"THE FAR-OFF MUTTERING OF THE STORM TO COME"
"Paul!"
Paul had walked unannounced into his mother's favourite little
sitting-room at Vaux Court, tired and travel-stained. She rose to her
feet and looked at him anxiously.
"Don't be alarmed, mother," he said, stooping down and kissing her.
"There's nothing at all the matter."
"Arthur is well?"
"Quite well; I was with him yesterday afternoon. There's nothing the
matter. London was boring me, that's all, and I thought I'd run down
here and have a look at the old place, and perhaps a day's hunting."
Relieved of her anxiety, Mrs. de Vaux was unaffectedly pleased to see
her eldest son. She was a fine, white-haired old lady, dignified and
handsome, but with very few soft lines about her comely face.
"I am delighted to see you, of course, Paul! The meet is at Dytchley
woods to-morrow! I hope you'll have a good day. Take your coat off. I
have rung for some tea."
"Thanks! How bright and cheerful the fire seems. I walked from the
station, and it was miserably cold."
"Of course it was. I wish I had known you were coming. We have so
little work for the carriage horses."
"I did not make up my mind until half an hour before the train
started," Paul answered. "Dick Carruthers wanted me to run over to
Paris with him for a couple of days, and I was undecided which to do.
I heard that it was cold and wet there, though; and there is always a
charm about this old place which makes me glad to come back to it."
"There is not such another place in England," his mother remarked,
pouring out the tea. "Although this is such an outlandish county,
there have been a dozen people here this week, asking to be allowed
to see over the Abbey. I always give permission when you are away, and
there is no one stopping here."
Paul drank his tea, and stretched himself out in his low chair with an
air of comfort.
"I am glad you let them see the place, mother," he said. "It is only
right. What class of people do you have, as a rule? Clergymen and
ecclesiastical architects, I suppose?"
"Chiefly. There are a good many Americans, though; and yesterday,
or the day before, a Roman Catholic priest. He spent the day in the
cloisters and wandering about the Abbey, I believe."
Paul looked up suddenly, and drew his chair back out of the firelight.
For the first time, his mother noticed how pale and ghastly his face
was.
"Paul, are you ill?" she asked anxiously. "What is the matter with
you?"
"Nothing. I am only tired. It is a long journey, you know,--and the
walk from the station. Indeed, it is nothing else. I am quite well."
His mother resumed her seat. She had risen in sudden alarm. Her son's
face had frightened her.
"You look just as your poor father used to look sometimes," she said
softly. "It always frightened me. It was as though you had a pain
somewhere, or had suddenly seen a ghost. You are sure you are well?"
"Quite, mother! You need have no fear. Arthur and I have your
constitution, I think."
His tone was deeper, almost hollow. He still kept his chair back
amongst the shadows. Mrs. de Vaux was only partially satisfied.
"I am afraid you have been keeping too late hours, Paul, or reading
too much. Lord Westover was saying the other day that you were in a
very Bohemian set--journalists and artists, and those sort of people.
I am afraid they keep awful hours."
"Lord Westover knows nothing about it," Paul answered wearily.
"Ordinary London society would tire me to death in a fortnight. There
is another class of people, though, whose headquarters are in London,
far more cultured, and quite as exclusive, with whom association is a
far greater distinction. I can go anywhere in the first set, because
I am Paul de Vaux, of Vaux Abbey, and have forty thousand a year. I
am permitted to enter the other only as the author of an unfashionable
novel, which a few of them have thought leniently of. Which seem the
worthier conditions?"
"I am answered, Paul. Of course, in a sense, you are right. I am
an old woman, and the twaddle of a London drawing-room would fall
strangely upon my ears now, but I had my share of it before Arthur was
born. If I were a man, I should want variety,--a little sauce,--and
you are right to seek for it. And now, won't you go and have a bath,
and change your things. You still look pale, and I think it would
refresh you. Shall I ring for Reynolds? I suppose you have not brought
your own man?"
He stretched out his hand, and arrested her fingers upon the bell. "In
a moment, mother. It is so comfortable here, and I really think it is
my favourite room."
He looked round approvingly. It was a curious, hexagonal chamber, with
an oak-beamed ceiling, curving into a dome. The walls were hung with
a wonderful tapestry of a soft, rich colour, and every piece of
furniture in the room was of the Louis Quinze period. There was
scarcely a single anachronism. The Martin de Vaux of forty years ago
had been an artist, and a man of taste; and when he had brought home
his bride, a duke's daughter, he had spent a small fortune on this
apartment. Since then it had always been her favourite, and she was
always glad to hear any one praise it.
"I seldom sit in any other," she remarked complacently. "The blue
drawing-room is open to-night, but that is because Lord and Lady
Westover are dining here. I am afraid May will not be able to come;
she has a cold or something of the sort. I wonder whether it is true,
what they say, that she is delicate."
Paul did not appear much interested. He had a purpose in lingering
here, and it had nothing to do with May Westover's health. There was
a little information he wished to obtain without exciting his mother's
curiosity. But it was not exactly an easy matter.
"I was interested in what you said about the visitors here,"
he remarked. "I daresay to Americans this place must be very
interesting."
"You would think so if you saw some of them. They are a great deal too
inquisitive and familiar for Reynolds. He detests them. It is far more
interesting to think of that Catholic priest who was here the other
day. He lingered about the place as though he had known it all his
life, and loved it; and, Reynolds says, he prayed for two hours in the
chapel."
"Did you see him yourself?"
"Yes, in the distance. I did not notice him particularly. I wished
afterwards that I had. Reynolds' report of him pleased me so much. I
daresay he was conjuring up pictures of the days when the old Abbey
was full of grey-hooded monks, and the chapel was echoing day and
night to their solemn chants and prayers. Sometimes, in the gloaming,
I can almost fancy myself that I see them kneeling in long rows in
those rich stalls, and hear the rustle of their gowns as they pass
slowly down the aisles. I think he must have found it sad to linger
about in that beautiful chapel, so cold, and empty, and bare. That
is why I like Roman Catholics. They have such a strong reverential
affection for their places of worship, and take such a delight in
adorning them. It is almost like a personal love."
Paul moved uneasily in his chair and looked steadily into the fire.
"Then you did not notice him particularly?"
"Notice him! Notice whom?"
"This priest, or whoever he was."
"I did not see his face, Paul, if that is what you mean. I only
remember that he was tall. You seem very much interested in him. No
doubt Reynolds could tell you anything you wish to know. Here he is;
you had better ask him."
A grey-headed man-servant had entered, bearing a lamp. Mrs. de Vaux
turned to him.
"Reynolds, Mr. Paul is interested in hearing about the priest who
spent so much time looking over the Abbey yesterday. Can you describe
him?"
Reynolds set down the lamp and turned respectfully around. "Not very
well, I'm afraid, sir," he said doubtfully. "They all seem so much
alike, you know, sir, in those long gowns. He was tall, rather thin,
and no hair on his face at all. I can't say that I noticed anything
else, except that he spoke in rather a foreign accent."
"You are sure he was a priest, I suppose," Paul asked carelessly. "We
hear so much now of impostors, and of things being stolen from places
of interest, that it makes one feel suspicious."
"I am quite sure he was no impostor, sir." Reynolds answered
confidently. "He was too interested in the place for that. He knew its
history better than any one who has ever been here in my day. If he
had been one of those sneaking sort of fellows, looking about for what
he could get, he would have offered me money, and tried to get rid of
me for a time, I think, sir."
"That's true," Paul remarked. "Were you with him all the time, then?"
"Very nearly, sir. He did not like my leaving him at all. He was
afraid of missing something worth seeing. Besides, he did not ask to
come into the house at all, not even to see the pictures. He spent all
his time in the ruins.
"That ends the matter, of course," Paul answered shortly. "There is
nothing out there to attract pilferers. Sorry I said anything about
it."
"He asked whether you spent much of your time here, and when you would
be down again, sir," Reynolds remarked, as he turned to quit the room.
Paul looked up, and then stood quite still for a moment without
speaking. A great fear had fallen upon him. Out of the shadows of
the past, he seemed to see again that deathbed scene, and the tragedy
which had brought down the curtain upon two lives. Almost he could
fancy himself again upon his yacht, with the salt sea spray beating
against his face, and the white breakers hissing and seething around
him, as they made the dangerous passage towards that faint light,
which flickered and gleamed in the distant monastery tower. They are
safe! They reach the land; they are hurried into that great, gloomy
bed-chamber, where chill draughts rustled ghost-like amongst the
heavy, faded hangings, and the feeble candlelight left weird shadows
moving across the floor and upon the walls. Again he heard the
rattling of the window-panes, bare and exposed to every gust of wind;
the far-off thunder of the sea, like a deep, continuous undernote;
and, from an almost unseen corner of the chamber, the monotonous,
broken rhythm of sad prayers for the dying, mumbled by that dark,
curious-looking priest. And then, when the background of the picture
had formed itself in his memory, he saw the deed itself. He saw
the white, stricken face suddenly ablaze with that last effort of
passionate life; he saw the outstretched arm, the line of fire, and
the sudden change in the countenance of the man who stood at the foot
of the bed. He saw the cool cynicism replaced by a spasm of ghastly
fear, and he heard the low, gurgling cry dying away into a faint moan
of terror, as the murdered man sank on to the floor, a crumpled heap.
And, last of all, he saw that little brown girl, with her tumbled hair
and tear-stained face, clasping the dead body and glaring at every one
in the room, with a storm of hatred and impotent fury in her flashing
eyes. And that last recollection brought him, like a flash, back
to the present,--brought him swift, bewildering memories of Adrea,
shaking his heart, and bringing the hot colour streaming into his
face. He remembered where he was, and why he had left London. He
remembered, too, that he was not alone, and with a little start he
awoke to the present.
Reynolds had left the room, and his mother was watching him curiously.
He found it hard to meet her steady, questioning gaze without
flinching.
"Paul," she said slowly, "you are in trouble."
He shook his head. "It is nothing, mother--nothing at all. I ought to
beg your pardon for letting my thoughts run away with me so."
She was too proud to ask him for his confidence, and at that moment
the rumbling of a gong reached them from the distant hall. Mrs. de
Vaux rose:--
"There are a few people dining here, Paul, so you will not be late."
"I will be down, mother. The usual time, I suppose."
"Yes, eight o'clock."
They left the room together, but parted in the hall. Mrs. de Vaux
stayed to speak to the housekeeper for a moment, and Paul ascended
the broad staircase alone. On the first corridor he paused, standing
before the deep-cushioned sill of a high-arched window, and gazing at
the ruined portion of the abbey. The air outside was frosty and clear,
and though the moon as yet was only faintly yellow, every arch and
cloister was clearly visible. Paul gazed down at them, as he had done
all his life, with reverent eyes. There was something almost awesome
in the graceful yet bold outline, and in the great age of those
rugged, moss-grown pillars and arches, so ecclesiastical in their
shape and suggestiveness,--as indeed they might well be, for they were
practically the ruins of the old monastery chapel. But, as he looked,
the expression in his eyes suddenly changed. A dark figure had passed
slowly out from the shadow of the arches, and stood looking up towards
the house, rigid, solemn, and motionless. Paul covered his face with
his hands, and sank down upon the cushioned window-sill.