spirit.
"I am sorry I have bothered you," she said as she went.
As the door closed behind her, Mr. Rattar took out his handkerchief and
wiped his brow and his neck. And then he fell to work again upon the
recent records of the firm. Yet, absorbed though he seemed, whenever a
door opened or shut sharply or a step sounded distinctly outside his
room, he would look up quickly and listen, or that expression would come
into his eye which both Mary MacLean and Mr. Ison had described as the
look of one who was watched.
VI
AT NIGHT
When Simon Rattar came to his present villa, he brought from his old
house in the middle of the town (which had been his father's before him)
a vast accumulation of old books and old papers. Being a man who never
threw away an opportunity or anything else, and also a person of the
utmost tidyness, he compromised by keeping this litter in the spare
rooms at the top of the house. In fact Simon was rather pleased at
discovering this use for his superfluous apartments, for he hated
wasting anything.
On this same morning, just before he started for his office, he had
again called his housemaid and given her particular injunctions that
these rooms were not to be disturbed during the day. He added that this
was essential because he expected a gentleman that evening who would be
going through some of the old papers with him.
Perhaps it was the vague feeling of disquiet which possessed Mary
MacLean this morning that made his injunction seem a little curious.
She had been with the master three years and never presumed or dreamt
of presuming to touch his papers. He might have known that, thought
she, without having to tell her not to. Indeed, she felt a little
aggrieved at the command, and in the course of the morning she made a
discovery that seemed to her a further reflection on her discretion.
When she came to dust the passage in which these rooms opened her eye
was at once caught by a sheet of white paper pinned to each of the three
doors. On each of these sheets was written in her master's hand the
words "This room not to be entered. Papers to be undisturbed." The
result was a warning to those who take superfluous precautions. Under
ordinary circumstances Mary would never have thought of touching the
handles of those doors. Now, she looked at them for a few moments and
then tried the handle nearest to her. The door was locked. She tried the
second and the third, and they stood locked too. And the three keys had
all been removed.
"To think of the master locking the doors!" said she to herself after
failing at each in turn. "As if I'd have tried to open them!"
That top storey was of the semi-attic kind, with roofs that sloped
and a sky-light in one of them and the slates close overhead. It was
a grey windy morning, and as she stood there, alone in that large
house save for the cook far away in the kitchen, with a loose slate
rattling in the gusts, and a glimpse of clouds driving over the
sky-light, she began all at once to feel uncomfortable. Those locked
doors were uncanny--something was not as it should be; there was a
sinister moan in the wind; the slate did not rattle quite like an
ordinary slate. Tales of her childhood, tales from the superstitious
western islands, rushed into her mind. And then, all at once, she
heard another sound. She heard it but for one instant, and then with
a pale face she fled downstairs and stood for a space in the hall
trembling and wondering.
She wondered first whether the sound had really come from behind the
locked doors, and whether it actually was some one stealthily moving.
She wondered next whether she could bring herself to confide in cook
and stand Janet's cheerful scorn. She ended by saying not a word, and
waiting to see what happened when the master came home.
He returned as usual in time for a cup of tea. It was pretty dark by
then and Mary was upstairs lighting the gas (but she did not venture up
to the top floor). She heard Mr. Rattar come into the hall, and then,
quite distinctly this time, she heard overhead a dull sound, a kind of
gentle thud. The next moment she heard the master running upstairs, and
when he was safely past she ran even more swiftly down and burst into
the kitchen.
"There's something in yon top rooms!" she panted.
"There's something in your top storey!" snapped cook; and poor Mary said
no more.
When she brought his tea in to Mr. Rattar, she seemed to read in his
first glance at her the same expression that had disturbed her in the
morning, and yet the next moment he was speaking in his ordinary grumpy,
laconic way.
"Have you noticed rats in the house?" he asked.
"Rats, sir!" she exclaimed. "Oh, no, sir, I don't think there are any
rats."
"I saw one just now," he said. "If we see it again we must get some rat
poison."
So it had only been a rat! Mary felt vastly relieved; and yet not
altogether easy. One could not venture to doubt the master, but it was
a queer-like sound for a rat to make.
Mr. Rattar had brought back a great many papers to-day, and sat
engrossed in them till dinner. After dinner he fell to work again, and
then about nine o'clock he rang for her and said:
"The gentleman I expect this evening will probably be late in coming.
Don't sit up. I'll hear him and let him in myself. We shall be working
late and I shall be going upstairs about those papers. If you hear
anybody moving about, it will only be this gentleman and myself."
This was rather a long speech for silent Simon, and Mary thought it
considerate of him to explain any nocturnal sounds beforehand; unusually
considerate, in fact, for he seldom went out of his way to explain
things. And yet those few minutes in his presence made her uncomfortable
afresh. She could not keep her eyes away from that red cut on his chin.
It made him seem odd-like, she thought. And then as she passed through
the hall she heard faintly from the upper regions that slate rattling
again. At least it was either the slate or--she recalled a story of her
childhood, and hurried on to the kitchen.
She and the cook shared the same bedroom. It was fairly large with two
beds in it, and along with the kitchen and other back premises it was
shut off from the front part of the house by a door at the end of the
hall. Cook was asleep within ten minutes. Mary could hear her heavy
breathing above the incessant droning and whistling of the wind, and she
envied her with all her Highland heart. In her own glen people would
have understood how she felt, but here she dared not confess lest she
were laughed at. It was such a vague and nameless feeling, a sixth sense
warning her that all was not well; that _something_ was in the air. The
longer she lay awake the more certain she grew that evil was afoot; and
yet what could be its shape? Everything in that quiet and respectable
household was going on exactly as usual; everything that any one else
would have considered material. The little things she had noticed would
be considered absurd trifles by the sensible. She knew that as well as
they.
She thought she had been in bed about an hour, though the time passed so
slowly that it might have been less, when she heard, faintly and gently,
but quite distinctly, the door from the hall into the back premises
being opened. It seemed to be held open for nearly a minute, as though
some one were standing there listening. She moved a little and the bed
creaked; and then, as gently as it had been opened, the door was closed
again.
Had the intruder come through or gone away? And could it only be
the master, doing this curious thing, or was it some one--or
something--else? Dreadful minutes passed, but there was not a sound of
any one moving in the back passage, or the kitchen, and then in the
distance she could hear the grating noise of the front door being opened
and the rush of wind that accompanied it. It was closed sharply in a
moment and she could catch the sound of steps in the hall and the
master's voice making some remark. Another voice replied, gruff and
muffled and indistinct, and then again the master spoke. Evidently the
late caller had arrived, and a moment later she heard the library door
shut, and it was plain that he and Mr. Rattar were closeted there.
They seemed to remain in the library about a quarter of an hour before
the door opened again, and in a moment the stairs were creaking faintly.
Evidently one or both were going up for the old papers.
All this was exactly what she had been led to expect, and ought to
have reassured her, yet, for no reason at all, the conviction remained
as intense and disturbing as ever, that something unspeakable was
happening in this respectable house. The minutes dragged by till quite
half an hour must have passed, and then she heard the steps descending.
They came down very slowly this time, and very heavily. The obvious
explanation was that they were bringing down one of those boxes filled
with dusty papers which she had often seen in the closed rooms; yet
though Mary knew perfectly that this was the common sense of the matter,
a feeling of horror increased till she could scarcely refrain from
crying out. If cook had not such a quick temper and such a healthy
contempt for this kind of fancy, she would have rushed across to her
bed; but as it was, she simply lay and trembled.
The steps sounded still heavy but more muffled on the hall carpet,
though whether they were the steps of one man or two she could not feel
sure. And then she heard the front door open again and then close; so
that it seemed plain that the visitor had taken the box with him and
gone away. And with this departure came a sense of relief, as devoid of
rational foundation as the sense of horror before. She felt at last that
if she could only hear the master going upstairs to bed, she might go to
sleep.
But though she listened hard as she lay there in the oppressive dark,
she heard not another sound so long as she kept awake, and that was for
some time, she thought. She did get off at last and had been asleep she
knew not how long when she awoke drowsily with a confused impression
that the front door had been shut again. How late it was she could but
guess--about three or four in the morning her instinct told her. But
then came sleep again and in the morning the last part of her
recollections was a little uncertain.
At breakfast the master was as silently formidable as ever and he never
said a word about his visitor. When Mary went to the top floor later the
papers were off the doors and the keys replaced.
VII
THE DRIVE HOME
Under the grey autumnal sky Miss Cicely Farmond drove out of the town
wrapped in Ned Cromarty's overcoat. He assured her he never felt cold,
and as she glanced a little shyly up at the strapping figure by her
side, she said to herself that he certainly was the toughest looking man
of her acquaintance, and she felt a little less contrition for the loan.
She was an independent young lady and from no one else would she have
accepted such a favour, but the laird of Stanesland had such an off-hand
authoritative way with him that, somewhat to her own surprise, she had
protested--and submitted.
The trap was a high dog cart and the mare a flier.
"What a splendid horse!" she exclaimed as they spun up the first hill.
"Isn't she?" said Ned. "And she can go all the way like this, too."
Cicely was therefore a little surprised when at the next hill this flier
was brought to a walk.
"I thought we were going all the way like that!" she laughed.
Ned glanced down at her.
"Are you in a hurry?" he enquired.
"Not particularly," she admitted.
"No more am I," said he, and this time he smiled down at her in a very
friendly way.
So far they had talked casually on any indifferent subject that came to
hand, but now his manner grew a little more intimate.
"Are you going to stay on with the Cromartys long?" he asked.
"I am wondering myself," she confessed.
"I hope you will," he said bluntly.
"It is very kind of you to say so," she said smiling at him a little
shyly.
"I mean it. The fact is, Miss Farmond, you are a bit of a treat."
The quaintness of the phrase was irresistible and she laughed outright.
"Am I?"
"It's a fact," said he, "you see I live an odd lonely kind of life here,
and for most of my career I've lived an odd lonely kind of life too, so
far as girls were concerned. It may sound rum to you to hear a backwood
hunks of my time of life confessing to finding a girl of your age a bit
of a treat, but it's a fact."
"Yes," she said. "I should have thought I must seem rather young and
foolish."
"Lord, I don't mean that!" he exclaimed. "I mean that _I_ must seem a
pretty uninteresting bit of elderly shoe-leather."
"Uninteresting? Oh no!" she cried in protest, and then checked herself
and her colour rose a little.
He smiled humorously.
"I can't see you out of this glass eye unless I turn round, so whether
you're pulling my leg or not I don't know, but I was just saying to old
Simon that the only kind of lady likely to take an interest in me was a
female collector of antique curiosities, and you don't seem that sort,
Miss Farmond."
She said nothing for a moment, and then asked:
"Were you discussing ladies then with Mr. Rattar?"
He also paused for a moment before replying.
"Incidentally in the course of a gossip, as the old chap hadn't got my
business ready for me. By the way, did you get much change out of him?"
She shook her head a little mournfully.
"Nothing at all. He just asked questions instead of answering them."
"So he did with me! Confound the man. I fancy he has made too much money
and is beginning to take it easy. That's one advantage of not being too
rich, Miss Farmond; it keeps you from waxing fat."
"I'm not likely to wax fat then!" she laughed, and yet it was not quite
a cheerful laugh.
He turned quickly and looked at her sympathetically.
"That your trouble?" he enquired in his outspoken way.
Cicely was not by way of giving her confidences easily, but this
straight-forward, friendly attack penetrated her reserve.
"It makes one so dependent," she said, her voice even lower than usual.
"That must be the devil," he admitted.
"It is!" said she.
He whipped up the mare and ruminated in silence. Then he remarked:
"I'm just wondering."
Cicely began to smile.
"Wondering what?"
"What the devil there can be that isn't utterly uninteresting about
me--assuming you weren't pulling my leg."
"Oh," she said, "no man can be uninteresting who has seen as much and
done as much as you have."
"The Lord keep you of that opinion!" he said, half humorously, but only
half, it seemed. "It's true I've knocked about and been knocked about,
but I'd have thought you'd have judged more by results."
She laughed a little low laugh.
"Do you think yourself the results are very bad?"
"Judging by the mirror, beastly! Judging by other standards--well, one
can't see one's self in one's full naked horror, thank Heaven for it
too! But I'm not well read, and I'm not--but what's the good in telling
you? You're clever enough to see for yourself."
For a man who had no intention of paying compliments, Ned Cromarty had
a singular gift for administering the pleasantest--because it was so
evidently the most genuine--form of flattery. In fact, had he but known
it, he was a universal favourite with women, whenever he happened to
meet them; only he had not the least suspicion of the fact--which made
him all the more favoured.
"I don't know very many men," said Cicely, with her serious expression
and a conscientious air, "and so perhaps I am not a good judge, but
certainly you seem to me quite unlike all the others."
"I told you," he laughed, "that the female would have to be a bit of a
collector."
"Oh," she cried, quite serious still, "I don't mean that in the least. I
don't like freaks a bit myself. I only mean--well, people do differ in
character and experience, don't they?"
"I guess you're pretty wise," said he simply. "And I'm sized up right
enough. However, the trouble at present is this blamed mare goes too
fast!"
On their left, the chimneys and roof of a large mansion showed through
the surrounding trees. In this wind-swept seaboard country, its acres of
plantation were a conspicuous landmark and marked it as the seat of some
outstanding local magnate. These trees were carried down to the road in
a narrow belt enclosing an avenue that ended in a lodge and gates. At
the same time that the lodge came into view round a bend in the road, a
man on a bicycle appeared ahead of them, going in the same direction,
and bent over his handle-bars against the wind.
"Hullo, that's surely Malcolm Cromarty!" said Ned.
"So it is!" she exclaimed, and there was a note of surprise in her
voice. "I wonder where he has been."
The cyclist dismounted at the lodge gates a few moments before the trap
pulled up there too, and the young man turned and greeted them. Or
rather he greeted Miss Farmond, for his smile was clearly aimed at her
alone.
"Hullo! Where have you been?" he cried.
"Where have you?" she retorted as she jumped out and let him help her
off with the driving coat.
They made a remarkably good-looking young couple standing together there
on the road and their manner to one another was evidently that of two
people who knew each other well. Sitting on his high driving seat, Ned
Cromarty turned his head well round so as to bring his sound eye to bear
and looked at them in silence. When she handed him his coat and thanked
him afresh, he merely laughed, told her, in his outspoken way, that all
the fun had been his, and whipped up his mare.
"That's more the sort of fellow!" he said to himself gloomily, and for a
little the thought seemed to keep him depressed. And then as he let the
recollections of their drive have their own way undisturbed, he began to
smile again, and kept smiling most of the way home.
The road drew ever nearer to the sea, trees and hedgerows grew even
rarer and more stunted, and then he was driving through a patch of
planting hardly higher than a shrubbery up to an ancient building on the
very brink of the cliffs. The sea crashed white below and stretched grey
and cold to the horizon, the wind whistled round the battlements and
sighed through the stunted trees, and Ned (who had been too absorbed to
remember his coat) slapped his arms and stamped his feet as he descended
before a nail-studded front door with a battered coat of arms above it.
"Lord, what a place!" he said to himself, half critically, half
affectionately.
The old castle of Stanesland was but a small house as castles, or even
mansions, go, almost devoid of architectural ornament and evidently
built in a sterner age simply for security, and but little embellished
by the taste of more degenerate times. As a specimen of a small early
15th Century castle it was excellent; as a home it was inconvenience
incarnate. How so many draughts found their way through such thick walls
was a perennial mystery, and how to convey dishes from the kitchen to
the dining room without their getting cold an almost insoluble problem.
The laird and his sister sat down to lunch and in about ten minutes Miss
Cromarty remarked,
"So you drove Cicely Farmond home?"
Her brother nodded. He had mentioned the fact as soon as he came in, and
rather wondered why she referred to it again.
Miss Cromarty smiled her own peculiar shrewd worldly little smile, and
said:
"You are very silent, Ned."
Lilian Cromarty was a few years older than her brother; though one
would hardly have guessed it. Her trim figure, bright eyes, vivacity
of expression when she chose to be vivacious, and quick movements
might have belonged to a woman twenty years younger. She had never
been pretty, but she was always perfectly dressed and her smile could
be anything she chose to make it. Until her youngest brother came into
the property, the place had been let and she had lived with her friends
and relations. She had had a good time, she always frankly confessed,
but as frankly admitted that it was a relief to settle down at last.
"I was thinking," said her brother.
"About Cicely?" she asked in her frankly audacious way.
He opened his eyes for a moment and then laughed.
"You needn't guess again, Lilian," he admitted.
"Funny little thing," she observed.
"Funny?" he repeated, and his tone brought an almost imperceptible
change of expression into his sister's eye.
"Oh," she said as though throwing the subject aside, "she is nice and
quite pretty, but very young, and not very sophisticated; is she?
However, I should think she would be a great success as a man's girl.
That low voice and those eyes of hers are very effective. Pass me the
salt, Ned."
Ned looked at her in silence, and then over her shoulder out through the
square window set in the vast thickness of the wall, to the grey horizon
line.
"I guess you've recommended me to marry once or twice, Lilian," he
observed.
"Don't 'guess' please!" she laughed, "or I'll stick my bowie knife or
gun or something into you! Yes, I've always advised you to marry--if you
found the right kind of wife."
She took some credit to herself for this disinterested advice, since, if
he took it, the consequences would be decidedly disconcerting to
herself; but she had never pointed out any specific lady yet, or made
any conspicuous effort to find one for him.
"Well----" he began, and then broke off.
"You're not thinking of Cicely, are you?" she asked, still in the same
bright light way, but with a quick searching look at him.
"It seems a bit absurd. I don't imagine for an instant she'd look at
me."
"Wouldn't look----!" she began derisively, and then pulled herself up
very sharply, and altered her tactics on the instant. "She might think
you a little too old for her," she said in a tone of entire agreement
with him.
"And also that I've got one too few eyes, and in fact several other
criticisms."
His sister shrugged her shoulders.
"A girl of that age might think those things," she admitted, "but it
seems to me that the criticism ought to be on the other side. Who is
she?"
Ned looked at her and she broke into a laugh.
"Well," she said, "I suppose we both have a pretty good idea. She's
somebody's something--Alfred Cromarty's, I believe; though of course
her mother may have fibbed, for she doesn't look much like the
Cromartys. Anyhow that pretty well puts her out of the question."
"Why?"
"If you were a mere nobody, it mightn't make so much difference, but
your wife must have some sort of a family behind her. One needn't be
a snob to think that one mother and a guess at the father is hardly
enough!"
"After all, that's up to me. I wouldn't be wanting to marry her
great-mothers, even if she had any."
She shrugged her shoulders again.
"My dear Ned, I'm no prude, but there's always some devilment in the
blood in these cases."
"Rot!" said he.
"Well, rot if you like, but I know more than one instance."
He said nothing for a moment and as he sat in silence, a look of keen
anxiety came into her eye. She hid it instantly and compressed her
lips, and then abruptly her brother said:
"I wonder whether she's at all taken up with Malcolm Cromarty!"
She ceased to meet his eye, and her own became expressionless.
"They have spent some months in the same house. At their age the
consequences seem pretty inevitable."
She had contrived to suggest a little more than she said, and he started
in his chair.
"What do you know?" he demanded.
"Oh, of course, there would be a dreadful row if anything was actually
known abroad. Sir Reginald has probably other ideas for his heir."
"Then there _is_ something between them?"
She nodded, and though she still did not meet his eye, he accepted the
nod with a grim look that passed in a moment into a melancholy laugh.
"Well," he said, rising, "it was a pretty absurd idea anyhow. I'll go
and have a look at myself in the glass and try to see the funny side of
it!"
His sister sat very still after he had left the room.
VIII
SIR REGINALD
Cicely Farmond and Malcolm Cromarty walked up the avenue together, he
pushing his bicycle, she walking by his side with a more than usually
serious expression.
"Then you won't tell me where you've been?" said he.
"You won't tell me where you've been!"
He was silent for a moment and then said confidentially:
"We might as well say we've been somewhere together. I mean, if any one
asks."
"Thank you, I don't need to fib," said she.
"I don't mean I need to. Only----" he seemed to find it difficult to
explain.