Even as Violet had said, to put such a superhuman strain upon the
curiosity of two mere women seemed scarcely fair, and perhaps the
hardest strain of all was Mervyn's injunction not to talk about the
matter between themselves even; however, they followed it out with a
tolerable show of loyalty; in fact, as great a one as could be expected
of their sex.
On Melian, of course, the strain fell the hardest. She was quick to
recognise that the finding of that strange object had affected her uncle
far more than he would allow to appear. Not only that, but as day
followed upon day, there was no lessening of the effect. Then, too,
what had he done with the thing when they had gone inside leaving him
alone. Buried it--thrown it into the pond, or what? She, too, began to
feel as though living under the spell of a fear. Perhaps it had been an
error of judgment on her uncle's part, to enjoin so strict a silence
upon them, she more than once thought--and the worst of this was that it
precluded her from consulting Helston Varne.
She had been impressed by the promise that he had exacted from her that
she would so consult him in the event of finding herself in any
difficulty; in fact, under just such a contingency as had occurred; but
she was debarred by her subsequent promise. There were other mysterious
happenings she had considered the expediency of laying before him; more
even than when we last saw her on the point of doing so; for she had
since gained more than an inkling as to his real line in life and the
discovery increased her interest in him well nigh to the pitch of
vividness.
There was another matter as to which she had gained more than an
inkling, and that, the ill-repute which was said to surround Heath
Hover. She remembered how on her first arrival she had suggested that
it looked like a haunted house, and the way in which her uncle had
scoffed at the idea and turned away the question, struck her in
subsequent lights as a trifle overdoing the part. One circumstance,
however, seemed more suspicious still.
She was chatting with old Joe one day, and enjoining upon him the
necessity of fixing a board over a pane of glass she had broken in her
bedroom window, until it could be properly mended.
"I don't want any more bats coming in and flicking me in the face, Joe,"
she appended, "like that night just after I got here."
The old man dropped the handles of the barrow which he was just about to
trundle, and stared at her queerly.
"What time might that ha' been, Missie?" he said.
"Why, a few days after I came."
"That warn't no flittermaouse," he said. "Yew won't see none o' they
for--come weeks and weeks. They be all asleep they be."
"But it might have been a stray one."
The old rustic grinned pityingly and shook his head.
"That warn't no flittermaouse," he repeated.
Melian's eyes opened wider.
"What was it, then?" she said.
But the old rustic seemed suddenly to become alive to the fact that he
had said too much; in short, had been betrayed into overstepping his
employer's explicitly imposed injunctions.
"What war it? Narthen. You'd been dreamin', Missie, for sure. That's
what it war." And old Joe had picked up the wheelbarrow handles and
trundled off then and there with an energy which bade fair to put a stop
to any further questioning.
But his statement had rendered Melian decidedly uncomfortable. If her
acquaintance with natural history was defective, she had had ample
opportunity of discovering that that of her uncle was not; in fact,
eminently the reverse, and that he of all people should have been so
hard put to it as to invent a bat flying about on a mid-winter night,
showed something loose somewhere. Should she tax him with it under the
form of chaff? But she decided not to. He might not like it, and
again, he would almost certainly be angry with old Joe. On the other
hand it looked as if he himself were not so sceptical as he made out.
She had also become aware that nobody had been able to inhabit Heath
Hover for a long time past until her uncle had come; that is to say, do
more than give it a very brief trial, perhaps one of fewer weeks than he
had given it months. Well, as to that, he seemed quite comfortable
there, and since her arrived, happy. She was letting her imagination
run riot too much, she told herself--and certainly, she had never _seen_
anything since her arrival. Strange sounds might be produced by any
cause, and as for "influences"--well, imagination might be a factor
again.
Helston Varne had not been near them since that visit when they had met
unexpectedly on the dusking road, and as a matter of hard fact Melian
felt just a little sore with him for not having been. He had sent her a
few lines--short, straight, and to the point--reminding her of his
willingness to assist her at any time or at any moment, reminding her
also of her promise not to be behindhand in claiming such aid. This
note she had carefully kept. But he had not been near them again, and
she had found herself very much wishing that he would come. There was
something so refreshingly out of the ordinary about his personality--
about his conversation--and then, too, the high intellectual talent
which must go to make him such a success in the line of life he had
adopted; the suggestion of mystery blended with power was just the
element to appeal strongly to a girl of her character and temperament.
The fact is, that during the intervening time--getting on for three
months as it was--Melian had been thinking a great deal about Helston
Varne.
Everything was favourable to introspection of the sort. The life she
led, amid free, open, congenial surroundings, into the charm of which
she had entered from the very first, and which had grown upon her more
and more with every change of the advancing season--and yet the
personality of the man seemed subtly to pervade it all. There were
spots they had visited--a casual stroll along a woodland path, or a
breezy, uphill climb to this or that point whence rolling views of some
of the loveliest rural expanse in England swept away on either hand; and
she could remember all that was said, and exactly where it was said,
during their exchange of ideas, which were, for the most part,
thoroughly in sympathy. And then, too, in her moments of shadowy fears
in the mysterious ill-omened old house--small wonder that taking all
things together she should have thought a good deal about Helston Varne
during that intervening time.
It was the last day of Violet Clinock's visit, and on the morrow she
would be returning to town and work. She was a cheerful contented soul,
but the contrast between this glorious early June day, paradisical in
its cloudless beauty, the air fragrant with spring flowers and melodious
with the song of soaring larks; every meadow a golden sea of buttercups;
and soft masses of new leafage on high, irregular hedges, or towering
hugely heavenwards from this or that noble wood--the contrast between
this and the stuffy air and blackened chimney stacks which formed the
sole and shut-in outlook from her own modest dwelling of all the year
round was too marked even for her. She felt anything but lighthearted.
"You are in luck, Melian, dear," she could not restrain herself from
saying, wistfully. "Look at all this, and then think of me this time
to-morrow."
Melian was in the mood thoroughly to sympathise. This was one of those
days which she appreciated every hour, every minute of--and on which she
felt she could not get up too early or see the last of too late.
"Couldn't you anyway manage to stretch it out even a day or two longer?"
she said. "Surely you can?"
But the other shook a desponding head.
"No fear. I've pulled it out to its very utmost limits," she said. "I
can't afford to play cat and banjo with my billet--certainly not yet."
There was that in the answer which seemed to remind Melian that the
speaker had done that very thing on her behalf, what time she had been
ill, and friendless, and nearly destitute.
"It's too bad," she declared. "Yes, I am lucky, Violet, dear, and I owe
my luck entirely to you. But of course, when you have your long
holiday--in August or September--you are to put in every day of it here.
Just think--all those glorious heather slopes above Plane Pond--right
away back--will be blazing with crimson, and--what times we'll have. It
isn't so far off either, so buck up. It's of no use talking about
week-ends I suppose."
"You know I can't run to it, dear."
"I know you're altogether too beastly proud," was the answer. "If we
gave you a birthday present of a new hat you wouldn't be too proud to
take that, and a return ticket here runs to far less. It's an absurd
distinction."
But the other's head shake was quite decided.
"We've hammered all that out before," she said. "Look, your uncle has
finished his siesta. Here he comes."
The two girls had been picking wild flowers and had wandered away from
the spot where they had been picnicking on sandwiches and ginger-beer--
and something stronger for the only male of the party. It was a lovely
spot, an intermingling of heath and woodland, and the white stems of
birches supporting their new feathery foliage, stood out in relief from
a background of dark firs. Just glimpsed in the distance beyond stood a
venerable wooden windmill raised on piles--one of its sails missing and
another falling in half through sheer old age, like teeth. The whole
made for that combination of charm and the picturesque so characteristic
of, if not unique, as a sample of English rural scenery.
"Well," said Mervyn, knocking the ashes out of his pipe as he joined
them, and looking very placid and contented. "Isn't it time to saddle
up? We've come a precious long way, remember, and you have to allow a
margin for punctures."
But Melian overruled him.
"We needn't hurry, you know, dear," she urged. "And it's Violet's last
day."
"I know it is, worse luck," he answered, kindly, "I wish it needn't be.
Then again, we must also allow for that inspection of `old stones' you
threatened to deflect us from our way to go and adore."
"Oh, Chiltingford? You must see that, Violet. And there's a ripping
old pair of stocks too. By Jove, but that's good enough!"
"Don't know whether the misdemeanants who were clamped up in them
thought them good enough?" said her uncle with a laugh, and lighting a
fresh pipe. "Well, you shall both do just what you like to-day."
And they did; and the long, bright golden afternoon went all too quickly
by, as they skimmed along the well-kept roads, skirting greenwoods
resonant with thrush voices; down long hills between spangled meadows;
past cottages nestling in trees--every one a picture in itself--and snug
farms bulging with the suggestion of solid comfort; old grey church
towers, at which Melian looked wistfully and had to be reminded that the
cultus of every pile of "old stones" they saw would not come within the
compass of their time limit--and here and there one of those old country
seats whose exact counterpart is to be found in no other country in the
world. Yes, it was one of those days that would stand out, to elderly
and young alike, of those comprising that trio. To two of them at least
it might be that it would come back with all the more marked contrast--
perchance of deadly peril and fear--but that was within the
potentialities of the Future.
The stars were already bright in the summer sky as they descended the
last steep and stony hill, the quality of the latter calling forth more
than one half stifled malediction from the elderly unit of the trio
aforesaid. But to another unit of the said trio, the darkness, the
spot, conjured up a recollection, albeit the "tang-tang" of a jubilant
nightingale sounded from the dark and now leafy depths of "Broceliande,"
and the little brown owls, hawking over the adjoining fields, were
sending forth their harsh, fierce cries. Here was where she had
accidentally met Helston Varne for the last time, and they had not met
since. She was wondering again whether they ever would. And yet--it
was of no use to keep on dwelling upon it, she decided.