FOUND.
Mr. Brabazon did not make the most patient or sweet-tempered of
invalids, if a man may be termed an invalid who is laid up with
nothing more serious than a sprained ankle. As it happened, he had no
one but himself and his landlady to vent his ill-humour on, and as the
latter was in the habit of bursting into tears on the slightest
provocation, he kept her at arm's length as much as possible. What
made him especially savage was that his accident should have happened
at a time when every hour was, or seemed to him, of infinite
consequence. What might not be happening at Garion Keep--to what
straits might not his uncle be reduced--while he, Burgo, was lying on
his back, a helpless log, unable to walk across the floor without
exquisite pain? A score times a day he ground out maledictions between
his teeth at the untoward fate which had thus scurvily laid him by the
heels.
Nor was his amiability increased when he one day read in the _Times_
an announcement of the marriage of Miss Leslie to Lord Penwhistle.
That Mrs. Mordaunt would hurry on the match he knew full well, and for
some time he had never opened a newspaper without half expecting to
see the announcement, yet for all that, now it had come, it was like a
sudden stab. That Clara was fickle, mercenary, and altogether lacking
in stability of character, he had long ago made up his mind; indeed,
there had not been wanting times when he had told himself he ought to
thank his stars that, at whatever cost to himself, he had been
hindered from uniting his fate with hers. Still, despite all this, it
was inevitable that he should feel a lingering _tendresse_ for one
around whom, only such a little while before, his imagination had
woven the golden tissues of the fairest day-dreams his life had yet
known.
Sadly and bitterly sped the next few days for Burgo. There was nothing
for him to do, there was nothing he could do, save lie on his back and
think--think--think. And what a pleasant and profitable occupation
that is when we are possessed at once with a sense of our helplessness
and a burning anxiety to be up and doing, some of us may unfortunately
have learnt to our cost.
Still, despite his anxiety to follow up with the least possible delay
the clue which Benny Hines's niece had furnished him with, he
recognised how useless and foolish it would be to do so till he should
be able to move about with some measure of activity. Consequently it
was not till upwards of a fortnight from the date of his accident that
he finally found himself _en route_ for Oakbarrow station, and even
then he was not able to walk more than a few yards without the help of
a stout malacca.
Oakbarrow station is between two and three miles inland. On reaching
there Burgo hired a fly to convey himself and his portmanteau to Crag
End, an insignificant fishing hamlet about a mile and a half from the
Keep, which lived in his memory as a spot where he and his uncle had
been caught in a thunder-storm on the occasion of their visit six
years before. There was only one tolerable inn in the place, and there
Burgo alighted. Yes, they would be glad to accommodate him in their
humble way, said the landlord. He could have a bedroom, and also the
use of the upstairs sitting-room, except on market days, when the
country folk and their wives looked to have the run of the house.
Burgo, who was never exacting in minor matters, professed himself as
being quite satisfied; and as things turned out he had every reason
for being so.
Knowing how curious people in little country places are with regard to
the names and business of strangers, Burgo wisely determined to supply
the needful information about himself before curiosity had time to be
hatched. His name was Lumsden, he told Tyson, the landlord; he was
from London, and was by profession an artist. He had journeyed all the
way to Cumberland partly in the hope of benefiting his health, and
partly with the view of taking a series of sketches of the scenery and
objects of interest in the neighbourhood for one of the illustrated
papers. As it happened, he could sketch fairly well for an amateur,
and he had been careful that his luggage should include the needful
drawing materials, together with a portfolio containing sundry studies
in chalks and pencil several years old.
His intention had been to take a quiet stroll with the help of his
malacca in the dusk of evening in the direction of the Keep and
reconnoitre it from a distance.
He wanted to familiarise himself with the features of the old place,
with regard to some of which his memory was rather uncertain. But
towards four o'clock the weather changed and it began to rain heavily,
nor did it cease till night had fairly set in. It was undeniably
annoying, but there was no help for it. "Mr. Lumsden" must perforce
remain indoors till the morrow.
But it seemed to him that if he could not make use of his time in the
way he had designed, he might perhaps be able to do so in another way.
There were many things he was still ignorant of, many things which,
figuratively speaking, he was dying to know, and he thought it not
unlikely that his landlord might be able to enlighten him with regard
to some of them. Tyson, if not a man of much education, was
intelligent and well-mannered, and had nothing of the provincial boor
about him. In his younger days he had been a gentleman's servant and
had travelled--a fact which he was careful to impress upon all who
were brought into contact with him. In that simple little community it
gave him a certain _cachet_, and enabled him to speak with an air of
authority on many subjects about which in reality he knew next to
nothing. His trained eye had at once detected that "Mr. Lumsden" was
not _quite_ what he professed to be--that there was far less of the
wandering artist than of the West End _flâneur_ about him. Dress,
voice, manner, and that elusive something which makes its presence
felt but defies definition, all betrayed him.
"Don't tell me!" said Mr. Tyson to his wife, who had not spoken for
the last five minutes; "he's a swell to his finger-tips, and I think I
ought to know one when I see him. He's doing the artist dodge for a
lark, or because he's quarrelled with his governor, or because his
young woman's given him the go-bye. Anyhow, it's no business of ours,
and if Mr. Lumsden thinks he has thrown dust in my eyes he's quite
welcome to his opinion. Only, as I said before, I know a real swell
when I see one."
It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that when Mr. Lumsden, after
the candles had been lighted, complained of feeling a little lonely,
and requested as a favour that the landlord would keep him company
over a bottle of "John Jameson" (what wine there was in the house he
had found wholly unthinkable), and some of Burgo's own cigars, that
worthy should have complied with alacrity.
Burgo had the knack, when he chose to exercise it, which was not
always by any means, of putting those who, in no offensive sense,
might be termed his inferiors, at their ease, and in five minutes Mr.
Tyson felt himself quite at home, while at the same time perfectly
aware that there was an invisible line drawn between himself and the
man seated opposite him which he must on no account attempt to
overpass. But the landlord was one of the last men to have attempted
anything of the kind.
A turf fire had been lighted which, if it did not throw out much heat,
imparted an air of cheerfulness to the homely sitting-room, for in
September on the Cumberland seaboard the nights often strike
sojourners from the South as being unpleasantly chilly. On this
particular evening a cold rain was falling outside, and the incoming
tide had brought with it a wind which tore in fitful gusts down the
village street and smote each diamond-paned window with a watery lash
in passing. A couple of wax candles, reserved by Mrs. Tyson for very
special occasions, in brass candlesticks of amazing brilliancy, stood
on the oaken three-legged table, together with all the appliances for
the manufacture of toddy after the most approved recipe.
When the landlord, at Mr. Lumsden's request, had mixed a couple of
steaming jorums, the first thing he did was to drink his guest's
health, and the second to help himself to a cigar from the latter's
case. A comfortable hassock had been supplied Burgo on which to rest
his lame ankle, and as he basked in front of the little fire he told
himself that the "Golden Owl" was a bird of which he should retain a
pleasant recollection as long as he lived.
"And which is the most picturesque and interesting mansion, castle, or
ruin within an easy walk of Crag End, Mr. Tyson?" queried Burgo, after
having duly tested the quality of his grog.
"Well, sir, I'm afraid we're rather destitute hereabouts of the things
you speak of. After you've sketched Garion Keep you'll find nothing
worth looking at nearer than Kippsley Castle, eight miles away."
"And this Garion Keep that you speak of, is it a ruin, or does any one
live in it?
"It had been in a partially ruinous condition for longer than I
remember it till about a year ago, when the present owner, Sir Everard
Clinton, took into his head to have it thoroughly restored and made
fit to live in."
"With the usual result, I suppose, of spoiling its old-time
picturesqueness. But I seem to know the name of Sir Everard Clinton.
Was he not married a few months ago to a lady much younger than
himself?"
"The same man, sir. Report has it that he's a good bit over sixty,
whereas the lady looks young enough to be his daughter."
"So I have been told: such things get talked about in London. And are
Sir Everard and his wife now in residence at the Keep?"
"They came down about a fortnight ago, all in a hurry--at least
they never sent word to Farmer Jellicoe, who had the keys and the
looking-after of the place, that they were coming, and so, of course,
nothing had been got ready for them. Next day, however, half a dozen
or more servants followed them from London, though why the servants
couldn't have been sent on first and have got things shipshape for
their master and mistress is what I for one don't profess to
understand."
But Burgo understood.
Polly's information had proved to be correct; his uncle had been
brought to the Keep, and at that moment he, Burgo, was less than a
mile away from him. For a few moments, although he seemed to be
puffing placidly at his cigar, he was too inwardly agitated to trust
himself to speak.
It was the landlord who first broke the silence.
"They do say there's no finer air anywhere than our Cumberland air,"
he remarked; "so let us hope it'll do the poor gentleman good and help
to set him on his legs again."
"Sir Everard was ill when he arrived at the Keep, was he?"
"Mortal bad, sir. At Oakbarrow station he had to be carried from the
railway carriage to Jim Wilson's fly--the same that brought you,
sir--by Jim and his valet, and from the fly into the house when they
reached the Keep."
"That was a fortnight ago. Do you know whether Sir Everard's health
has improved in the meanwhile?"
The landlord shook his head. "They're very close up at the Keep--for
one thing, perhaps, because the servants are all stuck-up Londoners,
and very little news is allowed to leak out. It seems certain that the
poor gentleman has never been outside the house since he was carried
into it; but there's a roomy lawn between the house and the edge of
the cliff, and a sea-wall with a sheltered walk behind it, and mayhap
on fine days he might be found out there, if one really knew."
"Has he no medical man attending him?"
"Oh, yes, sir, Dr. Rapp was sent for the very day after Sir Everard
arrived, and every morning he jogs over from Oakbarrow on his brown
mare, passing here again on his way back about three-quarters of an
hour later."
"But even if poor Sir Everard is too ill to leave the house, that
seems no reason why his wife should not be seen out of doors now and
then."
"She is seen out of doors now and then, sir; I never said she wasn't.
The family brought neither horses nor carriages with them, but her
ladyship has hired a barouche and pair from the King's Arms' at
Oakbarrow, in which she and Miss Roylance take the air on most fine
afternoons."
Mr. Brabazon pricked up his ears. "Miss---- I didn't quite catch the
young lady's name."
"Miss Roylance, sir, who is said to be her ladyship's ward, or niece,
or something of that kind. She arrived at the Keep a couple of days
after the family, and has been staying there ever since."
Burgo had never heard Miss Roylance's name before which was scarcely
to be wondered at.
"Almost on the heels of Miss Roylance another visitor, a gentleman
this time, made his appearance at the Keep," resumed the landlord, "so
like her ladyship both in features and expression, only that he must
be several years the elder of the two, that one hardly needed to be
told he was her brother. His name, sir, did you say? It's a foreign
one; they say her ladyship is a foreigner born, though she speaks
English as well as you or I. He calls himself Siggnor--Siggnor--hang
me if I can remember the name! nor, if I did, am I rightly sure how to
pronounce it. Anyhow, he's a fine-looking man, nobody can deny that,
but with something in his face that made me say to myself the first
time I clapped eyes on him: 'If you owed me a grudge, you're not the
sort I should care to meet face to face in a lonely road, and you with
a dagger hidden about you.' But of course that was merely a foolish
fancy on my part; for no doubt the gentleman's as harmless as my pet
canary. He seems fond of taking long walks on the cliffs, or across
the moors, his only companions at such times being two big, fierce
dogs of some foreign breed, which, carefully muzzled, follow him about
wherever he goes. At night, however--so I've been told--they are
unmuzzled and turned loose in the courtyard."
After this the men smoked awhile in silence.
It seemed clear to Burgo that he had picked up a lot of information
which, even if it should ultimately prove of little real value, had at
all events served to put him _au courant_ with affairs at the Keep so
far as outsiders had any cognisance of them.
"You said just now," he presently remarked aloud, "that Sir Everard
Clinton had caused the Keep to be put in thorough repair, but I
suppose all that was arranged for some considerable time before his
marriage?"
"Oh, yes, sir. It was some time in the spring of last year that he
wrote to a firm in Whitehaven specifying what he wanted doing to the
old house; but it was not till after he was married, that is to say,
about three months ago, that he was at the trouble to come and see
whether his orders had been carried out in a way to satisfy him. He
and his bride--I heard they had only been married two or three weeks
before--came down from London, staying a couple of nights at
Oakbarrow, and driving over to the Keep during the day. It was then
that the Baronet gave orders about the laying out of the grounds and
the furnishing and fitting up of the old place, so that it seemed only
natural to suppose he intended to make it his home for at least a part
of the year."
Here was a point cleared up which had puzzled Burgo more than enough.
When Lady Clinton decided upon bringing her husband to Garion Keep she
had known quite well what she was about. That two days' visit had made
her sufficiently acquainted with the place to enable her to judge how
far it could be utilised for the furtherance of her secret designs.