“You musn't mind,” he said. “I expect the run tired you. My good lady is
sitting there under the copper beech.”
She was a fat woman in an apricot-coloured gown, with a heavily powdered
face, against which her black long-lashed eyes showed like currants
in dough. I was introduced to many fine ladies and gentlemen of those
parts. Magnificently appointed landaus and covered motors swept in and
out of the drive, and the air was gay with the merry outcries of the
tennis players.
As twilight drew on they all went away, and I was left alone with Mr.
and Mrs. M'Leod, while tall menservants and maidservants took away the
tennis and tea things. Miss M'Leod had walked a little down the drive
with a light-haired young man, who apparently knew everything about
every South American railway stock. He had told me at tea that these
were the days of financial specialisation.
“I think it went off beautifully, my dear,” said Mr. M'Leod to his wife;
and to me: “You feel all right now, ain't it? Of course you do.”
Mrs. M'Leod surged across the gravel. Her husband skipped nimbly before
her into the south verandah, turned a switch, and all Holmescroft was
flooded with light.
“You can do that from your room also,” he said as they went in. “There
is something in money, ain't it?”
Miss M'Leod came up behind me in the dusk. “We have not yet been
introduced,” she said, “but I suppose you are staying the night?”
“Your father was kind enough to ask me,” I replied.
She nodded. “Yes, I know; and you know too, don't you? I saw your face
when you came to shake hands with mamma. You felt the depression very
soon. It is simply frightful in that bedroom sometimes. What do you
think it is--bewitchment? In Greece, where I was a little girl, it might
have been; but not in England, do you think? Or do you?”
“Cheer up, Thea. It will all come right,” he insisted.
“No, papa.” She shook her dark head. “Nothing is right while it comes.”
“It is nothing that we ourselves have ever done in our lives that I
will swear to you,” said Mrs. M'Leod suddenly. “And we have changed our
servants several times. So we know it is not them.”
“Never mind. Let us enjoy ourselves while we can,” said Mr. M'Leod,
opening the champagne.
But we did not enjoy ourselves. The talk failed. There were long
silences.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, for I thought some one at my elbow was
about to speak.
“Ah! That is the other thing!” said Miss M'Leod. Her mother groaned.
We were silent again, and, in a few seconds it must have been, a live
grief beyond words--not ghostly dread or horror, but aching, helpless
grief--overwhelmed us, each, I felt, according to his or her nature,
and held steady like the beam of a burning glass. Behind that pain I was
conscious there was a desire on somebody's part to explain something on
which some tremendously important issue hung.
Meantime I rolled bread pills and remembered my sins; M'Leod considered
his own reflection in a spoon; his wife seemed to be praying, and the
girl fidgetted desperately with hands and feet, till the darkness passed
on--as though the malignant rays of a burning-glass had been shifted
from us.
“There,” said Miss M'Leod, half rising. “Now you see what makes a happy
home. Oh, sell it--sell it, father mine, and let us go away!”
“But I've spent thousands on it. You shall go to Harrogate next week,
Thea dear.”
“I'm only just back from hotels. I am so tired of packing.”
“Cheer up, Thea. It is over. You know it does not often come here twice
in the same night. I think we shall dare now to be comfortable.”
He lifted a dish-cover, and helped his wife and daughter. His face was
lined and fallen like an old man's after debauch, but his hand did not
shake, and his voice was clear. As he worked to restore us by speech
and action, he reminded me of a grey-muzzled collie herding demoralised
sheep.
After dinner we sat round the dining-room fire--the drawing-room might
have been under the Shadow for aught we knew--talking with the intimacy
of gipsies by the wayside, or of wounded comparing notes after a
skirmish. By eleven o'clock the three between them had given me every
name and detail they could recall that in any way bore on the house, and
what they knew of its history.
We went to bed in a fortifying blaze of electric light. My one fear was
that the blasting gust of depression would return--the surest way,
of course, to bring it. I lay awake till dawn, breathing quickly and
sweating lightly, beneath what De Quincey inadequately describes as
“the oppression of inexpiable guilt.” Now as soon as the lovely day was
broken, I fell into the most terrible of all dreams--that joyous one in
which all past evil has not only been wiped out of our lives, but has
never been committed; and in the very bliss of our assured innocence,
before our loves shriek and change countenance, we wake to the day we
have earned.
It was a coolish morning, but we preferred to breakfast in the south
verandah. The forenoon we spent in the garden, pretending to play games
that come out of boxes, such as croquet and clock golf. But most of the
time we drew together and talked. The young man who knew all about South
American railways took Miss M'Leod for a walk in the afternoon, and at
five M'Leod thoughtfully whirled us all up to dine in town.
“Now, don't say you will tell the Psychological Society, and that you
will come again,” said Miss M'Leod, as we parted. “Because I know you
will not.”
“You should not say that,” said her mother. “You should say, 'Goodbye,
Mr. Perseus. Come again.'”
“Not him!” the girl cried. “He has seen the Medusa's head!”
Looking at myself in the restaurant's mirrors, it seemed to me that I
had not much benefited by my week-end. Next morning I wrote out all
my Holmescroft notes at fullest length, in the hope that by so doing
I could put it all behind me. But the experience worked on my mind, as
they say certain imperfectly understood rays work on the body.
I am less calculated to make a Sherlock Holmes than any man I know,
for I lack both method and patience, yet the idea of following up the
trouble to its source fascinated me. I had no theory to go on, except
a vague idea that I had come between two poles of a discharge, and had
taken a shock meant for some one else. This was followed by a feeling
of intense irritation. I waited cautiously on myself, expecting to be
overtaken by horror of the supernatural, but my self persisted in
being humanly indignant, exactly as though it had been the victim of
a practical joke. It was in great pains and upheavals--that I felt in
every fibre but its dominant idea, to put it coarsely, was to get back
a bit of its own. By this I knew that I might go forward if I could find
the way.
After a few days it occurred to me to go to the office of Mr. J.M.M.
Baxter--the solicitor who had sold Holmescroft to M'Leod. I explained I
had some notion of buying the place. Would he act for me in the matter?
Mr. Baxter, a large, greyish, throaty-voiced man, showed no enthusiasm.
“I sold it to Mr. M'Leod,” he said. “It 'ud scarcely do for me to start
on the running-down tack now. But I can recommend--”
“I know he's asking an awful price,” I interrupted, “and atop of it he
wants an extra thousand for what he calls your clean bill of health.”
Mr. Baxter sat up in his chair. I had all his attention.
“Your guarantee with the house. Don't you remember it?”
“Yes, yes. That no death had taken place in the house since it was
built: I remember perfectly.”
He did not gulp as untrained men do when they lie, but his jaws moved
stickily, and his eyes, turning towards the deed boxes on the wall,
dulled. I counted seconds, one, two, three--one, two, three up to ten. A
man, I knew, can live through ages of mental depression in that time.
“I remember perfectly.” His mouth opened a little as though it had
tasted old bitterness.
“Of course that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me.” I went on. “I don't
expect to buy a house free from death.”
“Certainly not. No one does. But it was Mr. M'Leod's fancy--his wife's
rather, I believe; and since we could meet it--it was my duty to my
clients at whatever cost to my own feelings--to make him pay.”
“That's really why I came to you. I understood from him you knew the
place well.”
“Oh, yes. Always did. It originally belonged to some connections of
mine.”
“The Misses Moultrie, I suppose. How interesting! They must have loved
the place before the country round about was built up.”
“They were very fond of it indeed.”
“I don't wonder. So restful and sunny. I don't see how they could have
brought themselves to part with it.”
Now it is one of the most constant peculiarities of the English that in
polite conversation--and I had striven to be polite--no one ever does or
sells anything for mere money's sake.
“Miss Agnes--the youngest--fell ill” (he spaced his words a little),
“and, as they were very much attached to each other, that broke up the
home.”
“Naturally. I fancied it must have been something of that kind.
One doesn't associate the Staffordshire Moultries” (my Demon of
Irresponsibility at that instant created 'em), “with--with being hard
up.”
“I don't know whether we're related to them,” he answered importantly.
“We may be, for our branch of the family comes from the Midlands.”
I give this talk at length, because I am so proud of my first attempt at
detective work. When I left him, twenty minutes later, with instructions
to move against the owner of Holmescroft, with a view to purchase, I was
more bewildered than any Doctor Watson at the opening of a story.
Why should a middle-aged solicitor turn plovers' egg colour and drop his
jaw when reminded of so innocent and festal a matter as that no death
had ever occurred in a house that he had sold? If I knew my English
vocabulary at all, the tone in which he said the youngest sister “fell
ill” meant that she had gone out of her mind. That might explain his
change of countenance, and it was just possible that her demented
influence still hung about Holmescroft; but the rest was beyond me.
I was relieved when I reached M'Leod's City office, and could tell him
what I had done--not what I thought.
M'Leod was quite willing to enter into the game of the pretended
purchase, but did not see how it would help if I knew Baxter.
“He's the only living soul I can get at who was connected with
Holmescroft,” I said.
“Ah! Living soul is good,” said M'Leod. “At any rate our little girl
will be pleased that you are still interested in us. Won't you come down
some day this week?”
“How is it there now?” I asked.
He screwed up his face. “Simply frightful!” he said. “Thea is at
Droitwich.”
“I should like it immensely, but I must cultivate Baxter for the
present. You'll be sure and keep him busy your end, won't you?”
He looked at me with quiet contempt. “Do not be afraid. I shall be a
good Jew. I shall be my own solicitor.”
Before a fortnight was over, Baxter admitted ruefully that M'Leod
was better than most firms in the business: We buyers were coy,
argumentative, shocked at the price of Holmescroft, inquisitive, and
cold by turns, but Mr. M'Leod the seller easily met and surpassed us;
and Mr. Baxter entered every letter, telegram, and consultation at the
proper rates in a cinematograph-film of a bill. At the end of a month
he said it looked as though M'Leod, thanks to him, were really going
to listen to reason. I was many pounds out of pocket, but I had learned
something of Mr. Baxter on the human side. I deserved it. Never in my
life have I worked to conciliate, amuse, and flatter a human being as I
worked over my solicitor.
It appeared that he golfed. Therefore, I was an enthusiastic beginner,
anxious to learn. Twice I invaded his office with a bag (M'Leod lent it)
full of the spelicans needed in this detestable game, and a vocabulary
to match. The third time the ice broke, and Mr. Baxter took me to his
links, quite ten miles off, where in a maze of tramway lines, railroads,
and nursery-maids, we skelped our divotted way round nine holes like
barges plunging through head seas. He played vilely and had never
expected to meet any one worse; but as he realised my form, I think
he began to like me, for he took me in hand by the two hours together.
After a fortnight he could give me no more than a stroke a hole, and
when, with this allowance, I once managed to beat him by one, he was
honestly glad, and assured me that I should be a golfer if I stuck
to it. I was sticking to it for my own ends, but now and again my
conscience pricked me; for the man was a nice man. Between games he
supplied me with odd pieces of evidence, such as that he had known the
Moultries all his life, being their cousin, and that Miss Mary, the
eldest, was an unforgiving woman who would never let bygones be.
I naturally wondered what she might have against him; and somehow
connected him unfavourably with mad Agnes.
“People ought to forgive and forget,” he volunteered one day between
rounds. “Specially where, in the nature of things, they can't be sure of
their deductions. Don't you think so?”
“It all depends on the nature of the evidence on which one forms one's
judgment,” I answered.
“Nonsense!” he cried. “I'm lawyer enough to know that there's nothing in
the world so misleading as circumstantial evidence. Never was.”
“Why? Have you ever seen men hanged on it?”
“Hanged? People have been supposed to be eternally lost on it,” his face
turned grey again. “I don't know how it is with you, but my consolation
is that God must know. He must! Things that seem on the face of 'em like
murder, or say suicide, may appear different to God. Heh?”
“That's what the murderer and the suicide can always hope--I suppose.”
“I have expressed myself clumsily as usual. The facts as God knows
'em--may be different--even after the most clinching evidence. I've
always said that--both as a lawyer and a man, but some people won't--I
don't want to judge 'em--we'll say they can't--believe it; whereas I
say there's always a working chance--a certainty--that the worst hasn't
happened.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Now, let's come on! This
time next week I shall be taking my holiday.”
“What links?” I asked carelessly, while twins in a perambulator got out
of our line of fire.
“A potty little nine-hole affair at a hydro in the Midlands. My cousins
stay there. Always will. Not but what the fourth and the seventh holes
take some doing. You could manage it, though,” he said encouragingly.
“You're doing much better. It's only your approach shots that are weak.”
“You're right. I can't approach for nuts! I shall go to pieces while
you're away--with no one to coach me,” I said mournfully.
“I haven't taught you anything,” he said, delighted with the compliment.
“I owe all I've learned to you, anyhow. When will you come back?”
“Look here,” he began. “I don't know, your engagements, but I've no one
to play with at Burry Mills. Never have. Why couldn't you take a few
days off and join me there? I warn you it will be rather dull. It's a
throat and gout place--baths, massage, electricity, and so forth. But the
fourth and the seventh holes really take some doing.”
“I'm for the game,” I answered valiantly; Heaven well knowing that I
hated every stroke and word of it.
“That's the proper spirit. As their lawyer I must ask you not to say
anything to my cousins about Holmescroft. It upsets 'em. Always did. But
speaking as man to man, it would be very pleasant for me if you could
see your way to--”
I saw it as soon as decency permitted, and thanked him sincerely.
According to my now well-developed theory he had certainly
misappropriated his aged cousins' monies under power of attorney, and
had probably driven poor Agnes Moultrie out of her wits, but I wished
that he was not so gentle, and good-tempered, and innocent eyed.
Before I joined him at Burry Mills Hydro, I spent a night at
Holmescroft. Miss M'Leod had returned from her Hydro, and first we made
very merry on the open lawn in the sunshine over the manners and customs
of the English resorting to such places. She knew dozens of hydros, and
warned me how to behave in them, while Mr. and Mrs. M'Leod stood aside
and adored her.
“Ah! That's the way she always comes back to us,” he said. “Pity it
wears off so soon, ain't it? You ought to hear her sing 'With mirth thou
pretty bird.'”
We had the house to face through the evening, and there we neither
laughed nor sung. The gloom fell on us as we entered, and did not shift
till ten o'clock, when we crawled out, as it were, from beneath it.
“It has been bad this summer,” said Mrs. M'Leod in a whisper after we
realised that we were freed. “Sometimes I think the house will get up
and cry out--it is so bad.”
“How?”
“Have you forgotten what comes after the depression?”
So then we waited about the small fire, and the dead air in the room
presently filled and pressed down upon us with the sensation (but words
are useless here) as though some dumb and bound power were striving
against gag and bond to deliver its soul of an articulate word. It
passed in a few minutes, and I fell to thinking about Mr. Baxter's
conscience and Agnes Moultrie, gone mad in the well-lit bedroom
that waited me. These reflections secured me a night during which I
rediscovered how, from purely mental causes, a man can be physically
sick; but the sickness was bliss compared to my dreams when the birds
waked. On my departure, M'Leod gave me a beautiful narwhal's horn, much
as a nurse gives a child sweets for being brave at a dentist's.
“There's no duplicate of it in the world,” he said, “else it would have
come to old Max M'Leod;” and he tucked it into the motor. Miss M'Leod
on the far side of the car whispered, “Have you found out anything, Mr.
Perseus?”