The master of Heath Hover had just drawn up the blind of his bedroom
window, and was gazing out upon a morning of unrivalled and cloudless
beauty, for the year had grown apace, and now the tender green of the
spring leafage gladdened the eye in every direction. Through the open
window floated the scents of spring--late spring--likewise its sounds,
the hum of winged insects, the cry of coots from up yonder on the pond,
the carolling of innumerable thrushes and the ever welcome call of the
cuckoo. It was a morning on which, all things being even, it was good
to be alive.
Came also to his ears another sound, sweeter than even the sweet sounds
of spring--the sound of girl voices, the high, clear notes of Melian's
voice rising above that of Violet Clinock, who had arrived the evening
before on a few days' visit. Nearer and nearer drew the voices, and
then their owners came in sight, and began leisurely to descend the path
leading from the sluice. A delightful picture they made, in their youth
and freshness--thought the onlooker, whom as yet they had not seen.
They had paused about halfway down, and Melian was descanting volubly on
some favourite subject--and then the said onlooker's face went white and
clammy, and he thought he could hardly keep his footing, for something
bright and shining had caught his glance, and it was in Melian's hand.
The whole outlook seemed to sway and rock before Mervyn's eyes. Was it
real or was he dreaming? This dreadful thing, this hateful thing, held
carelessly in the long white fingers! Why, he would about as soon have
found her caressing a hooded snake. What should he do, what should he
say--and would she unhesitatingly obey him? In the horror of the moment
even the power of speech seemed to fail him. But some sort of an
exclamation must have escaped him, for now they looked up.
"Drop--that--thing--instantly," he managed to jerk out, and his voice
seemed far away and raucous. "Obey me--without--question, Melian."
If ever two startled girls stood staring, it was these two in the middle
of the sluice path. The ghastliness of the face up there at the window,
the fearful, unnatural voice. That her uncle had suddenly gone mad was
the solution which first presented itself to Melian's perplexed mind.
But she obeyed. An immense sigh of relief escaped the onlooker.
"Don't move," he said, "until I come down."
His hands trembled so that he could hardly tie the tasselled cord which
girded his dressing gown, and he almost stumbled down the stairs in his
haste to arrive. Even in that flash of time, he was thinking--What if
they should take advantage of his momentary disappearance from sight to
pick up that thing again? But he must pull himself together, and even
as he emerged he felt partially relieved to notice that they were
standing just as he had seen them last, but staring at him in round-eyed
amazement.
"Why, Uncle Seward, whatever is it? You look as if you had seen all the
ghosts in the world."
"Here, child, show me your hands--quick!"
Still marvelling, she extended them. He seized them in his, and
subjected them to a long, close scrutiny, first with the palms upward,
then all over. The colour returned to his ghastly face as he emitted a
long deep sigh of relief.
"Yours now, Miss Clinock."
Violet extended hers, feeling in secret rather frightened. What strange
mystery was this which had been effective so violently to upset her
ordinarily so equable and self-contained host--this was not her first
visit to Heath Hover. She could not but notice, while the same process
was repeated, that it seemed to be slightly less prolonged in her case
than in that of Melian.
"What does it mean, Mr Mervyn?" she asked.
"Any one would think that that rum little shining thing would bite,"
said Melian, mischievously.
The two pairs of bright eyes, the dark and the blue, brimming with
mischief--eke curiosity--fixed upon his face, served to brace Mervyn.
He was himself again, or very nearly. And then to him came the thought
as to how he should account for his agitation. It had been so palpably
real that he was at his wits' end to think how he should explain it
away; and it must be explained away. Women were gifted with such
singularly clear-sighted instinct--and, worse still, perhaps--with such
a fund of curiosity. A forestalment of this promptly came out.
"But--what _is_ the thing, Uncle Seward?" went on Melian.
He looked at her for a moment, wondering what answer to make.
"Perhaps I was upset about nothing," he said, regaining his equability
with an effort. "The fact is it brought back to my mind a very curious
and uncanny experience--not in this country, but I've been among strange
scenes and people in other parts of the world, you know. There's a
great deal in association of ideas, and there are strange happenings all
the world over, as you two children may--or may not--find out by the
time you get to my time of life. Where did you find--that--by the
way?--No--leave it where it is."
This last quickly, as Melian stooped over the thing as though to pick it
up again.
"Why, just where the path begins to come down from the road," she
answered, wondering.
"On your way _back_?"
The question came out abrupt, staccato. Some of the first agitation
seemed to show itself again. And then, with the affirmative answer,
both girls noticed that he looked greatly relieved.
"Well, I suppose you're both ready for breakfast," he went on in quite a
normal tone. "I'm not, but you're not obliged to wait for me. That
would be too great a tax on your ravening young appetites, wouldn't it?
Eh, Miss Clinock?"
Violet, thus appealed to, laughingly disclaimed impatience on that head,
but Melian thoroughly and emphatically disagreed with her.
"Well, you'd better go and hurry old Judy up," said Mervyn. "I shall
have to go and get dressed first."
But he did not re-enter the house with them, nor, indeed, did he hurry
to re-enter it at all. Both girls were rather silent and wondering, and
in the minds of both was the same thought, though neither cared to voice
it to the other, and the thought was a disquieting one; perhaps to
Melian the more disquieting of the two. For to her clearer insight, and
with the knowledge of her uncle's character, which she had had some
months of opportunity to gain, his explanation of the incident did not
somehow carry conviction. There was more, far more beneath it than a
mere matter of evolved recollection; of that she felt fully convinced.
He was not the stamp of man who would be upset by such, and the
practical side had come out in the very real fear--the agony of fear
almost--which he had manifested over the discovery of that harmless
looking star-shaped trinket. Trinket? Well, that for want of a better
word. The thing, after all, might have been a trade mark of sorts which
had come detached from a biscuit box or a tin of specially boomed
blacking. No. There was more in this than met the eye.
Then she remembered that her uncle had spent his life in strange, out of
the way parts of the world, mostly among strange people. What if there
was nothing accidental about this shining pointed thing being left just
where he could find it. What if it were some sort of a sign, some sort
of a manifesto? What if some danger were overhanging him? And by a
curious back twist in her mind the thought of Helston Varne came back to
her. A tower of strength seemed that thought--and then came that which
seemed to cut under its foundations.
They were both halfway through breakfast by then, when Mervyn entered--
clothed and ready for the day before him. All trace of agitation seemed
to have disappeared. He was even in unusual good spirits.
"By the way," he said, in the course of conversation, which he had
somewhat cleverly led up to, "I suppose you two children are old enough
to know how not to talk. For instance--your find this morning. I
particularly wish no word to be said about it to anybody--anybody. Not
only round here, but anywhere. Perhaps some day--though I don't
absolutely promise that--I may give you an explanation; but only on
condition nothing is said about it now."
Both pairs of eyes sparked up. But Melian's dropped. She could not
take Helston Varne into confidence now.
"Why, Mr Mervyn," answered Violet, readily, "of course we shan't say
anything about it."
"You'll greatly oblige me if you don't," he said, somewhat earnestly.
"The fact is that there are quite enough `old wives' fables' hanging
about this place. We don't want to pile on to them. By the by, there's
another thing, which is perhaps a harder thing to ask. Don't talk it
over with each other--in short, don't _dwell_ upon it. Forget it."
"Aren't you rather asking us impossibilities, dear?" said Melian. "Two
mere women! And our curiosity screwed up to boiling over point."
"Why, it smacks of a magazine yarn," declared Violet. "Never mind, Mr
Mervyn, I'll promise to remember your wishes."
Both fancied he looked relieved, though not entirely at ease.
"That's perfectly all right, then," he returned. "Anybody who was such
a friend to this little one when she was in straits as you were, is safe
on a promise, I'll swear."
"Steady on, Mr Mervyn, and spare my blushes," protested the girl,
looking pleased all the same. "I did no more for Melian than she'd have
done for me, and we people who have to work have to stick by each other
when a pinch comes."
"And very much to the good that is," said Mervyn. "Knocks a lot of the
essentially feminine nonsense out of women and develops the good."
"Well said, Mr Mervyn. That's capital, isn't it, Melian?"
"Not bad," was the reply, with a dash of affectionate impudence
underlying it.
"Not only that, but it was owing to you entirely that I became aware--
almost of the existence, I was going to say--of this child here," he
went on. "That counts on the credit side of obligation."
"Oh, go it, Uncle Seward. Butter seems to be getting cheap," said
Melian, equably. "We are getting more than we can do with, Violet.
Eh--what?"
"Now what would you children like to do with yourselves this morning?"
asked Mervyn, when the laugh had subsided.
"We were going to show Violet how to catch some fish. Old Joe has been
digging out worms, and he's coming with us to bait. You know, Violet,
the part I can't stick about this bait fishing is the worm part of it,
so I take Joe to do that, and look the other way while he does it.
There are some good perch in Plane Pond, but the big ones will hardly
ever bite. The smaller ones you can get plenty of, but the pounders
won't come to the scratch, like the `oldest oyster' in the Walrus and
the Carpenter."
"All right, then," said her uncle. "You two will be quite happy on your
own, and I've got some letters to write. I haven't often, which is one
of the compensating advantages of being a lonely man. So shout up Joe
when you want him."
He saw them start off presently; bright, happy, laughing. He did not go
with them as far as the boat house, which nestled in the thick, wooded
bank of the great pond near the further end of the same. John Seward
Mervyn had a good deal on his mind that radiant cloudless morning of
late spring, while all the woods were ringing with birdsong, and the
sweet, young, clear voices of his niece and guest died fainter and
fainter away among the solemn tree boles.
Two cyclists skimmed along the sluice-road, taking the next steep
acclivity with all the rush they could get out of their headlong free
wheel down the steeper, and somewhat dangerously winding, hill before.
They looked to the right at the pond, and to the left at Heath Hover.
One seemed half inclined to stop and dismount to take in the picturesque
effect of it, but did not. Then a waggon loaded up with floury
millsacks rumbled by, and then another cyclist, a motor one this time,
and the spitting throb of his abominable engine and the reek of petrol
seemed to hang on the glorious, radiant, spring air like a corroding
cloud, long after their producer was out of sight. But there seemed an
unusual amount of traffic on that not much used road to-day, thought
Mervyn--and then he fell to wondering what if the shine of that
mysterious disc deposited at the top of the sluice path, had caught the
eye of any of these? Well, that was not his affair, he thought, grimly,
but--something more might have been heard of it. And the thought
brought back something of that awful heart-numbed blood-freezing moment,
when he had descried Melian coming down the path, holding that symbol in
her bare hand.
How had it got there--there where she had found it? _It_? Yes, but--
had _it_? To set this doubt at rest--not much "rest" about it, he told
himself with a mirthless ironical laugh--he had been glad to see the
last of these bright young presences for an hour or two. Old Judy he
could hear now clattering about with pots and pans and firestoking
implements in the kitchen. He was entirely alone--at last.
He went upstairs. The landings, uneven and cranky with age, gave and
creaked beneath his tread. The long narrow passage which led to the
disused part of the house was darkened with dust and cobwebs on the
neglected casements, and as he went along, he was drawing on that same
old pair of gloves. He passed several doors, then turned the handle of
one. It opened into a mouldy room, partly stacked with ancient and
worm-eaten furniture. He moved aside an old sideboard, which seemed to
manifest an inclination to fall to pieces in the process. Between it
and the wall something gleamed at him, something white and shining. He
bent down as though to touch it, then changed his mind.
"Good! That's there," he said to himself. "Now for the other, if _it_
is there?"
He went out again and shut the door, removing the gloves as he threaded
the passage; and putting them in his pocket, he went to the front door
and out. The fresh open air--yes, that was life--the pure sweet breath
of wood and water, the joyous song of birds. Afar down the long pond,
came another joyous sound, that of rippling laughter. It came from the
boat, wafted over the water--wondrous sound conductor--and although
nearly half a mile away he could distinguish Melian's clear note from
that of her friend. Lightheartedness, silvery lightheadedness, running
side by side, parallel with tragedy! A strange world! Then he dived
into a close woodland path which led down at a steep angle below the
house.
Soon he stopped, listening--looked around without seeming to do either.
A runnel of water trickled down a stony course, partly under the stones;
in hot weather it was dry. He moved aside two stones, casually as
though thinking of something else. In the solemn silence of the gnarled
oak-wood he could see nobody, but it did not follow that nobody could
see him.
But--_something_ could--_something_ did. The round, white, eye-like
disc, with its five star points, stared up at him--stared with baleful--
almost human, or rather demoniacal glance, from its damp bed, where he
himself had placed it months before. It should have been red with
rust--yet it was not. This too struck him, and he began to feel himself
hopelessly enmeshed. That other, its counterpart, who had placed it
there? He had been cherishing a faint and utterly unreasonable thought
that in a moment of aberration, he himself might have removed it from
the original hiding place to which he had consigned it during Helston
Varne's temporary imprisonment. But no. There was the other, in the
disused part of his house. He had just put it there, and he had just
left it there. He could not get away from that.
The beauties of the glorious woodland were around him as he retraced his
steps, the networking of the sunlight through the tree-tops, the cool,
moist fragrance of underfoot moss, the tap-tap of a woodpecker coming in
chastened echo through the columns of tree trunks, then the gurgling
trill of a thrush. Everywhere peace, the sweet English woodland peace
of a cloudless late spring or early summer day. Yet John Seward Mervyn
went up that woodland path wearing a grey, ashen face, and carrying
something very like utter despair in his heart.
As he arrived at the house, the two girls were coming down the path. A
clear, laughing hail of welcome greeted him.
"We've been in luck, dear," cried Melian, taking a fishing basket from
old Joe, who was walking behind. "Look at this."
She displayed eight or nine perch--two quite big ones.
"Violet caught those," she went on. "I've never caught any as big. I
don't believe there are any bigger ones in Plane Pond; eh, Joe."
"They be middlin' fish, Miss Melun--they be middlin' fish, sure-ly,"
answered the old rustic.
"Why, I'm sure the big 'un must be over a pound," rattled on the girl
joyously. "And didn't Violet just prick her fingers over his spines."
Here again Mervyn conjured up another picture as he contemplated the
great spiny dorsal fin and black stripes of a really finely conditioned
perch. She had pricked her fingers with something very harmless that
time, he thought, grimly.
"We have had such a jolly time, Mr Mervyn," said Violet, animatedly.
"I've enjoyed it no end."
He felt that she was looking curiously at him. Her delighted tone
seemed to tail off suddenly.
"I'm very glad to hear it," he said, throwing off his mood and striving
to join in theirs.
"Over a pound. I'm certain it is," went on Melian, who was still
wrapped up in contemplation of the "take". "Come along and let's weigh
him."
And the two, aglow with life and spirits, headed for the kitchen and the
weighing scales.
"Contrast--again?" thought Mervyn, as he followed.
So did another person, who, unseen, had witnessed the whole of the
morning's doings from their very commencement.