ODD STORY OF CAPTAIN DUGGLE!
Christmas Day, 1918, was a merry feast, and nowhere merrier than at Old
Place. There was a house-party and, for dinner on the day itself, a
local contingent as well: Miss Wall, the Irechesters, Mr. Penrose, and
Doctor Mary. Mr. Beaumaroy also had been invited by Mrs. Naylor; she
considered him an interesting man and felt pity for the obvious tedium
of his situation; but he had not felt able to leave his old friend.
Doctor Mary's Paying Guest was of the house-party, not merely a dinner
guest. She was asked over to spend three days and went, accompanied by
Jeanne, who by this time was crying much less; crying was no longer the
cue; her mistress, and not merely stern Doctor Mary, had plainly shown
her that. Gertie Naylor had invited Cynthia to help her in entertaining
the subalterns, though Gertie was really quite equal to that task
herself; there were only three of them, and if a pretty girl is not
equal to three subalterns--well, what are we coming to in England? And,
as it turned out, Miss Gertie had to deal with them all--sometimes
collectively, sometimes one by one--practically unassisted. Cynthia was
otherwise engaged. Gertie complained neither of the cause nor of its
consequence.
The drink--or drugs--hypothesis was exploded, and Miss Wall's
speculations set at rest, with a quite comforting solatium of romantic
and unhappy interest--"a nice titbit for the old cat," as Mr. Naylor
unkindly put it. Cynthia had told her story; she wanted a richer
sympathy than Doctor Mary's common sense afforded; out of this need the
revelation came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with the
narrator's tacit approval, ran through the family and its intimate
friends. If Cynthia had been as calculating as she was guileless, she
could not have done better for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, old
Naylor's courtliness, Gertie's breathless concern and avid appetite for
the fullest detail, everybody's desire to console and cheer--all these
were at her service, all enlisted in the effort to make her forget, and
live and laugh again. Her heart responded; she found herself becoming
happy at a rate which made her positively ashamed. No wonder tactful
Jeanne discovered that the cue was changed!
Fastidious old Naylor regarded his wife with the affection of habit and
with a little disdain for the ordinariness of her virtues--not to say
of the mind which they adorned. His daughter was to him a precious toy,
on which he tried jokes, played tricks, and lavished gifts, for the joy
of seeing the prettiness of her reactions to his treatment. It never
occurred to him to think that his toy might be broken; fond as he was,
his feeling for her lacked the apprehensiveness of the deepest love. But
he idolized his son, and in this case neither without fear nor without
understanding. For four years now he had feared for him bitterly: for
his body, for his life. At every waking hour his inner cry had been even
as David's, "Would God I had died for thee, my son, my son!" For at
every moment of those four years it might be that his son was even then
dead. That terror, endured under a cool and almost off-hand demeanour,
was past; but he feared for his son still. Of all who went to the war as
Crusaders, none had the temperament more ardently than Alec. As he went,
so--obviously--he had come back, not disillusioned, nay, with all his
illusions, or delusions, about this wicked world and its possibilities,
about the people who dwell in it and their lamentable limitations,
stronger in his mind than ever. How could he get through life without
being too sore hurt and wounded, without being cut to the very quick by
his inevitable discoveries? Old Naylor did not see how it was to be
done, or even hoped for; but the right kind of wife was unquestionably
the best chance.
He had cast a speculative eye on Cynthia Walford--Irechester had caught
him at it--but, as he observed her more, she did not altogether satisfy
him. Alec needed someone more stable, stronger, someone in a sense
protective; somebody more like Mary Arkroyd; that idea passed through
his thoughts; if only Mary would take the trouble to dress herself,
remember that she was--or might be made--an attractive young woman;
and--yes, throw her mortar and pestle out of the window--without,
however, discarding with them the sturdy, sane, balanced qualities of
mind which enabled her to handle them with such admirable competence.
But he soon had to put this idea from him. His son's own impulse was to
give, not to seek, protection and support.
Of Cynthia's woeful experience Alec had spoken to his father once only.
"It makes me mad to think the fellow who did that wore a British
uniform!"
How unreasonable! Since by all the laws of average, when millions of men
are wearing a uniform, there must be some rogues in it. But it was
Alec's way to hold himself responsible for the whole of His Majesty's
Forces. Their honour was his; for their misdeeds he must in his own
person make reparation. "That fellow Beaumaroy may have lost his
conscience, but my boy seems to have acquired five million," the old man
grumbled to himself--a grumble full of pride.
The father might analyse; with Alec it was all impulse--the impulse to
soothe, to obliterate, to atone. The girl had been sore hurt; with the
acuteness of sympathy he divined that she felt herself in a way soiled
and stained by contact with unworthiness and by a too easy acceptance of
it. All that must be swept out of her heart, out of her very memory, if
it could be.
Doctor Mary saw what was happening, and with a little pang to which she
would not have liked to own. She had set love affairs, and all the
notions connected therewith, behind her; but she had idealized Alec
Naylor a little; and she thought Cynthia, in homely phrase, "hardly good
enough." Was it not rather perverse that the very fact of having been a
little goose should help her to win so rare a swan?
"You're taking my patient out of my hands, Captain Alec!" she said to
him jokingly. "And you're devoting great attention to the case."
He flushed. "She seems to like to talk to me," he answered simply. "She
seems to me to have rather a remarkable mind, Doctor Mary." (She was
"Doctor Mary" to all the Old Place party now--in affection, with a touch
of chaff.)
_O sancta simplicitas!_ Mary longed to say that Cynthia was a very
ordinary child. Like to talk to him, indeed! Of course she did; and to
use her girl's weapons on him; and to wonder, in an almost awestruck
delight, at their effect on this dazzling hero. Well, the guilelessness
of heroes!
So mused Mary, on the unprofessional side of her mind, as she watched,
that Christmas-tide, Captain Alec's delicate, sensitively indirect and
delayed approach towards the ripe fruit that hung so ready to his hand.
"Part of his chivalry to assume she can't think of him yet!" Mary was
half impatient, half reluctantly admiring; not an uncommon mixture of
feeling for the extreme forms of virtue to produce. In the net result,
however, her mental image of Alec lost something of its heroic
proportions.
But professionally (the distinction must not be pushed too far, she was
not built in water-tight compartments) Tower Cottage remained
obstinately in the centre of her thoughts; and, connected with it, there
arose a puzzle over Dr. Irechester's demeanour. She had taken advantage
of Beaumaroy's permission--though rather doubtful whether she was doing
right, for she was still inexperienced in niceties of etiquette--and
sent on the letter, with a frank note explaining her own feelings and
the reason which had caused her to pay her visit to Mr. Saffron. But
though Irechester was quite friendly when they met at Old Place before
dinner, and talked freely to her during a rather prolonged period of
waiting (Captain Alec and Cynthia, Gertie and two subalterns were very
late, having apparently forgotten dinner in more refined delights), he
made no reference to the letters, nor to Tower Cottage or its inmates.
Mary herself was too shy to break the ice, but wondered at his silence,
and the more because the matter evidently had not gone out of his mind.
For, after dinner, when the port had gone round once and the proper
healths been honoured, he said across the table to Mr. Penrose:
"We were talking the other day of the Tower--on the heath, you know, by
old Saffron's cottage--and none of us knew its history. You know all
about Inkston from time out o' mind. Have you got any story about it?"
Mr. Penrose practised as a solicitor in London, but lived in a little
old house near the Irechesters' in the village street, and devoted his
leisure to the antiquities and topography of the neighbourhood; his lore
was plentiful and curious, if not important. He was a small, neat old
fellow, with white whiskers of the antique cut, a thin voice, and a dry
cackling laugh.
"There was a story about it, and one quite fit for Christmas evening,
if you're in the mood to hear it."
The thin voice was penetrating. At the promise of a story silence fell
on the company, and Mr. Penrose told his tale, vouching as his authority
an erstwhile "oldest inhabitant," now gathered to his fathers; for the
tale dated back some eighty years, to the date of the ancient's early
manhood.
A seafaring man had suddenly appeared, out of space, as it were, at
Inkston, and taken the cottage. He carried with him a strong smell of
rum and tobacco, and gave it to be understood that his name was Captain
Duggle. He was no beauty, and his behaviour was worse than his looks. To
that quiet village, in those quiet strait-laced times, he was a horror
and a portent. He not only drank prodigiously--that, being in character
and also a source of local profit, might have passed with mild
censure--but he swore and blasphemed horribly, spurning the parson,
mocking at Revelation, even at the Deity Himself. The Devil was his
friend, he said. A most terrible fellow, this Captain Duggle. Inkston's
hair stood on end, and no wonder!
"No doubt they shivered with delight over it all," commented Mr. Naylor.
Captain Duggle lived all by himself--well, what God-fearing Christian,
male or female, would be found to live with him?--came and went
mysteriously and capriciously, always full of money, and at least
equally full of drink. What he did with himself nobody knew, but evil
legends gathered about him. Terrified wayfarers, passing the cottage by
night, took oath that they had heard more than one voice!
"This is proper Christmas!" a subaltern interjected into Gertie's ear.
Mr. Penrose, with an air of gratification, continued his narrative.
"The story goes on to tell," he said, "of a final interview with the
village clergyman, in which that reverend man, as in duty bound,
solemnly told Captain Duggle that, however much he might curse, and
blaspheme, and drink, and--er--do all the other things that the Captain
did" (Obviously here Mr. Penrose felt hampered by the presence of
ladies), "yet Death, Judgment, and Churchyard waited for him at last.
Whereupon the Captain, emitting an inconceivably terrific imprecation,
which no one ever dared to repeat and which consequently is lost to
tradition, declared that the first he'd never feared, the second was
parson's gabble, and as to the third, never should his dead toes be
nearer any church than for the last forty years his living feet had
been! If so be as he wasn't drowned at sea, he'd make a grave for
himself!"
Mr. Penrose paused, sipped port wine, and resumed.
"And so, no doubt, he did, building the Tower for that purpose. By
bribes and threats he got two men to work for him. One was the uncle of
my informant. But though he built that Tower, and inside it dug his
grave, he never lay there, being, as things turned out, carried off by
the Devil. Oh, yes, there was no doubt! He went home one night--a
Saturday--very drunk, as usual. On the Sunday night a belated
wayfarer--possibly also drunk--heard wild shrieks and saw a strange red
glow through the window of the Tower--now, by the way, boarded up. And
no doubt he'd have smelt brimstone if the wind hadn't set the wrong way!
Anyhow Captain Duggle was never seen again by mortal eyes--at Inkston,
at all events. After a time the landlord of the cottage screwed up his
courage to resume possession--the Captain had only a lease of it, though
he built the Tower at his own charges, and, I believe, without any
permission, the landlord being much too frightened to interfere with
him. He found everything in a sad mess there, while in the Tower itself
every blessed stick had been burnt up. So the story looks pretty
plausible."
"And the grave?" This question came eagerly from at least three of the
company.
"In front of the fireplace there was a big oblong hole--six feet by
three feet by four--planks at the bottom, the sides roughly lined with
brick. Captain Duggle's grave; but he wasn't in it!"
"But what really became of him, Mr. Penrose?" cried Cynthia.
"The Rising Generation is very sceptical," said old Naylor. "You, of
course, Penrose, believe the story?"
"I do," said Mr. Penrose composedly. "I believe that a devil carried him
off--and that its name was _delirium tremens_. We can guess--can't we,
Irechester?--why he smashed or burnt everything, and fled in mad terror
into the darkness. Where to? Was he drowned at sea, or did he take his
life, or did he rot to death in some filthy hole? Nobody knows. But the
grave he dug is there in the Tower--unless it's been filled up since old
Saffron has lived there."
"Why in the world wasn't it filled up before?" asked Alec Naylor, with a
laugh. "People lived in the cottage, didn't they?"
"I've visited the cottage often," Irechester interposed, "when various
people had it, but I never saw any signs of the Tower being used."
"It never was, I'm sure; and as for the grave--well, Alec, in country
parts, to this day, you'd be thought a bold man if you filled up a
grave that your neighbour had dug for himself--and such a neighbour as
Captain Duggle! He might take it into his head some night to visit it,
and if he found it filled up there'd be trouble--nasty trouble!" His
laugh cackled out rather uncomfortably. Gertie shivered, and one of the
subalterns gulped down his port.
"Old Saffron's a man of education, I believe. No doubt he pays no heed
to such nonsense, and has had the thing covered up," said Naylor.
"As to that I don't know. Perhaps you do, Irechester? He's your patient,
isn't he?"
Dr. Irechester sat four places from Mary. Before he replied to the
question he cast a glance at her, smiling rather mockingly. "I've
attended him on one or two occasions, but I've never seen the inside of
the Tower. So I don't know either."
"Oh, but I'm curious! I shall ask Mr. Beaumaroy," cried Cynthia.
The ironical character of Irechester's smile grew more pronounced, and
his voice was at its driest: "Certainly you can ask Beaumaroy, Miss
Walford. As far as asking goes, there's no difficulty."
A pause followed this pointed remark, on which nobody seemed disposed to
comment. Mrs. Naylor ended the session by rising from her chair.
But Mary Arkroyd was disquieted, worried as to how she stood with
Irechester, vaguely but insistently worried over the whole Tower
Cottage business. Well, the first point she could soon settle--or try to
settle, anyhow.
With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was made
up, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; her
resolute approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himself
isolated for the moment from everybody except Mary.
"You got my letter, Dr. Irechester? I--I rather expected an answer."
"Your conduct was so obviously and punctiliously correct," he replied
suavely, "that I thought my answer could wait till I met you here
to-day, as I knew that I was to have the pleasure of doing." He looked
her full in the eyes. "You were placed--placed, my dear colleague--in a
position in which you had no alternative."
"I thought so, Dr. Irechester, but----"
"Oh yes, clearly! I'm far from making any complaint." He gave her a
courteous little bow, but it was one which plainly closed the subject.
Indeed he passed by her and joined a group that had gathered on the
hearthrug, leaving her alone.
So she stood for a moment, oppressed by a growing uneasiness. Irechester
said nothing, but surely meant something of import? He mocked her, but
not idly or out of wantonness. He seemed almost to warn her. What could
there be to warn her about? He had laid an odd emphasis on the word
"placed"; he had repeated it. Who had "placed" her there? Mr. Saffron?
Or Mr.----?
Alec Naylor broke in on her uneasy meditation. "It's a clinking night,
Doctor Mary," he observed. "Do you mind if I walk Miss Walford
home--instead of her going with you in your car, you know? It's only a
couple of miles and----"
"Do you think your leg can stand it?"
He laughed. "I'll cut the thing off, if it dares to make any
objection!"