The Bidding Feast
“Pendleton!” I exclaimed, “the Honourable Crofts Pendleton!”
“Eh?”
“Hail, fellow well met! This _is_ a lark!”
The man was nonplussed. It had always been, at least for me, one of
his chief charms when we were in the same college, the haziness and
obstruction of mind that were so queerly assorted with his solidity of
physique. Now, eight years between, he was bulkier than ever and (I
was willing to wager) yet more detached from reality in his mental
operations.
He was scratching his fine mane of hair now, irresolute. And he really
had reason to be confused while we confronted each other in the
dimly-lit porch. For I presented such a scotched and scrambled
appearance as never before, mould-mud-and-sweat-clotted,
unrecognizable no doubt even to my most accustomed friends. Why should
he not be startled when in this gear and guise I greeted him with
burbling cheer?
He looked so dumbly helpless that I had to laugh.
“Man, man, do you mean to say that you don’t remember me by my voice?”
“Your voice?” repeated Pendleton. “Yes, it sounds familiar” (he was
lying), “but somehow I can’t—”
I kept chuckling, and he looked hurt; so I said, “Of course you can’t.
I’m Bannerlee, Alfred Bannerlee.”
The announcement drove him back a pace. “No!”
“Emphatically yes.”
He was studying me intently now, quite rapt. “But how on earth did you
find your way up the Vale? It must be full of stinking fog down there
in New Aidenn.”
“I came _down_ the Vale!” I announced. “There’s a thimbleful of mist
up in the north, too.”
“_Down_ the Vale! You say you came down the Vale!” Then suddenly
realization and recognition of me burst upon him for the first time,
and he reached for my hand and gave it a good pumping, grasped my
elbow, and took me inside. “My dear man, my dear fellow, you must have
had a sickening time. Delighted to have you with us. By gad! How on
earth did you ever find this nook in the woods?”
“I’m an antiquarian, you know, a nomad. I might better ask how you did
the same,” I rejoined. “And, er, are you the butler?”
“No. Of course not. I’m the host. Why, what do you mean?” He stared at
me with the old uncertainty.
“You answered my knock with remarkable alacrity.”
“Oh, I was just at the door, going to open it anyhow. I was on my way
to my room when I heard you out there.” He gestured toward the drive.
“I imagined you’d want to be let right in.”
“But, my dear Crofts, you didn’t know who I was.”
“Oh, yes, I did. That is, I thought I did. Oh, there’s a fine state of
confusion here. You see, we’ve been waiting for Sir Brooke Mortimer
since before dinner. And as he’s not sent word, we’re still waiting
for him.”
“Oh?” I said.
“Yes,” said he.
We were standing just inside the hall, which contained some of the
finest screen panelling I have seen. I guessed, rightly, that it was
Henry VIII. work. A multitude of little heads peered out from the wall
beneath coats-of-arms, and the foliated edges of the wood were as
delicate as lace. There was a settle standing on the left-hand side,
where the ceiling sloped down sharply, evidently beneath a winding
stair.
Pendleton seemed struck by a sudden thought. “You’d like to change,
perhaps?”
“My dear man! If you’ll fit me out! I shall perish otherwise. As I am,
I’d rather not see people.”
“Well—would you mind waiting here a moment? I’ll fetch Blenkinson. Not
long. There’s a good fellow.”
He was gone, and I sat me down on the restful settle with some
gyrating thoughts to compose.
But before I had time to set one thought beside another, a new man in
evening dress came breezing nonchalantly past me to the door, which he
opened and peered out of, to close it in a moment with a small shiver.
It had grown chilly out-of-doors during the latter hour of my odyssey.
Turning, he beheld me in my recess.
“Hello,” he exclaimed mildly. “So you _have_ come. No news of him?”
He was, I now think, one of the most deceptive-appearing persons I
have ever encountered, of a type emphatically British, but the extreme
of his type. He was the nonpareil for unobtrusiveness and lack of
distinction; without even the stamp of vulgarity, he was ordinary and
unnoticeable to the last degree. I have never seen a man who appeared
to possess so many properties of a vacuum. His age, perhaps, was
somewhere about the third decade. He was of no particular height
(actually about five feet seven) or weight (about ten stone ten), and
his face was all that was commonplace. A pair of futilely brown
moustaches divided it into upper and lower portions, in the superior
of which pastel-grey eyes kept an unblinking but unobservant watch;
below, his mouth and jaw were neither strong nor weak. His complexion
was pale but not to excessive sallowness, and his brownish hair,
rather thin, was faintly flecked with grey. His dinner coat fitted
exceptionally well.
“Yes, I have come,” I answered, “but I’m not sure I’m the ‘you’ you
mean.”
“Why, you’re Hughes, the keeper, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m just a friend of Pendleton’s.”
“Oh, is that so?”
He was not cloudy and remote like Crofts Pendleton; rather I thought I
detected even a trace of the sardonic in his tone, and I must have
flushed at the remembrance of my rough and woebegone attire.
“I don’t look the part, I admit.”
“Well, no, you don’t.” He held out his hand with a cordiality
surprising to me. “Belvoir’s my name—Ted Belvoir. It’s B-e-l-v-o-i-r,
you know.”
“Bannerlee’s mine. B-a-n-n—”
“Oh, that’s all right. I spelled mine out on account of these
Americans. They think it’s funny to pronounce it ‘Beaver!’”
“Americans!”
“Why, you must be quite a stranger here. Didn’t you know—”
“I know nothing. I am indeed an utter stranger, save for being
acquainted with Pendleton. You see that I’m rather the worse for wear;
well, I’ve been running and scrambling and climbing all over Aidenn
Forest to-day, and to cap the climax I fell into this Vale and
blundered upon this house.”
“All over Aidenn Forest?”
“Yes, I am an antiquary of sorts.”
“Now, that’s very interesting, very interesting. Why, you may
have—have you seen anyone?” There was a glimmer of excitement in his
pale eyes.
Now suddenly it occurred to me that reticence might be useful in this
mansion whereof I knew so little and that little full of perplexity.
“Why, what sort of person?”
“Oh, a gentleman prowling at a loose end.”
“I should say not,” I assured him, “unless he was mightily
transmogrified.”
“Well, that delays us again.”
“I suppose the man you mean is, er, Sir Brooke Mortimer.”
“Yes.” His eyes widened. “Now, how did you know that?”
“Pendleton told me before he went to fetch the butler.”
“That’s the man, that’s the man. Irritating, isn’t it? Hughes and some
of the other servants have gone in search. That’s why our host takes
so long to get Blenkinson, who must be busy.”
“You don’t tell me the servants have gone out to scour for him!”
“He’s such an irregular blighter, you know. May have tried to walk it
from New Aidenn or even from somewhere else on the line. They’re going
to telephone down when the station-master comes for the evening train.
You see, he wasn’t due on any particular train, but they expected him
to send word ahead. So they’re in a pretty pass.”
“What’s the man look like?”
“Oh, a little, piddling sort of minnikin. Wearing a couple of pairs of
glasses, most likely, and sure to be smoking an offensive cigar.
Speaks with a lisp when he gets excited—sometimes when he isn’t. You
couldn’t have seen him?”
“No,” I avouched. “Neither to-day nor any other day.” I had already
resolved, by the by, to tell no stranger about the men I had seen. I
wanted to be believed.
I refrained from asking why Sir Brooke’s presence was so necessary for
the comfort of all, but my new acquaintance evidently saw the question
in my face, for he answered it in a manner to provoke my curiosity yet
further. “He’s going to propose the health of the bride, y’know.”
A third personage came round from the other side of the stairs, and
the blood in my veins gave a little leap when I recognized the
white-haired man whose suspicious behaviour I had overlooked in the
dim room with the tower windows. His gaze was inquiring, as if he had
come to see whose the voices were, and when he saw my unaccustomed
face, he gave a cluck, as if to say, “I know who _you_ are,” and
demanded peremptorily:
“Are you the missing idiot?”
I said, “Perhaps.”
His little dark eyes sparkled. “Then you’re not—no, I see you’re not.
You haven’t, by the way, seen a lost sheep of a knight outside?”
“No.”
Somehow Belvoir had melted away upon the coming of this gentleman; now
the old fellow, with his eyes pursuing the other down the hall out of
my view, snapped, “So much the better. We have at least one crazy man
here already.”
“Indeed! What is his name?” I asked with much enjoyment, expecting to
hear Belvoir identified, for I judged that no love was lost between
these two.
“Cosgrove!”
“Oh! I haven’t heard of him, I believe.”
“Well, you will.”
He was gone!
I listened to his waning footsteps down the hall for only a brace of
seconds before I had made a hasty, rash decision. I would see, before
anyone else, what was the state of affairs inside the room where I had
witnessed this old fellow’s dubious practices. I edged around the
curve of the stair, saw him moving briskly away at the other end of
the wainscoted and carpeted passage, which was quite broad enough to
be called a good-sized gallery. There were two doors on the right,
four on the left (counting one by the stair-foot, where the corridor
broadened almost into a room), and one away at the far end, which last
must lead into the conservatory. A collection of portraits, large and
small, hung over and between the doors, although, since the hall was
wholly enclosed by rooms, they must never be seen save by artificial
light.
By the time I had comprehended so much, the old gentleman had
disappeared through the farthest door at the left. An entrance behind
the stairs I judged to lead into the library where the light was
blazing, perhaps as a beacon for Sir Brooke. The room I sought must
lie beyond the door facing the stair-foot. I felt like a burglarious
person while I opened it and stole into darkness, taking out my
electric-torch. And the moment afterward I felt like a fool.
The yellow cone of light played on walls hung with trophies and
weapons of every age and sort. I saw the old candle-bracket by the
window, and the closed doors leading to rooms on each side, as well as
to the open. Standing where the “men” had been were two hollow suits
of armour, complete in plate and chain.
So the old codger’s only crime must have been a little harmless
fussing about. Still, why had he chosen near-darkness when there was,
as now I saw, an electric switch beside the door? Perhaps the switch
was out of order; I had not the courage to try it and see. Almost, but
not quite, I acquitted the white-haired gentleman of evil design.
I lost no time in returning to my station in the hall. I was on the
settle, and had almost decided that Crofts Pendleton had forgotten me
when he appeared apologetically, with the butler, carrying a loaded
tray, at his heels.
“If it’s compatible with bathing, I got Blenkinson to put some dishes
together. Dinner’s just over.”
“My dear Crofts, you’re too thoughtful.”
“Very seldom, I assure you,” he smiled.
“Certainly, I’d like to break the edge of appetite, anyhow.”
“Then we’ll go up to my room.”
Blenkinson, with impeccable whiskers, looked as if he might be the
Master of University College. With the tray, he followed us up the
circular stairs, whose well reached into the dim heights of the second
storey. A room on the right of the first landing was Pendleton’s.
“Hullo, it’s dark! I expected Ludlow had come up. He complained of
feeling seedy.”
The long corridor of this floor, which I later found to lead to the
door of the landing of the outside stairs at the north end of the
building, was invisible until Pendleton touched a button on the wall.
“Ludlow? Is he the tufted individual, hawk-like?”
“Why, yes. Have you seen him?”
“We have conversed slightly. He’s downstairs.”
“He must be feeling better,” murmured Crofts. Yet somehow I distrusted
that his Lordship had suffered even a little twinge.
Now Blenkinson withdrew discreetly as a Dean, after examining each
dish on the tray and giving every cover an approving caress.
“May I ask a question?”
“Blaze away.”
“Aren’t things a little out of order here, to-night? Or are there no
ladies present?”
“There are ladies, plenty of ’em. But what do you mean?”
“Why are the men prowling around the House? Where are the ladies?
Don’t they customarily leave the men at the board?”
“Oh, yes, usually.” There was a light in his eyes that caused me to
expect something quite illogical and characteristic. “But here it’s
the other way round.”
“What?”
“Here the men leave the table to the ladies. It’s the local custom.”
It had come, the sublimely ridiculous. But still—I ventured: “Then
most of your guests are Welsh folk?”
“Not one; all English and American. But ‘When in Rome,’ you know,
Bannerlee. I like to pay tribute to the _mores_ of the place. That’s a
word of Belvoir’s; you know what I mean.”
In anyone but Crofts Pendleton I should have held such deference to
the manners of the parish or the borough or the shire to be a gesture
of mock. But mockery was out of the question in that face of perfect
guilelessness. So innocent and susceptible were those big features
that I had a momentary impulse to tell him that there appeared to be
“goings-on” in the House. But I forbore.
So, beginning to lay aside my reeking clothes, I asked him the nature
of the party, and if it were in celebration of a particular occasion,
and in so doing I met point-blank another of his vague notions,
disassociated from the working of any ordinary mind.
“A very special occasion indeed,” he declared. “We are having a
wedding party—that is, there’s going to be a wedding party; to-night
it’s a Bidding Feast.”
“Bidding Feast?”
“Yes,” said Crofts, evincing much pleasure in his revelation. “It
accords with the folk custom. You look oddly. Haven’t you heard of
it?”
“Not sufficiently, I fear.”
“It’s very old, very old, to help the married-pair-to-be to set up
housekeeping.”
“Then I am amiss in not knowing something of it, having turned
desultory antiquarian since we were last together. Tell me about it.”
He seemed shy and apologetic. “Of course we don’t go into all of
it—the donations of bread and cheese and sugar and such, or promissory
notes (they’ve been recognized as legal obligations in the courts, you
know). We haven’t had any of that, or selling cakes and ale for the
enrichment of the couple. These are wealthy people. And we’ve
dispensed with the ‘inviter.’”
“Oh, you have?” I asked ironically. “What, perchance, is he?”
“A professional in the business exclusively. He tramps the country for
several days ahead and bids the householders with a set of humorous
doggerel verses, or printed ballad. I’ve several works describing it
all in the library downstairs. It used to be a universal thing in
Wales, but it’s almost a dead-letter now.” He looked as if he were
about to sigh.
“And you say that you’re reviving it for a couple who are not Welsh?”
“Welsh? Of course they’re not Welsh. Paula Lebetwood’s an American,
and Sean Cosgrove—well, he’s an Irishman.”
“One hopes so. And how goes the Feast?”
“We’re being terribly festive! Under the circumstances, you
know. . . .”
Here was the maddest, one might say the most pitiful, of Pendleton’s
fancies. A Welsh Bidding Feast for setting up a couple in
housekeeping—only minus the Welsh folk, minus the donations, minus the
cakes and ale, minus the “inviter,” minus about everything, in fact,
except the good intentions of the host! A ghost of a Bidding Feast.
“Surely, Crofts,” I remarked, “if you are trying to revive the good
old Welsh customs, you might suggest a bundling party.”
He went red, but was too good-natured to take offence. “Nonsense, man.
Don’t mention it. Why, it’s an immoral thing. Sermons used to be
preached against it.”
“But under the circumstances!” I repeated his phrase. “Morality is a
question of local custom, isn’t it? The _mores_, you know.”
“_Mores?_ Oh, you sound like Belvoir, who’s been getting everybody in
a stew.” He overlooked his own introduction of the word.
“Well, I shan’t propose it, my dear man. I know that I should be
mobbed, without a Welshman in the Vale to protect me.”
A flicker of movement crossed his features, and his voice was
constrained, even grave. “Without a Welshman?—well, I don’t know.”
“You’re aggrieved, Crofts. What’s the matter?”
“This place is full of wild-eyed superstitions,” he declared,
beginning to pace the length of the room. “We have a few Welsh
servants—they keep the place up while it’s unoccupied—and they’re agog
with the Gwyllion and the Tylwyth Teg. They’re stirring up the rest
with tales of the haggish fairies and dwarfs and goblins that seem to
infect this locality.”
“Well,” I laughed, yet with a pinch of queerness in thinking of the
near-apparition who had occurred on the ledge-path, “as long as nobody
has met his own funeral and the dames and peers of elfin-land keep
outside the walls—”
“But that’s just it!” he cried vexatiously. “There’s _been_ an
invasion. The women have made me put all their best jewellery in the
strong-box, and still they’re fretting.”
I paused in the act of drying my back. “You don’t mean—”
“The worst visitant of all is in our midst, and unless we dispose of
him our nerves will be in tatters!” Then he lapsed into sudden
contrition for his vehemence. “Of course I’m not such a fool as to
believe any of it.”
“The supernatural, you mean?”
“That’s why I said I’m not so sure we haven’t a Welshman in our midst.
He must be at the bottom of it all. Confound it, somebody must be.”
“Whom do you mean by ‘he’?”
“Parson Lolly,” answered Pendleton, with slightly bated breath, and I
remember that I was impressed into silence for a moment.
“_Parson_ Lolly?”
“So he is called.”
“And who may the Parson be?”
“A legend, just a damned legend.”
“And a Welshman too?”
“That’s it!” he exclaimed with an eager gesture. “Don’t you see it
must be so, or else there’s hell let loose in this valley? It must be
a man, must be, must be! Only—” He checked himself.
“Well?”
“No man can do the things Parson Lolly is said to do.”
I made a complete break in my toilet and scrutinized my friend, who
was visibly shaken. He said, “It’s no use trying to describe how it
feels to be a host in the midst of such a hullabaloo. It’s the very
devil. And I can’t _do_ anything to stop it. Helplessness is a
terrible thing.”
“Now tell me some of this nonsense,” I urged. “And first of all, why
‘Parson’? It’s creepy.”
“It certainly is,” he agreed. “That designation adds oddness,
sinister, too, to the whole portrait of him.”
“What else is there in his portrait?”
“He’s old, several hundred years old at the most conservative estimate
of the servants. His business is general mischief and bedevilment and,
I surmise, thievery.”
“What does he look like?”
“He has the face of a demon, red with hell-fire, and streaked with
smoke. He has the likeness of a man otherwise, but he wears a great
flowing robe of black; there’s where the ‘Parson’ part comes in, I
suppose. The robe is vaster than any prelate’s of earth, though there
again you have the sinister touch. He—he flies in it, Bannerlee, like
an enormous crow! He’s been seen flying away over the Bach Hill.”
“How far is Bach Hill from here?”
“About two miles.”
I resumed my dressing, and simulated a laugh, for it would not do to
seem too much impressed with this fol-de-rol. Pendleton maintained his
appearance of dead seriousness.
“I wonder if there’s anything else. Oh, yes—his voice.”
“Voice?” My question must have been sharp.
“It’s a young voice and an old voice in one. He’s been heard,
Bannerlee.” Pendleton licked his lips. “I’ve heard him myself.”
“You must leave this, Crofts,” I admonished, dimly aware that I was
cribbing from literature. “You’re letting your imagination make sport
of you, of course; but, tell me, what’s been the spring of all your
troubles? What’s actually happened here?”
His mood had shifted. “No, let’s change the subject. This is no way to
receive a guest, with omens and warnings.”
“But, good heavens, you only make it worse when you stop at the
warnings. I want to hear some of the facts.”
“You really do?”
“This is absurd. Of course I do.”
But Crofts’ mind was then in an unwilling state as regarded retailing
the misdeeds of the Parson. He became sketchy. At first there had been
annoyances among the servants, the overturning of pots and skillets,
the displacement of articles, some so thoroughly removed that they
never would be found. For the past forty-eight hours these trifles had
been throwing the kitchen into an uproar, but one more serious thing
had occurred the previous evening in the presence of the guests who
had already arrived. All Pendleton would tell me of this outrage was
that it had to do with the smashing of the conservatory window, and
that then the voice of the Parson had been heard by everyone.
“It makes me feel sometimes, for a minute or two, that there may be
something in it,” he muttered finally. “Why isn’t it possible that
someone has found a method of flying with a minimum of mechanical aid?
It will happen sooner or later.”
“When I see him taking off, I’ll believe—not otherwise.”
“That’s the sensible thing to say—very sensible.”
Now in the course of this long conversation I had disencumbered myself
of my damp-heavy explorer’s gear, had cavorted in the bath between the
rooms of Pendleton and his wife, had donned his dressing-gown and
shaved with his razor, had covered myself with one of his old business
suits, now “uncomfortably snug” for his frame, but flappingly loose
for mine. The food I had reserved until after the bath; although the
things were now cool, I took half a cupful of coffee and sampled the
leg of a duck. I resolved to confide one thing to Pendleton now;
perhaps it would bring him some relief. So, swiftly explaining my
movements in Aidenn Forest that day, I related my adventures with the
man on the ledge-path, and hinted that he might be at the root of the
mischief.
“What time was that?”
“Over two hours ago, I suppose.”
He shook his head, wistfully. “No, I wish it was as simple as you
suggest. But the Parson was making trouble among the servants only an
hour before you came.”
I thought of the menagerie-keeper, yet somehow he didn’t fit into this
situation.
“I’m sorry, Crofts. Still, you mustn’t let such antics disturb you.”
“I won’t, I won’t,” he promised, but I thought his protest a little
feverish.
While we went downstairs I gave him the best imitation I could of the
stranger’s cry on the ledge-path, and asked him if he believed it was
Welsh.
“No,” he said, with the gravity of conviction, “no, that’s certainly
not Welsh.”
Bless his simple heart! I believe he knows no more Cumraeg than I.
We moved along the galley-passage, and nighed the third left-hand
entrance.
Now, just as we were about to enter, while we heard the voices of
festivity inside, he turned to me suddenly.
“I’m sending the boy to your village beyond the hills to-morrow
morning—whatever-its-name-is—for your things. You’re to be one of us,
of course.”
“My dear Crofts, I hate to intrude.”
“No intrusion. And there are other equal strangers among us. Will you
stay on for a couple of days?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“Then I’ll announce you as one of us.”
We joined the Bidding Feast.
I motioned my host to precede me into the midst of the party. Now it
so happened that we entered with none to observe us, for this door
opened beneath an old musicians’ gallery.
We had no sooner entered this shady spot than I placed my hand on
Pendleton’s sleeve and put finger to lips, and stood to take in the
scene in silence. The head of a cat, with ears singularly set back,
made a rest for the hand at the pillared foot of the winding
balustrade to the gallery. It had given me a moment’s shock at first,
but now I set my fingers along that smooth nose and peered covertly
from the concealment of the little staircase. The Bidding Feast, save
for floral and evergreen festoons about the Hall, had all the look of
two tables of ordinary auction bridge.
But I hardly did more than give a secret glance at the guests before
surveying the extent and features of the Hall itself. Flat-ceilinged,
its wooden roof supported by braced thirty-foot timbers, a room
regular in its right-angularity, it nevertheless gave the impression
of spaciousness. It was two storeys in height, full forty feet in
length, and obviously of great age, perhaps a bulwark of war, for its
ashlar masonry was undisguised by arras, woodwork, or plaster.
Somehow, save for the chimney-piece in the wall beyond which the
conservatory lay, a fireplace which was massive without being
cumbrous, the appointments of the room seemed to me inept. All the
Tudor furniture was gone, and in its stead was a collection of
mahogany and walnut pieces from the lion-mask period—and later—looking
frail and prettified in that ancient stronghold of defence. The
woven-backed chairs, the spindly animal-legs of the tables with their
claw-feet, the spider’s web marqueterie decorations, were to my mind
strongly out of keeping. The waxed floor was in part covered by old
English “Turky” carpets. Altogether a medley of anachronisms was the
Hall of the Moth, but its walls a-frown and towering chimney-place
lent nevertheless a thrill of antique grandeur.
[Illustration: A plan of the ground floor of Highglen House. The front
door is at the bottom of the plan, opening into a narrow corridor
leading through the middle of the house, as well as a winding
staircase to the next floor. Large doors immediately to the left of
the front door connect to a library in the bottom left corner of the
building. Above the library is the armoury. The armoury has doors on
all sides, including one to the outside. Above the armoury is a large
room labelled “Hall of the Moth”. The door between the armoury and the
Hall of the Moth is underneath a raised platform labelled “Musicians’
Gallery”. Both the Hall of the Moth and the central corridor have
doors to the conservatory, which runs along the top of the plan, and
has a large window along most of the top wall. The right-hand side of
the plan is mostly taken up by the dining-room, which the conservatory
connects to directly. Below the dining-room are the kitchen and
pantries.]
Two of the eight card-players I recognized, of course, Lord Ludlow and
Belvoir, who were opposed to each other at the nearer table, where the
deal had just been made. Lord Ludlow, who was facing me, lifted his
cards from the table, arching his brows above the pince-nez which now
clung to his sharp-wedged nose. Satisfaction gleamed from all quarters
of his countenance.
“_You_ haven’t the right kind of face for cards,” I thought; then a
notion made me mutter, “Or, I wonder?” The old dissembler!
I was impressed by the vague familiarity of the back of Lord Ludlow’s
partner, and guessed her to be the hostess of the Bidding Feast. I had
known Alberta Pendleton in the early days, and had seen that stately
back preceding me up the aisle at her wedding. It had taken on added
dignity, if anything, in the intervening years, and I expected,
rightly, that her delicate beauty (Pendleton had been ungodly lucky)
would have ripened into greater loveliness.
Belvoir, on her right, was opposite a woman I intuitively knew must be
his wife, for she might have been his widow. It was not only that she
looked older than she was, and gave that impression, for she was
gowned in black relieved by grey, and that her cheek was pale, having
a worn softness, or that her composed voice, rather full and sweet,
seemed full of twilight memories; she had the half-experienced,
half-expectant air which bereft females wear. And indeed I supposed it
could hardly be otherwise for her, married as she was to a man who
seemed without a trace of colour, without a morsel of flesh to him, or
a drop of blood, the acme of innocuousness.
At the far table three men were playing with one woman, whose back was
turned to me. Facing her, and me, sat a bright-eyed, youngish fellow
with short black hair, a face almost crimson-red, and on his right and
left respectively a dandified-looking chap with waxed moustaches, and
a good solid individual of immobile swarthy countenance, the image of
a substantial, dependable Englishman. This ponderous person was
dealing with a regular, unhurried motion that recalled to me the
grinding of the mills of God.
“A pretty kettle of fish!” I murmured to myself, and added to Crofts,
“A variegated lot, old fellow! So many different tempers and
purposeful minds reduced to the same dead level by the permutations of
fifty-two pasteboard slips. Saddening, Crofts, saddening.”
“All intimates, one way or another,” he whispered. “Good friends, mind
you, but you’ll find them fighting half the time.”
“They certainly look engrossed in the game.”
“Ah, but that’s a pretence. They keep up a very brave front, but any
trifling disturbance would set them wild.”
“You don’t say so.”
“I tell you, man, there’s something foul and fearful in this damned
Vale. I half regret—well, come on. You’ve got to meet them sometime.
They’ve all heard about you.”