THE COLONEL MEETS THE SQUIRE
As Colonel Quaritch was contemplating these various views and
reflecting that on the whole he had done well to come and live at
Honham Cottage, he was suddenly startled by a loud voice saluting him
from about twenty yards distance with such peculiar vigour that he
fairly jumped.
“Colonel Quaritch, I believe,” said, or rather shouted, the voice from
somewhere down the drive.
“Yes,” answered the Colonel mildly, “here I am.”
“Ah, I thought it was you. Always tell a military man, you know. Excuse
me, but I am resting for a minute, this last pull is an uncommonly
stiff one. I always used to tell my dear old friend, Mrs. Massey, that
she ought to have the hill cut away a bit just here. Well, here goes
for it,” and after a few heavy steps his visitor emerged from the
shadow of the trees into the sunset light which was playing on the
terrace before the house.
Colonel Quaritch glanced up curiously to see who the owner of the great
voice might be, and his eyes lit upon as fine a specimen of humanity as
he had seen for a long while. The man was old, as his white hair
showed, seventy perhaps, but that was the only sign of decay about him.
He was a splendid man, broad and thick and strong, with a keen, quick
eye, and a face sharply chiselled, and clean shaved, of the stamp which
in novels is generally known as aristocratic, a face, in fact, that
showed both birth and breeding. Indeed, as clothed in loose tweed
garments and a gigantic pair of top boots, his visitor stood leaning on
his long stick and resting himself after facing the hill, Harold
Quaritch thought that he had never seen a more perfect specimen of the
typical English country gentleman—as the English country gentleman used
to be.
“How do you do, sir, how do you do—my name is de la Molle. My man
George, who knows everybody’s business except his own, told me that you
had arrived here, so I thought I would walk round and do myself the
honour of making your acquaintance.”
“That is very kind of you,” said the Colonel.
“Not at all. If you only knew how uncommonly dull it is down in these
parts you would not say that. The place isn’t what it used to be when I
was a boy. There are plenty of rich people about, but they are not the
same stamp of people. It isn’t what it used to be in more ways than
one,” and the old Squire gave something like a sigh, and thoughtfully
removed his white hat, out of which a dinner napkin and two
pocket-handkerchiefs fell to the ground, in a fashion that reminded
Colonel Quaritch of the climax of a conjuring trick.
“You have dropped some—some linen,” he said, stooping down to pick the
mysterious articles up.
“Oh, yes, thank you,” answered his visitor, “I find the sun a little
hot at this time of the year. There is nothing like a few handkerchiefs
or a towel to keep it off,” and he rolled the mass of napery into a
ball, and cramming it back into the crown, replaced the hat on his head
in such a fashion that about eight inches of white napkin hung down
behind. “You must have felt it in Egypt,” he went on —“the sun I mean.
It’s a bad climate, that Egypt, as I have good reason to know,” and he
pointed again to his white hat, which Harold Quaritch now observed for
the first time was encircled by a broad black band.
“Ah, I see,” he said, “I suppose that you have had a loss.”
“Yes, sir, a very heavy loss.”
Now Colonel Quaritch had never heard that Mr. de la Molle had more than
one child, Ida de la Molle, the young lady whose face remained so
strongly fixed in his memory, although he had scarcely spoken to her on
that one occasion five long years ago. Could it be possible that she
had died in Egypt? The idea sent a tremor of fear through him, though
of course there was no real reason why it should. Deaths are so common.
“Not—not Miss de la Molle?” he said nervously, adding, “I had the
pleasure of seeing her once, a good many years ago, when I was stopping
here for a few days with my aunt.”
“Oh, no, not Ida, she is alive and well, thank God. Her brother James.
He went all through that wretched war which we owe to Mr. Gladstone, as
I say, though I don’t know what your politics are, and then caught a
fever, or as I think got touched by the sun, and died on his way home.
Poor boy! He was a fine fellow, Colonel Quaritch, and my only son, but
very reckless. Only a month or so before he died, I wrote to him to be
careful always to put a towel in his helmet, and he answered, in that
flippant sort of way he had, that he was not going to turn himself into
a dirty clothes bag, and that he rather liked the heat than otherwise.
Well, he’s gone, poor fellow, in the service of his country, like many
of his ancestors before him, and there’s an end of him.”
And again the old man sighed, heavily this time.
“And now, Colonel Quaritch,” he went on, shaking off his oppression
with a curious rapidity that was characteristic of him, “what do you
say to coming up to the Castle for your dinner? You must be in a mess
here, and I expect that old Mrs. Jobson, whom my man George tells me
you have got to look after you, will be glad enough to be rid of you
for to-night. What do you say?—take the place as you find it, you know.
I believe that there is a leg of mutton for dinner if there is nothing
else, because instead of minding his own business I saw George going
off to Boisingham to fetch it this morning. At least, that is what he
said he was going for; just an excuse to gossip and idle, I fancy.”
“Well, really,” said the Colonel, “you are very kind; but I don’t think
that my dress clothes are unpacked yet.”
“Dress clothes! Oh, never mind your dress clothes. Ida will excuse you,
I daresay. Besides, you have no time to dress. By Jove, it’s nearly
seven o’clock; we must be off if you are coming.”
The Colonel hesitated. He had intended to dine at home, and being a
methodical-minded man did not like altering his plans. Also, he was,
like most military men, very punctilious about his dress and personal
appearance, and objected to going out to dinner in a shooting coat. But
all this notwithstanding, a feeling that he did not quite understand,
and which it would have puzzled even an American novelist to
analyse—something between restlessness and curiosity, with a dash of
magnetic attraction thrown in—got the better of his scruples, and he
accepted.
“Well, thank you,” he said, “if you are sure that Miss de la Molle will
not mind, I will come. Just allow me to tell Mrs. Jobson.”
“That’s right,” halloaed the Squire after him, “I’ll meet you at the
back of the house. We had better go through the fields.”
By the time that the Colonel, having informed his housekeeper that he
should not want any dinner, and hastily brushed his not too luxuriant
locks, had reached the garden which lay behind the house, the Squire
was nowhere to be seen. Presently, however, a loud halloa from the top
of the tumulus-like hill announced his whereabouts.
Wondering what the old gentleman could be doing there, Harold Quaritch
walked up the steps that led to the summit of the mound, and found him
standing at the entrance to the mushroom-shaped summer-house,
contemplating the view.
“There, Colonel,” he said, “there’s a perfect view for you. Talk about
Scotland and the Alps! Give me a view of the valley of Ell from the top
of Dead Man’s Mount on an autumn evening, and I never want to see
anything finer. I have always loved it from a boy, and always shall so
long as I live—look at those oaks, too. There are no such trees in the
county that I know of. The old lady, your aunt, was wonderfully fond of
them. I hope—” he went on in a tone of anxiety—“I hope that you don’t
mean to cut any of them down.”
“Oh no,” said the Colonel, “I should never think of such a thing.”
“That’s right. Never cut down a good tree if you can help it. I’m sorry
to say, however,” he added after a pause, “that I have been forced to
cut down a good many myself. Queer place this, isn’t it?” he continued,
dropping the subject of the trees, which was evidently a painful one to
him. “Dead Man’s Mount is what the people about here call it, and that
is what they called it at the time of the Conquest, as I can prove to
you from ancient writings. I always believed that it was a tumulus, but
of late years a lot of these clever people have been taking their oath
that it is an ancient British dwelling, as though Ancient Britons, or
any one else for that matter, could live in a kind of drainhole. But
they got on the soft side of your old aunt—who, by the way, begging
your pardon, was a wonderfully obstinate old lady when once she
hammered an idea into her head—and so she set to work and built this
slate mushroom over the place, and one way and another it cost her two
hundred and fifty pounds. Dear me! I shall never forget her face when
she saw the bill,” and the old gentleman burst out into a Titanic
laugh, such as Harold Quaritch had not heard for many a long day.
“Yes,” he answered, “it is a queer spot. I think that I must have a dig
at it one day.”
“By Jove,” said the Squire, “I never thought of that. It would be worth
doing. Hulloa, it is twenty minutes past seven, and we dine at half
past. I shall catch it from Ida. Come on, Colonel Quaritch; you don’t
know what it is to have a daughter—a daughter when one is late for
dinner is a serious thing for any man,” and he started off down the
hill in a hurry.
Very soon, however, he seemed to forget the terrors in store, and
strolled along, stopping now and again to admire some particular oak or
view; chatting all the while in a discursive manner, which, though
somewhat aimless, was by no means without its charm. He made a capital
companion for a silent man like Harold Quaritch who liked to hear other
people talk.
In this way they went down the slope, and crossing a couple of wheat
fields came to a succession of broad meadows, somewhat sparsely
timbered. Through these the footpath ran right up to the grim gateway
of the ancient Castle, which now loomed before them, outlined in red
lines of fire against the ruddy background of the sunset sky.
“Ay, it’s a fine old place, Colonel, isn’t it?” said the Squire,
catching the exclamation of admiration that broke from his companion’s
lips, as a sudden turn brought them into line with the Norman ruin.
“History—that’s what it is; history in stone and mortar; this is
historic ground, every inch of it. Those old de la Molles, my
ancestors, and the Boisseys before them, were great folk in their day,
and they kept up their position well. I will take you to see their
tombs in the church yonder on Sunday. I always hoped to be buried
beside them, but I can’t manage it now, because of the Act. However, I
mean to get as near to them as I can. I have a fancy for the
companionship of those old Barons, though I expect that they were a
roughish lot in their lifetimes. Look how squarely those towers stand
out against the sky. They always remind me of the men who built
them—sturdy, overbearing fellows, setting their shoulders against the
sea of circumstance and caring neither for man nor devil till the
priests got hold of them at the last. Well, God rest them, they helped
to make England, whatever their faults. Queer place to choose for a
castle, though, wasn’t it? right out in an open plain.”
“I suppose that they trusted to their moat and walls, and the hagger at
the bottom of the dry ditch,” said the Colonel. “You see there is no
eminence from which they could be commanded, and their archers could
sweep all the plain from the battlements.”
“Ah, yes, of course they could. It is easy to see that you are a
soldier. They were no fools, those old crusaders. My word, we must be
getting on. They are hauling down the Union Jack on the west tower. I
always have it hauled down at sunset,” and he began walking briskly
again.
In another three minutes they had crossed a narrow by-road, and were
passing up the ancient drive that led to the Castle gates. It was not
much of a drive, but there were still some half-dozen of old pollard
oaks that had no doubt stood there before the Norman Boissey, from
whose family, centuries ago, the de la Molles had obtained the property
by marriage with the heiress, had got his charter and cut the first sod
of his moat.
Right before them was the gateway of the Castle, flanked by two great
towers, and these, with the exception of some ruins were, as a matter
of fact, all that remained of the ancient building, which had been
effectually demolished in the time of Cromwell. The space within, where
the keep had once stood, was now laid out as a flower garden, while the
house, which was of an unpretentious nature, and built in the Jacobean
style, occupied the south side of the square, and was placed with its
back to the moat.
“You see I have practically rebuilt those two towers,” said the Squire,
pausing underneath the Norman archway. “If I had not done it,” he added
apologetically, “they would have been in ruins by now, but it cost a
pretty penny, I can tell you. Nobody knows what stuff that old flint
masonry is to deal with, till he tries it. Well, they will stand now
for many a long day. And here we are”—and he pushed open a porch door
and then passed up some steps and through a passage into an
oak-panelled vestibule, which was hung with tapestry originally taken,
no doubt, from the old Castle, and decorated with coats of armour,
spear heads, and ancient swords.
And here it was that Harold Quaritch once more beheld the face which
had haunted his memory for so many months.