The Cranston party had organised a picnic to Durnley Castle.
It was May--bright, flowery, laughing May--neither spring nor summer,
but something of both. The sun's rays were not too powerful this
glorious afternoon, as with a delicious warmth they poured down upon the
fields studded with golden buttercups and delicate bluebells, and
distilled the sweet scent from blossoming hawthorn hedges, where the
linnet and grey-backed shrike sat patiently upon their eggs, secure in
the recesses of their thorny covert. Fair to the eye were the velvety
coppices, with their newly-donned mantles of bright green, whence issued
the soft coo of the turtle-dove, and the flap of the cushat's wing among
the branches. Then, too, how light-hearted the joyous, oft-repeated
note of the cuckoo, sounding over the pleasant landscape!
Durnley Castle was a fine ruin, with massive ivy-grown walls still
rising to a considerable height; and standing as it did on a lofty
headland, the views of the coast obtained from it were superb.
Otherwise it was much like other ruins of the kind, its scarp being
literally strewn with bits of sandwich paper, ancient and modern, broken
bottles, and similar relics of generations of picnic parties. It was
under the care of a clan of cottagers, whose thatch might be detected
among the trees hard by, which care mainly consisted in taking precious
good care to collect sixpences, but stopped short at clearing away the
abominable rubbish aforesaid.
"Eva," cried Ned Medlicott, the curate's twelve-year-old, running up to
his sister, a pretty girl of eighteen, to exhibit some kestrel's eggs.
"Look at these. Did you ever see such stunners!"
"`Stunners,' indeed," was the laughing reply. "Why, how did you get
them, Ned?"
"I didn't _take_ them," explained the boy; "Mr Dorrien climbed the
tree--but--"
"But the great thing is, here they are, eh, Ned?" cried Roland. "And
it's my private opinion you'll break them before you get home."
He was thinking how thoroughly happy the boy looked, and how easily he
had been made so, and the thought seemed to please him.
"Hullo, Eustace! Late as usual," he went on, as some new arrivals hove
in sight, toiling up the steep escarpment. "Thought you had wrecked
your party."
For Eustace had brought round the rest of the party by sea, in a sailing
craft, chartered at Minchkil.
"Oh, did you? Now look here. Do you know what Thought did? No? Well,
I'll tell you--Thought we had had a precious dry walk up from the boat,
and lost no time in beheading one of those jolly long-necked bottles
over there. Aren't I right, Mr Medlicott?" turning to his companion.
"Oh, of course, you always are," answered the latter with a laugh. He
was the senior curate of Wandsborough, a middle-aged, scholarly man--
owning a vast family, two representatives of which were with the party,
as we have seen.
"Worse and worse!" said Roland, with a shake of the head, and
mischievously barring the way. "Eustace, I wash my hands of you--`fizz'
before tiffin isn't good for little boys like you."
"Hallo--Sophonisba!" sang out Eustace. "Cut out one of those
long-necked bottles, and sail round here with it, sharp! Your dear
brother-in-law's getting mean in his old age. Marsland, tell her to.
She'll do it if _you_ tell her," added the mischievous dog, grinning all
over his face, while his youngest sister looked viciously at him without
complying.
"There, there. Go and do for yourself, Eustace," said Roland, letting
him pass. "And now that we are all here, we can gather round the
festive--table-cloth. Assort yourselves, good people, and do it well;
if you don't it's your own faults. Stewart, keep an eye on that
subaltern of yours, and don't let him have too much champagne, or my
wife says you will be held responsible as his superior officer."
Captain Stewart--in whose troop Eustace was--and who had run down with
him for the occasion--vehemently declined responsibility, and set to
work devoting himself to Eva Medlicott, to the no small satisfaction of
that young lady.
"`Shop!' Bear witness all!" cried Eustace, tossing off his glass with
the air of a man who had walked a mile up a steep hill at mid-day.
"He's talking arrant `shop.' Roland, old chap, consider yourself fined
a case of this same `gooseberry.' Stewart and I will take it up to Town
with us to-night."
"Nonsense, you're not going to-night," said Olive.
"Am. With deep grief I say it--but--`painful necessities,' as the
schoolmaster says upon certain occasions! If we miss that train I'm
broke. Chief desperately glum--vows I've had four times too much leave
already. Isn't that so, Stewart?"
"For once, Ingelow, truth and the exigencies of the Service compel me to
support your statement," gravely replied the captain, whose attention
was divided between his fair companion and the dispensing of a
pigeon-pie to many hungry applicants.
There was a laugh at this, and then, the contagion spreading, the fun
grew apace, and never a merrier party made the grey old ruins ring. It
wae a model picnic party, not too large, all fairly well known to each
other, or, in the case of an exception or two, acquisitions to any
circle, and all young, except perhaps the curate, who was such a
thoroughly good-natured man that his quietness--"slowness" we are afraid
they called it--was quite forgiven him. Then there were no elderly
chaperons to spoil sport with their whisperings and confounded
sharp-sightedness, and not even a botanically-minded old maid to drag
off some wretched youth to grub up fern-roots for her, when he would
fain be wandering _perdu_ in another direction with a very different
sample of charmer.
The Dorriens had been obliged to defer their foreign trip. Business of
all sorts, connected more or less with the property, which could not
well be left to others, had kept cropping up in the most vexatious
manner since we heard them making their plans nearly two months ago. To
Roland these delays had been irritating in the extreme, but now he
thought he saw the end of them, and had made up his mind to start early
next month. There was one bright side to it all. He had heard no more
mysterious hints. These seemed to have ceased since the departure of
Johnston, who had left the neighbourhood altogether when summarily
dismissed from Cranston.
Luncheon over, the party dispersed themselves abroad according to
taste--in pairs or in squads. Others preferred taking things easy where
they were. Besides those named, there were half a dozen other people
who are not specially concerned with this history.
"Hallo! Who are these chaps, I wonder?" suddenly exclaimed Eustace, who
was having a quiet weed with his brother-in-law, in a snug, sunny corner
of the ruin. Two men were strolling leisurely towards them, stopping
every now and then, as if admiring the view to seaward. The foremost
had a telescope slung round him, while the other carried a butterfly-net
and specimen box. They might have been a brace of well-to-do tradesmen.
"Where? Oh! The advance-guard of a cheap trip, most likely. Two
waggonettes of hooraying yahoos to follow," was the somewhat
dissatisfied reply.
"Beg pardon, sir," said the foremost of the new arrivals. "Excuse my
asking, but is there any objection to me and my friend going over the
castle."
"None whatever, as far as I know," answered Roland good-naturedly. "By
the way, is there a trip behind you?"
The men looked mystified for a moment, then the naturalist replied.
"Oh, no, gentlemen, only we two. We walked over from Wandsbro', we two
did, just to look at the view from here, and catch a few butterflies."
"Caught any?"
"Not to speak of, sir. Just these two or three," opening his green box.
A tortoiseshell of dissipated aspect, and a couple of orange tips stood
displayed.
"H'm! Well, as far as I know you'll find nothing to prevent you going
where you like. Only I should advise you to be careful in walking about
the walls, because they're unsafe in parte."
The men thanked him and walked away. Eustace and Roland, grateful that
the invasion took so mild a form, puffed their cigars lazily, and
straightway forgot all about it. Had they been aware of it, what matter
to them that the strangers, exploring round the ruins, should light upon
the Cranston footman, lunching on the relics of the spread, and that the
said strangers, being of an engaging manner after their kind, should, in
a trice, find themselves on the best of terms with James, resulting in
much friendly consumption of Cranston ale, all round.
"That your governor, up there?" said he of the telescope presently,
jerking a thumb in the direction he had just left.
"Which?" asked James laconically.
"Tall gent--light clothes--talks like God Almighty."
"Yes, that's him."
"Good governor?" said the butterfly-catcher.
"So, so. Too much shirt, though--rather."
"Hey?"
"Too shirty, for them as doesn't like it," explained James.
Then, with tongue loosened by a liberal allowance of ale,
indiscriminately poured upon the absorption of the residue of unfinished
champagne bottles, the faithful James proceeded to give his new friends
a full, true, and above all, humorous account of his master's
idiosyncrasies, whereat the strangers laughed till they could no longer
sit upright. But even the graphic James missed the real humour of the
thing, as conveyed from one to the other of his listeners in a swift and
irresistibly comic glance.
The afternoon had reached the debatable ground lying between itself and
evening, and the diverse and errant members of the party had found their
way back to the rendezvous. And last of all arrived Marsland and
Sophie, trying to look as if they had been there all the time; and the
latter, catching her brother's eye, read therein a mute and satirical
assurance that she had not heard the last of her tardy arrival and eke
of its circumstances.
"Don't wait for me, anybody who wants to stroll on," said Olive, who was
superintending the putting away of the things. "I'll come on
afterwards."
"And, by the way, Stewart, do you mind taking the ribbons going back?"
said Roland. "I'm going home by way of the angry deep."
The Captain declared himself delighted, as in fact he was. A smart
whip, he flattered himself he would show those four slashing bays of
Dorrien's at their best.
"Ta-ta, Stewart. Good people, I hope all your lives are insured! I
know what Stewart on the box means," sung out the irrepressible Eustace,
with a fiendish chuckle over the misgiving which he had flung in among
the driving party. "And now for the rolling deep?"
We will follow the party in the boat. Besides Eustace and Roland there
were two young ladies from Wandsborough and Mr Medlicott and Ned.
Item, an amphibious youth from Minchkil, who represented the "crew."
It was a lovely evening. There was just enough breeze to propel them
gently and without rocking, and a fragrant whiff of sweet hawthorn
reached them even there. As they stood out to sea, the moon shone out
brighter and brighter in the clear sky, glancing upon the tiny ripples
as though its light were touching the moving spear points of a host.
Then, as they presently rounded the headland, a hollow and tuneful echo
seemed wafted back to them as the waves plashed against the semi-circle
of cliff with the inflowing tide.
Eustace and the two Wandsborough girls were deep in a wordy war of
banter and laughter, the former steering villainously in consequence.
Roland and the curate were puffing at their cigars and lazily conversing
in the fore part of the boat, and young Ned was playfully pulling Roy's
ears. Suddenly through the stillness of the night, above the musical
ripple as the bow of the boat cleft the water, above the bell-like plash
of the waves upon the shore, a strange, mysterious sound came wafting
over the moonlit sea, a sound as of the deep-toned howling of a dog.
The sky, studded with stars, is without a cloud. Yonder, shadowed by
the lofty headland, the grey rock-turrets of The Skegs stand forth
spectral under the clear moon. Again that most dismal sound floats out
upon the night air, but no one seems to hear or notice it. No one?
One--that is. One who has heard it before. The curate, glancing at his
host, is surprised and alarmed at the latter's face, for it is ashy
white; and following the set and rigid gaze, behold! a dark shadow is
resting blackly upon the summit of the haunted rock. And Roy, with his
hackles erect and gums drawn back, is snarling aggressively in response.
The terrible and grisly Ban once more. What does it portend?