The House
I don’t suppose I was in the air a second, but there was time enough
for me to rue my neglect of Jack Bonnet’s invitation. Why hadn’t I
turned round and gone away from the Forest and let the oratory go
hang?
I was aware soon afterward that I was still alive in a queer place
under the shelter of the hilltop, a place all caved-in earth and
half-buried squarish rock, like heavy tombstones thickly lichened, and
resting, some of them, one upon the other. I was on my back with my
head on a pillow of fungi; beneath the pillow, however, was a
sufficiently flinty foundation. For a long time I remained supine, and
listened with interest while my heart gradually resumed a normal rate.
The upper tangle of the fog was just beyond and below me; yet when I
looked at the dark brink above, I realized that never, never could I
climb back at the spot where I had fallen. But I felt a great
gladness.
I explored the place little more than was necessary to get my
bearings. So upon regaining enough strength I commenced to creep along
the face of the cliff, now and then dipping into the region of the
mist and losing sight of the sky, which was growing desolate of light.
At length I found a slope where the grass was short and turf firm, a
sward. I went now at a pace between a walk and a run and congratulated
myself on making headway, though the brow of the ravine was forbidding
above me still. Then the bank became startlingly overgrown with trees,
and the drizzle was thicker among them.
I slowed to a snail’s pace, and that was well for me. All too soon my
foot gave way on the left-hand edge of a mass of undergrowth quite
impenetrable to sight. I struggled to take hold of something, did, in
fact, grasp stems that yielded instantly to my weight, for they were
frail and grew on a perpendicular face of earth. Once more I had the
exquisitely dreadful sensation of falling whither I could not tell. My
body ripped down through a mesh and tangle of shrubs that availed
almost nothing to stay my descent. I accelerated.
Then my ribs struck a goodly branch with a knock that did indeed break
my fall, but before I could twine an arm about this saviour, I had
jounced to a lower branch, thence to the ground, this time with only a
moderate jar.
I was on a narrow rocky path with the densely overgrown hill on one
hand and the mist of the Vale—yawning space—on the other. I thought
for a flash that I had invaded the home-ledge of some unrecorded ape
or gorilla. For a creature cried out in my very face, a man coming up,
as it were, out of the living rock of the path before me. He was
fustian-clad, heavy-set, dark-featured, scowling frightfully, and my
impression was that he was almost spent of breath. His mouth gaped in
a rictus of strain and fear.
“Mawkerdjey—immilath acowal!” So they sounded, the words he spat in my
face, the shout he shouted uninterpretable by my English ears in that
cranny of Wales. But meaningless as was the shout to me, it remained
clear in my auditive memory, as a scene sometimes is keenly limned in
one’s inattentive sight. And I was sure it was not Welsh. Nor was this
because Radnorshire is a backsliding county where the ancient language
has yielded to the new. The shape and stress of the cry were unlike
what speech I have heard in the remoter areas where Welsh is still
spoken.
In an instant the fellow had scuffled past me and was ascending in the
fog, while yet I leaned on my hand with buzzing senses and jerky mind.
I staggered to my feet and looked upward along the path. At the head
of the rise a glimmer of sea-green sunset-light lingered, and the
broad bulk of the man staggered against that semi-darkness, a
diminishing silhouette. At length I saw him reach the top of the rise,
throw up his hands in a sort of gesture of weary achievement, and
disappear to the uplands beyond.
Excitedly, and full of profitless conjecture as to what might be his
business upon the rolling solitudes of Aidenn Forest, I turned on my
way down the zigzag path, being resolved to explore the Vale for
shelter since now it was hopeless to make my way over the fells and
crags to my Welsh tavern lodging that night. The outcry of the
ape-like man was still distinct in my ears, an undecipherable shout,
one, I knew, strange even in this region of strange tongues.
I had paused, arrested by a sound the like of which I have never
known, a roaring sound, not the boom of cannon or the rage of water or
the thunder of avalanche, all of which I have heard. It came from
below and far away, a gentle roar; I thought it might be some
superhuman voice. As a fact, while I listened, I became convinced that
it was a voice of great power with something unique and quite baffling
in its quality, one full capable of terrifying a man of unsteady
nerves. Yet I was sure that in a different context I would recognize
that quality as a natural thing. The muffled echoes of the voice
rocked around the Vale; words I am sure there were, the same phrase or
sentence repeated many times, but the utmost strain of ear and
faculties did not enable me to distinguish the meaning of a syllable.
Then the distant shout and its reflections ceased, and I heard only
the still grasses. I went on, full of living fancies.
A new sound greeted me out of the darkness, the rippling song of a
nightingale on my right beyond the brink. The trees in the depths of
Aidenn Vale, then, must be near below. And presently finding almost
level ground, I heard the chuckle of water, and discerned a lofty fall
of dulled silver, indeed passed it so close that the rising spray
touched my cheek. Thus I had found Aidenn Water, not far from its
springs on the shoulder of Black Mixen at the upper end of the
horseshoe.
Straining my sight in the clogged air, I could trace the black thread
of the watercourse on my right hand. Beside it I trod, to the broken
descant of amorous birds. And while I went the way of the stream south
among the wilding trees, the dark mist paled. I raised my eyes; great
Whimble hill loomed before me, and over its stern summit crept a
chipped and gibbous moon, softly lustering. While the moon went up the
sky, I trolled on southward in air grey and spectral under the
frowning summits of Aidenn Vale.
The pathway left the stream for a gentle rise through the trees. Still
I could hear Aidenn Water clamour down the Vale while it skipped
along. Soon I emerged from the thick of the wood into an open space,
the level summit of a vast mound, and with a certain freshening of
surprise found myself approaching a lonely wall built by human
strength.
A wall—no more—ruinous and desolate, toppled in many places from its
original height.
Passing closer, I discovered the confounded and scattered remnant of
other wasted walls, strewn like bones in the brightening glamour of
the moon. And midway among them stood one tree of mighty stature,
doubtless rendered even more towering by the witchery of mist and
moonlight.
Sometimes acoustic conditions prevent one from hearing what goes on
just round the corner only a few feet away. So, then, my path led me
toward the south-west end of the ruin, and precisely at the standing
angle of the stone I ran into another man. I did literally run into
him, for he was soft and spongy, and my first feeling was that I had
encountered a hot-water bottle strolling as leisurely as if on the
Mall.
We recoiled from a position cheek by jowl. A light flashed in my eyes,
and at the same instant I directed the glare of my pocket-torch, which
I still possessed, into his eyes. Our speeches, too, crossed each
other.
“Pardon! I didn’t hear you, sir!”
“What are you doing here?”
It was not the greeting I had expected; in fact, I felt it quite
discourteous. Moreover, he kept the spot-light of his dark-lantern
playing on my features for some time, and his piercing eyes studied me
critically. In return I gave his exterior a good scrutiny.
My light revealed a tall figure, appearing excessively, grotesquely
tall because it was wearing a very high, narrow top-hat, almost a
steeple-hat. The man was large and round as well as long. His face
compared with the rest of his body was relatively narrow; I saw
glittering eyes and a long, straight nose, eyebrows black like coals,
and a mantling, pointed beard, also very thick and fiercely black.
What gave me the creeps was that this beard did not grow quite
straight, but was tilted a little to the left.
His clothing, I saw in this long dissection, was that of an elderly
man, a black double-breasted frock-coat, not cutaway, and black
trousers which descended to elastic-sided boots. And under the arm
toward which the beard slanted was lodged an old, bulgy umbrella with
a large metal handle. He quickly shifted this article into his right
hand, grasping it toward the point so that it might be a weapon of
considerable moment, his left hand holding the dark-lantern.
He was the first to break the silence. Smiling, he replaced the
umbrella under his arm.
“Ah, pardon me, please. I see that you are on my side.” His voice, now
I noticed it, was rather deep, and yet rather young for one of his
solemn appearance.
“I’m sure I’m not against you,” I answered, and lowered my light out
of his eyes. He followed suit.
“You are one of the natives of this region?” he asked, and with his
question came the thought to me that he might be a foreigner, although
his full, somewhat throaty voice was perfectly assimilated to the
Anglican inflections. Those coat-skirts somehow gave him a little of a
Continental aspect—and that umbrella! Didn’t Schubert always carry an
umbrella? or was I thinking of Paul Pry?
“I should say not,” I responded. “I, too, am a stranger.”
“Ah, you, _too_? What a pity!”
“Yes, am I not correct in believing that you—”
“Quite so, sir; my name, sir, is Septimus MacWilloughby, and I was
taught not far from Birmingham. And now, sir, will you kindly tell me
what you have been doing here?”
“Been doing? Doing? Why, nothing, in the sense you seem to mean. And
have you any business with me? Isn’t it rather—?”
“It is necessary.”
“I lost my way in fog up there on the hilltops and came down into the
Vale in the hope of finding some sort of shelter. I was just passing
by this—”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. MacWilloughby, in what seemed to me a
rather meditative tone. “Tell me, please: in your travelling to-day
have you run across a very small grey spaniel, with ink-spots?”
I was reduced to repeating, “With ink-spots?”
“Yes, certainly: I repeat, a small grey spaniel, with ink-spots. The
dog was not to blame if the bottle was too near the edge of the table.
No, I see that you have not. Well then, by chance you may have seen a
pair of Scandinavian ponies, both lame in the off foreleg?”
“I certainly have not.”
“Dear me,” sighed my interlocutor. He stabbed the ground with his
umbrella, leaned upon it with both hands, large, red, bloated hands,
nervously twitching fat fingers. “And finally, did you notice whether
any snakes—”
I was growing exasperated, whether or not this _soi-disant_
MacWilloughby was making merry at my expense.
“Don’t you know,” I asked harshly, “that there are no snakes in
Radnorshire?”
“But these were from my menagerie. Dear me, my menagerie will be
dreadfully depleted, I fear. You didn’t—?”
“Look here,” I exploded; “have you a Bull of Bashan on your list? If
you have, your bull’s dead—I can tell you so much. With the exception
of a cave-man who was running up the path there, every animal I’ve
seen has been indigenous.”
“But snakes—from my menagerie,” he protested mildly, ignoring my tone.
He indicated with the umbrella and his free hand, for a pencil of
moonlight from rifted clouds had caused us both to stow away our
torches. “Snakes about so long.”
“No, no!”
He shrugged disappointedly. “Well! if it must be. Then you will tell
me, please, which of these hills”—he included them all with a sweep of
the umbrella—“is called Kerry Hill?”
“Why, none of them. Kerry Hill is outside this county, thirty miles
away.”
“Oh, so far away? Then I must be leaving at once. I have a friend who
lives in a little house on the top of that hill, and he will be
anxious for me.”
Whereupon Mr. MacWilloughby strode past me, but checked himself.
“Stay—what was that you said about a cave-man?”
I was willing to humour him a little longer. “Oh, I met _him_ right
enough. He shouted some gibberish in my face and passed me going to
the uplands.”
“Oh? Now that is very good. You may think it inexcusable of me, sir,
but I had the idea for a little while that you were that cave-man. I
asked you those questions partly to hear a little of your language.
Now, since you say Kerry Hill is so far, I really—”
He commenced to walk away, but I protested.
“I think it’s time you answered a question or two of mine. I don’t
know what possesses you to climb into that wilderness, even if your
whole menagerie is kicking its heels up there—they’ll keep. But you
can at least tell me what I’m likely to find further down the Vale.
Shall I find anyone there?”
The stranger’s face, in spite of its startling features, grew really
pleasant with a smile. “I believe you will find someone further down.
Yes, I believe you will find all you want.”
“I’m not looking for any special number of people,” I told him tartly.
“I want a house—shelter—a place to stop overnight. Am I clear?”
Mr. MacWilloughby seemed to have lost interest in his surroundings. In
answer to my question he murmured, “Yes, you are very likely to find a
house,” but his thought seemed to be running in other channels. He was
biting the beard of his nether lip. Suddenly he drew himself up. “You
might mention—if you decide to stop—to the master of the hostelry,
that his many watch-dogs are causing me inconvenience. Secretly, you
understand. All this you must tell him secretly. I enjoy the society
of the menagerie, and of many kinds of dogs—the Russian wolf-hound,
the Dalmatian—but I do not care for the two-legged kind he has out
to-night. It is not a thing I like to mention, you understand—it is so
delicate—but when one is actually precluded from stepping across a
stile—” Hand and umbrella made an expressive gesture. “You catch my
drift, I perceive.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him,” I remarked sardonically.
“You will?” he exclaimed with a parade of pleasure. “Then in that case
I shall not need protection against the rain.”
His arm shot out, and I saw the umbrella fly up like a thick javelin
through the air, to disappear beyond the wall beside which we stood.
“Another thing!” he cried, and I detected a real note of sincerity in
his tempestuous voice. “Tell the golden-haired woman that I have
warned her to beware of the blighter with the red face and the pot of
money. She should dismiss him—utterly. I have seen what I have seen.”
I emitted a dry “No doubt.”
“Thank you, sir, for your great courtesy,” said Mr. MacWilloughby. His
lofty hat he removed with a flowing ease; he bent his back in an
old-time inclination. Then in the fluctuating moonlight I saw not only
black beard and brows, but as well a wriggling mass of black hair. He
was smiling, but his smile now had a touch of wildness, even of
ghoulishness. He set his hat upon his brows again.
“I shall not need even finger-nails if I meet another like you,” he
said.
He turned on his heel and continued his stately promenade toward the
summit of the Vale. I watched him until the moon surrendered and the
mist had him. Where was he going? To join that prehistoric man on the
hill? And where in heaven’s name had he come _from_?
Mad? Was he mad? No more mad than I. I realized, the moment he had
projected his umbrella, that he was eminently sane. But he had
overplayed his part a little—for his audience.
Continuing on my southward way, I soon passed the site of what had
been the outer walls of this great castle, though now little remained
save one block of hewn stone upon another here and there. Most of the
material had probably been carried off to build some mansion of a
later age.
I left the ruin, advancing down the Vale, whose bounds of lofty crag
and hanger were darkly visible for a little while. But I could not
leave behind me the thought of the huge man and his eccentric
speeches. Only new surprises could reave that vision from me; and
presently, passing a large, white-painted, wood-gate, I was startled
to observe that although I was in a wilderness, it was an
extraordinarily well-ordered wilderness. The trees along the path, ash
and sycamore, I believed, stood at like distances from one another and
were spaced regularly opposite. I seemed to be marching along a smooth
avenue in a park; the remoter trees, too, although they were obscure
as fleeing ghosts, appeared to flee away in serried ranks. The spaces
in the glades looked clear of underbrush. I was glad to note these
signs, if signs they were, of human tending, with their suggestion of
human nearness, for even my refreshened strength was slipping away
from me and the welts and strains of my body were clamouring again.
Quicker than I had expected, I was out of the toy wilderness into a
clear space of thirty-odd yards (the dominant moon showed me this),
and Aidenn Water was roaming close beside my path. A brook going to
join the larger stream from some hill-recess on my left was crossed by
an old stone bridge with urns at the ends of its stone balustrades, a
ridiculously massive structure for so insignificant a watercourse. But
a few seconds later I passed another object built with overplus of
formality and ostentation, a semi-rustic house which could have been
no more than a summer-house, quite unsuited for habitation but freaked
and loaded with statuary and gewgaws.
“The eighteenth century!” I murmured. “What nightmares did they not
have in the Age of Reason? Am I now to find a geometrical mansion of
Georgian brick?”
I had entered a new zone of drizzle and mist when I had my first
evidence of the house appertaining hereto. The fog thickened almost to
the density of a wall, and when the well-ordered path ceased at the
edge of the lawns, I blundered against a tree trunk, one of three
standing alone in gloom and grandeur in the open space. I generously
cursed the spirits, whose exhalation, as every Welsh peasant used to
know, the mist is. By a flash of my torch I recognized the three
tapering shapes as horizontal cypresses, and at once I felt relief,
for I was sure that these none-too-hardy trees must be of a recent and
venturesome planting. I was becoming convinced that human lives were
not far from me.
A few steps more and I was standing on a pebble walk beneath the
shorter northern wall of a definitely up-to-date structure. The stone
may have been old stone, but it had been smoothed off within a
generation, and the ivy had evidently been somewhat restricted in its
rambling in order that the broad-spread glass of this storey might not
be effaced from the light. Why all this glass? A conservatory? I
stepped across the walk, flashed my torch, peered in, saw a glimmering
galaxy of flowers, sniffed and detected a hint of their thick odour,
was satisfied. A conservatory it was, extending from end to end of
this northern wall, with unlit, wide-paned windows from end to end
save where a steep outer stair led up to a small roofless platform and
door in the first storey; and I perceived a vague second storey, above
which chimneys sprouted.
Now, I should not have lingered here more than a few seconds, had not
there burst forth a chill sound that actually took me out of myself
for a moment, a caterwauling from somewhere behind me and further
toward the mountain wall of the ravine. It seemed impossible that such
a desecration of silence could proceed from a single throat. It was a
sobbing cry full of hunger, but there was positive anger and direness
in it. It had a quality, too, of immitigable anguish, as though all
the hopelessness of dumb beasts were its burden. Once the throbbing
cry subsided into a gruff growl, and then, strangely enough, was the
first time that I recognized its clamour as that of a cat. “But,” I
remembered thinking, “it must be a cat as big as a wolf.” And while
the last throes of the savage wailing echoed back from the hill, I
looked up to the gloomy heights of the mansion, as if I expected each
dark window to flare with inquiring light.
[Illustration: A map of the area surrounding Highglen House. Close to
the house are some ruins and the Stables. A road leads from the
stables, past the house, and then down the map. Off to the left is a
grove of strawberry trees, in the middle of which sits a hard tennis
court. At the top right corner of the map is a building labelled “Farm
of the sisters Delambre”. The farm sits close to a fence, which runs
across the map until it meets the river, labelled “Aidenn Water”. The
river runs down the left side of the map, turning briefly towards the
middle of the map where it crosses under the road. Between Highglen
House and the farm is a footpath, halfway along which it passes a
small structure labelled “18th Century Summer House”. A small brook
branches off of Aidenn Water which crosses the footpath at a small
bridge, and from there another footpath continues up the map, through
a gate in the fence, and beyond.]
In puzzlement and lively eagerness to discover more about this
mansion, I turned to the right and followed the walk to the corner of
the conservatory, where it joined a drive that wound out of the
right-hand darkness. I discovered that the side of the house extended
a hundred feet or more parallel to the course of Aidenn Water.
Visible, too, on the broad lawn at four or five rods’ distance from
the house was a tall, two-legged thing, fifty feet high by a rough
judgment, an erection of twin towers with a passageway above and
between, the whole standing lonely, dark and still.
The conservatory’s narrow side ended in the jutting of a tower, quite
black. Between this and the next tower, its counterpart, I caught dim
glimpses of modern french windows, a pair of them, evidently belonging
to the same large room. There was a formal entrance between the second
tower and the third, but since it was unlit, I decided to go further
in hopes of finding the main portal. Yet I had a view of what was
behind the door, and again I paused, fascinated.
Inside the third tower, the projecting half of an octagon studded with
little windows, I saw a taper burning low in an old candlestick
fastened like a bracket on the wall, a thing of fantastic crooks and
curlicues. The light was blue and brittle, for the wick was surfeited
with grease. But I was able to see three men in the panelled hallway,
two of them standing, or perhaps leaning, against the wall. Of these I
perceived no more than their dark featureless forms, and a marked
stiffness in their attitudes. On the opposite side of the hall from
the candle, they were too vague to be any more particularized than as
human forms. The third man, save for his little tuft of white hair,
had been no more than a smudge either.
For he was bent over, his back toward me, _and he was picking the
pockets of the other two men_! I can describe his actions in no better
way. They, seemingly stupefied, made no motion to prevent!
I must say that the old, white-tufted fellow was not very adroit at
his work. I stood absolutely spell-bound while I watched him paw about
the clothing of the two others. The candle guttered with special
vehemence, and the pilferer turned upward to it an anxious eye. Then
he appeared to make a decision; standing full length, he crossed to
the candle and lifted his lean fingers to snuff it. I was impressed by
a sight of his narrow brown face, vulturine in contour, with the tall,
furrowed brow of a student, the thin, pale lips of an ascetic, and the
broken-off jaw of a fighter. The expression was whimsical and wily.
The light glinted for an instant on a green eye, on white smiling
teeth, and on the diamond stud in his shirt-front. Then the fingers
smothered the feeble flame, and he was in the darkness with those
dazed ones I suspected were his victims.
And I hastened around the fourth tower, larger than the rest, at the
southern extremity of the mansion. What was I to do? Had I in fact
witnessed the induction to a serious crime? Was it my duty to report
what I had seen? It must depend on circumstances; perhaps the old
tufted sinner was the proprietor himself. I must be cautious. I must
be dissimulative.
Above all, I must not be surprised.
An electric chandelier sparkled in the large corner tower, revealing
it to be part of the sumptuous library of the mansion, empty of
persons. I found the entrance I sought in the middle of the south end
of the building. The crunching drive made a great circle, leading to a
square-arched, ivied entry. A barred lamp above the vestibule faintly
revealed the arms of the house cut in stone at the apex of the arch,
and surmounting this, as a sort of crest, was the rude but
unmistakable image of a cat’s head. I dimly perceived a feline nose
with faintest trace of whisker running along it, and triangular ears.
The mouth was grinning, not pleasantly.
Here was matter for vast surprise, but I must not _be_ surprised!
I stepped underneath the arch, to the broad iron-bound black-door.
Another pale light revealed the knocker, an iron piece in the shape of
the paw of a cat. There was also the button of an electric bell. I
grasped the paw and struck twice.
Almost immediately the door opened. “Come in,” said a voice. “You’ve
been—”
_I must not be surprised!_ But I gaped, and gurgled, for all I know.
The sturdy square-set fellow in evening dress who had opened the door
so suddenly and who now stood in the half-light was staring at me,
beginning to look a little _distrait_.
“Oh, so you’re not—” he commenced brusquely, and, changing his tone,
recommenced, “But _are_ you, or aren’t—?”
“No, no,” I managed to gasp. “I’m not—I don’t think so.”
I had known nothing of Aidenn Vale or of the ruins, mansions, or
creatures in it. But I knew this man!