghost, Mr. Deland."
"Then you have a ghost and all complete?"
"Of course. Hasn't Mr. Fairnish of the Three Fishers told you the story
yet? He is usually to be relied upon to impart every bit of village
gossip within the first five minutes of one's acquaintance!"
Cleek threw back his head and laughed. They had entered a long,
low-ceilinged room, panelled in Spanish leather, with casement windows
which gave upon a little walled-in enclosure surrounded by flowering
shrubs and white-starred syringa-bushes that sent their pungent odour
upon the air in one long waft of perfume.
"He's told me a good deal, it is true, but----What a delightful room! A
library, I take it? And what a curious old instrument that is! I haven't
seen a spinning wheel like that since I was in Wales and one stood in
the corner of the room where I slept at the village inn. A sort of
heirloom, I suppose?"
She nodded, and Cleek crossed over to the thing to examine it, touching
a part here and a part there with reverent fingers.
"Yes, I suppose you _would_ call it that," she responded, crossing over
to him and looking down at the thing in question. "Though, really, why
Father has it here I cannot imagine. Its history is certainly not a
credit to the line. For it belonged to the very girl I was going to tell
you about. It belonged to the Family Ghost. Here is the story. The
villagers believe it to this day, and couldn't be persuaded to enter the
Castle grounds at night upon any pretext whatever. But of course the
educated folk don't. Early in the sixteenth century a wild head of the
Macduggan clan abducted a young--and I imagine beautiful--peasant-girl
when she was sitting at her wheel, spinning, and ran away with
her--wheel and all--and brought her here, so legend says, to this very
room. The girl, whose name, I believe, was Dhurea, or something like
that, stabbed herself with the sharp-pointed spindle of the wheel, and
in doing so laid a curse upon the Macduggan clan. She--she was going to
have a child, Mr. Deland, and as she was dying, she swore that in every
generation a Duggan should die a violent death, and that the sound of
her spinning wheel should predict the moment when death was near."
"Oho!" said Cleek, in two different tones. "That differs a good deal
from the story Mr. Fairnish tells. There was a child, I understood, and
this child was stolen by the grandparents. That's not correct, then?"
"There are various interpretations of the legend. No one knows the
truth--only that she killed herself and cursed the family in that
unpleasant manner."
"And has the curse come true?"
For a moment Miss Duggan hesitated. Then she sent startled eyes up into
his face. There was the look of a dog at bay in them.
"I don't believe the story, Mr. Deland! I don't believe a _word_ of it,
for such things cannot possibly be, in this civilized country," she
answered in a scared tone. "And yet--ever since that day, one at least
of each generation has died unnaturally. And now--in _this_ generation
there is only Father and Ross.... This peasant-girl is supposed to haunt
our dear Castle, and after midnight to stalk the place over, looking for
the man who dishonoured her and who has been dead these many generations
past."
"H'm! I see. And so, naturally, she cannot find him. A weird story, and
more pleasant in the daylight than in the dark. And this is the lady's
spinning wheel, I take it? Your father has it by his writing-table, I
see. Rather in the way, isn't it?"
"It used to stand over there, in the corner, but Paula declared that it
was too dark there, and that it did not show to its full beauty. So she
moved it. Father lets her do whatever she wishes. And of course it does
show better there, by the window, doesn't it? And as it's Father's
_left_ hand that comes beside it, Mr. Deland, I don't really see that it
much matters."
"No, I suppose not.... Hello! we've been a long time here, haven't we?
And I haven't seen the half of the place yet. Isn't that the luncheon
gong? Or is it just your tangy Highland air that makes me hungry enough
to imagine it?"
"Neither," said she, laughing. "That's Rhea's bell. It hangs just under
the bronze statue of Rhea--you remember the one I showed you yesterday
as we came home together?--and it rings upon the entrance of any one
through the great gate. A clumsy contraption, which has never been
altered in all these years."
"But quite useful--with unwanted visitors," he replied, stooping
suddenly and picking up something off the carpet. "Hello, what's this?
Looks like a bit of flexible electric wire. Something of your brother's
hobby, no doubt."
He held it out to her in the open palm of his hand. It was just a little
scrap of crimson-covered flexible wire, and she barely noticed it.
"And ... hello, hello! No electricity used in here, either. I suppose
that's because your father doesn't approve?"
"Yes. Ross wired the room--or had it wired with the aid of an
electrician--and then installed the light. But Father was so angry that
he would rarely ever use it. Sticks to the musty old lamp over there,
for most things."
"And is the room still wired?"
"Yes. There's a wall plug over there by the door. Why, Mr. Deland?"
"Oh, nothing. Then that would account for this fragment of flexible
wire, wouldn't it? H'm. Yes. I see. I see."
But what he saw he did not at that moment mention, and Miss Duggan had
to guess at his meaning.
"But it was done ten days ago-- I must really speak to the servants and
tell them to keep the place cleaner than they do. Fancy leaving odd
pieces about like that!" she ejaculated, sensitive to any suggestion of
poor management upon the part of Castle authorities. But Cleek did not
hear. He was standing over by the wall-plug, looking down at it, and
then kneeling, began to examine it minutely. She watched him in
amazement, unused to his methods.
"Why, Mr. Deland--"
"Oh, just looking at how your brother does his work. Quite a good
workman, isn't he?" said Cleek, rising slowly to his feet, and pocketing
the bit of flexible wire forthwith.
And that was the last word she could get out of him upon the subject.