Kingmaker
Forthwith commenced that three-legged race I have already described,
in whose zigzag course I was presented to all these people in about
two minutes.
While my mind was still in a haze, a small thing caught my eye and
made me give a much larger thing a rapid, cursory, and at the same
time careful survey. The small thing was still another image of a
cat’s head, this one in profile with jaws apart and bared teeth, the
head forming a heraldic badge tucked into one spandril of the Hall
fire-arch. The renewed sight of this insistent emblem had a bad effect
on me. The leering head at the outer door, the sleek head at the foot
of the balustrade, and this vindictive head brought the sharp,
nerve-tearing cry of the outer darkness into my ears again.
“Crofts”—I must have spoken with asperity—“why the devil didn’t your
family choose some holier badge than a damned cat’s head, with nothing
funny or Cheshire-ish about it?”
“My family? Not my family.”
“Oh, not—”
“Lord, no. Dirty thing, isn’t it, that one? But not mine. Bought this
place a couple of years ago. Look there, for a primitive genealogical
sign.”
I thought at first he was pointing to the badge and I leaned to
examine it at closer quarters. The spandrils of the fire-arch had the
usual long crinkled leaves of the early Tudors; on one lay the royal
rose, on the other the badge of the head.
“No, no, not that—the mantel-tree itself.”
Pendleton tapped the very old and thoroughly blackened beam of oak
resting on the upraised hands and the heads of a pair of grotesque
knee-bent dwarfs in lieu of corbels. And while I stared at it,
somewhat at a loss to grasp his meaning, he passed his hand along its
outer surface, saying, “If you can’t see, feel.”
This mantel-tree, obviously the original, though forming more than
merely an incipient shelf, was unusually low for the period (if I knew
anything of such) and I had to lean a bit to get my eyes flush to it.
My fingers felt the slight roughness of lettering, and I deciphered,
in French characters, the smoke-stained names “Arthur Kay” and
“Biatryx Kay,” which Pendleton assured me I read correctly.
“None of your ilk, you say?”
“Oh, no! Quite the most ancient family in these parts. Here before the
House itself, before the castle.”
“That ruin up the Vale?”
“No, I mean the castle this house is remnant of. That other—up the
Vale—that was the Kays’ too.”
“And the head of the cat?”
He shrugged. “You ought to know more of these things than I, you
gravedigger. It’s part of their coat-of-arms. Look.”
I had already taken in the entire fireplace. It was in harmony with
the grey walls. The over-mantel, like the interior of the unlit
chimney-place itself, was composed of large stone blocks, very
ancient, and the beam on which the names were cut formed a canopy from
which it receded to the summit of the lofty chamber. The
half-obliterate vestiges of what must have been a cross were visible
in the centre of this curtain of rock, and on either side a shield
with unrecognizable blurs for quarters. Only where Pendleton pointed I
could see what might have been a feline profile.
As my host remarked, the subject of bearings lay more aptly in my
special province than in his (which was, I remember, the excellence of
sodium and its compounds). I was about to launch into a necessarily
brief statement of what this device might signify, when Blenkinson
entered and murmured something inaudible to his master.
“People at New Aidenn,” remarked Pendleton with slight ellipsis. “Be
back at once.” This last was a promise, not an imperative.
He followed the servant out, and my exegesis was, as it happened, for
ever postponed. Gilbert Maryvale, whose partner, Oxford, had made the
declaration, seeing me solitary, rose from his chair with the peculiar
lightness that was so unexpected and came to my side.
He looked at me with inquiry in his very dark eyes while he settled
himself against the over-mantel. “Word from Sir Brooke?”
“I believe Pendleton’s gone to ’phone the station-master at New
Aidenn. We’ll know, doubtless, in a minute or two.”
“Yes, doubtless.”
I thought I perceived a greater interest striving to suppress itself
in him; I looked at him sharply. “Just why, Mr. Maryvale, are we all
agog over this gentleman’s absence?”
He was abashed for an instant, then, cocked an eye in humorous
confession, and spoke low. “Caught, I suppose. Well, Mr. Bannerlee, I
don’t think that, barring an exception or two”—he hitched a shoulder
toward the nearer table where Mrs. Bartholomew was deliberating
whether to play the ace or not—“I don’t think we _are_ particularly
agog as a whole. One may have one reason, one another, but mine is
that I believe Sir Brooke Mortimer is a good deal different from what
he seems. And you may be sure that I’d not be telling you that if I
weren’t sure that his real purpose will be revealed—”
He said more, but I did not take in the sense of it. Eve Bartholomew,
I noticed, played the ace, which was immediately trumped by Oxford;
but that was a trifle. What had taken me out of mind for a moment was
the striking similarity of his words to the thought in my own brain,
that the people in Aidenn Vale were other than they seemed. This,
great as was my attraction to it, was scarcely a topic to be pursued
with my acquaintance of a few minutes, and my next contribution to
talk turned the subject.
“I was about to ask Pendleton a question; may I victimize you?”
“Why, certainly—if I can—”
I lowered my voice to half its volume. “I am sure that you can. This,
according to our host, is a genuine old Welsh Bidding Feast. But as
far as I could discover, most of the attributes are missing, and
especially the most essential one of all.”
“What’s that?”
“The bride in prospect. I am quite certain she is not, er, here.”
He laughed with his eyes, throwing back his head quite gleefully. “You
may be sure she’s not. Of course, our good Cosgrove’s American
betrothed—did Pendleton tell you she’s American?—isn’t in sight just
now. The fact is, Miss Mertoun—Oxford’s her cousin—has been headachy
all evening, and Miss Lebetwood has been staying with her since she
went to her room.”
Crofts Pendleton had returned; he was beside us on the heels of my
latest speech, and his face revealed excitement somewhat chastened by
alarm.
“Shall I tell ’em all at once?”
“But what’s to tell?” asked Maryvale.
“He wasn’t on the night train, but the station-keeper thinks
someone like him came up in the afternoon. How he—supposing it was
he—missed getting in the motor—there Wheeler was waiting for him
especially—unless he wanted the walk—he _would_—well, shall I?”
“It will raise nobody’s spirits,” said Maryvale. “But suppose you do.”
“Hughes and the men are back from below the bridge,” muttered Crofts.
“They’ve seen nothing of him either.” He clapped his hands for
attention.
I kept my eyes on Crofts while he made his statement, but out of the
tail of one I noticed that Maryvale was scanning the inhabitants of
the Hall, as if to catch the effect upon each. The effect was strong.
When my eye took in the room, everyone had laid down his cards and was
looking at the blank countenance across the table. There was hardly a
word spoken; no one asked a question. Then Eve Bartholomew took up her
hand once more.
“Sir Brooke is a sensible man,” she announced. “He has probably
returned to New Aidenn to put up for the night. And there are men
looking for him if he is lost. Let’s go on playing.”
By her determination, which at the time I divined to be only a
courageous sham, she drew the widely surmising minds in the room back
to a focus on bridge. A few minutes later Maryvale, with a courteous
but irresistible gesture, waved Pendleton into his place at the table
opposite Charlton Oxford, and my host picked up the newly-dealt cards
with perturbed countenance. Maryvale rested a foot on the
fire-dogs—they were of much later date than the fireplace itself,
their brass enriched with blue and white enamel—and took from the
mantel-shelf a long-stemmed clay pipe, a veritable churchwarden. This
he carefully packed with a shaggy sort of tobacco and smoked with
deep-drawn pleasure, having offered me an excellent cigar, which I
declined in memory and anticipation of flight from bulls.
Presently, since Eve Bartholomew had given the fumes several looks
askance, and sniffed, Maryvale with a smile led me to the nearest of
two entrances of french windows, opened it, and stepped outside. I
followed, descending a step or two to the drive beyond which lay the
lawn. The air was mild again and the fog had become only a mystery in
the trees.
“Too chilly for you?”
“By no means.”
“We’ll stroll.”
At that moment we were beside the little jutting tower between the
Hall of the Moth and the glassed conservatory, with a small rockery
just across the drive. I noted that the scent of flowers at that spot
was remarkably strong, almost as the heady reek of the interior must
be. I asked Maryvale if he did not notice it too.
“Ah, yes. But that’s because there’s no glass in that window. They’re
burning some oil-heating business inside until the glazier comes.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“You’ve not heard?”
“I think Crofts—he wasn’t at all explicit.”
“Nor could he be. It was only a matter of a crash of a splintering
window, and a shout by a most hollow and bewildering voice. Then, I
must admit, there were other shouts from some of us, and one or two of
the ladies were not above screaming. And nothing was discovered save
the fragments of glass.”
“What did the voice seem to say?”
“It was clear enough. It shouted some rigmarole about Parson Lolly.
‘Parson Lolly’s here,’ or ‘Look out for Parson Lolly,’ or something of
the kind.”
“What do you make of it? It worries Crofts severely.”
“Do you wonder? No, I don’t profess to make anything of it myself. We
must wait until we have more evidence.”
“Which may be most unpleasant.”
“Oh, as for being afraid . . .”
We paused, I remember, by one of the large french windows looking into
the Hall of the Moth. At the table nearest us Cosgrove carefully noted
down the score. He picked up the pack, shuffled deliberately, dealt.
The cards flew bewilderingly from his hand like a flock of
humming-birds released from a cage; they swirled and gleamed in the
light. Yet Cosgrove’s arms were motionless; only his right hand and
wrist moved as swift as the eye could conveniently follow.
“Cosgrove,” murmured Maryvale; “what a man!”
“What do you mean?”
My companion’s surprise was thoroughly ingenuous. “You don’t know
about Sean Cosgrove?”
“I don’t know much about any Irishman.”
“Irishman or not, he’s a rarity—a sort of hardness next to positive
stolidity, yet with plenty of _savoir faire_—caution in thought and
preparation, and then a sure swiftness like that dealing of the cards;
add to it a consecration to an idea so whimsical and quaint that
heaven must laugh, and heaven must speed him.”
“What idea may that be?”
“It’s one of those secrets everyone knows—Ireland redeemed.”
My “oh” was certainly disappointed.
Maryvale looked for some time at the red face of him before he chose
to enlighten me further. “Many wild young Irishmen have burned and
blazed for Ireland free, but never one I’ve known had the genius of
imagination of this man.” He added in a low-toned parenthesis,
“Barring the Marquess of Killarney, I’ve no doubt he’s the wealthiest
Irishman in the realm.”
“That’s enough distinction for one Hibernian.”
“Seldom known in his race, surely. And he saves his money, looking
always to the gleam of his great goal.”
“Well enough, Mr. Maryvale—but you speak as if he had some special
vision.”
“A Free State is nothing compared to the bright morning in mind.”
“Ah, an anarchist!”
Maryvale chuckled. “That was certainly an unlucky dive of logic, my
friend. No, Mr. Bannerlee, Sean Cosgrove aspires to restore the
ancient dynasties of Munster and Leinster!”
“But—well, how will he find the lines? They’re extinct, aren’t they?”
“I should hesitate to say categorically where Cosgrove is planning to
discover them.”
“But how will he set about it?”
“Well, if I tell you baldly, you’ll think he’s utterly mad. He’s going
to advertise in the _Times_.”
A vast vacuum of seconds must have gone by, while I looked again
intently at the huge face so solemn over its slips of pasteboard,
before I ventured, “And what do you think of him yourself, then?”
“Let me explain what I meant when I said that Cosgrove will advertise
in the _Times_ to find the true rulers of Munster and Leinster. He
will not advertise there alone; he will put the inquiry in every
little rag and sheet. He will send men among the peasants on the land
to ask. He will receive answers, will he not, Mr. Bannerlee?”
“Of every sort.”
“Of every sort, as you say. The genealogist will ridicule, the
republican will sneer or snarl, the crank will present his ready-made
conclusions, the peasant will tell the tale his grandmother’s
grandmother crooned to her and she to him. And Sean Cosgrove will
receive every answer for the sake of the good that may be in it. He is
ready to examine every contention of the genealogist, to sift the
fables rigorously, to get at the root of every wild story, to
criticize every legend—and in the end he will find his man, or find
his truth! Let us go in.”
We reopened the french windows, entered the Hall of the Moth.
I looked at him, who had so suddenly, yet so unaffectedly, made almost
an intimate of me in the brief hour of acquaintance, tried to appraise
the pent brows and the fugitive, almost wistful eyes of Gilbert
Maryvale, the “complete man of business.” Those eyes, what were they
seeking, or what had they discovered? They saw deeps, I knew,
soundings surely unsuspected by these more or less ordinary people, by
that old vulture with white plumage, Ludlow—or Belvoir the
nonentity—or, certainly, this fancy man Charlton Oxford—or our
unimaginative host, Crofts Pendleton—or Sean Cosgrove himself, who
from Maryvale’s account must represent the quintessence of insurgency
and holy tradition.
These “ordinary people,” I had called them. But were they, any of
them, ordinary? My total impression of that company at the Bidding
Feast had become one of masks and shadows. Such obvious contradiction
as seemed to exist in the case of Maryvale and such duplicity as
Ludlow’s might have their subtler likenesses in everyone. Mrs.
Belvoir, with her melodious voice, might be a volcano which had never
gone up in flame and ruin; this dapper Charlton Oxford might be a
leading light of the Society for the Cherishing of Atheism. Crofts
Pendleton had assured me that their air of studious interest while
rapt in the complexities of cards was a dissembling of fear, but I
wondered if it might not be a dissembling of something else as well,
something which I could not then grasp intuitively. But I felt its
existence, just as a man in a pitch-dark room may be, they say, aware
of another presence.
Maryvale, catching me look first at him, then at the absorbed
contestants, drew a mistaken deduction.
“No, Mr. Bannerlee, no sign of any of them wanting to give me my place
back again. There’s a riveting fascination in cards if you’re keyed
right.” I believe he looked a bit ashamed of his cross-bred metaphor.
“One of the many forms in which chance plays pranks upon us. All, all
thralled.”
“Some more and some less, however.”
“Oh, of course, but my point was that no one escapes the lure. Even
the unlikeliest—”
“Mr. Cosgrove, that would be, I have—”
“I think not, I really am sure not. Oh, no.”
“What? You don’t mean his Lordship?”
Maryvale took his pipe in his hand, smiling, waved it. “You do not
know us, Mr. Bannerlee. We are really quite a surprising company, we
friends of Cosgrove, and his, er, enemies. Now who, beside the
respected Mr. Charlton Oxford here, seems to you to personify most
thoroughly the spirit of conformity, the one cut out most neatly for a
player of auction bridge?”
I needed not to hesitate one whit, but with a nudge indicated Belvoir.
“He seems made to fit into any background.”
Maryvale laughed long and with absolute silence. “Yes, yes,” he
whispered, “a family man, I grant you, with legitimate children, a
householder in suburbia—so far so good. That’s irony _in excelso_. But
for deep down conformity of spirit, like the thousand and one of his
neighbours in Golders Green, ye gods! Why, man, he’s the most radical
wight in England—a stick of dynamite!”
“He!”
“Haven’t you read his ‘Bypaths’?”
“His! Good God!”
Then from the farther table came a cackle from Ludlow: “Well, I say it
_is_ so! . . . Saint Paul knew as much psychology as any of your
puffed-up pedagogues.”
Alberta Pendleton (who was his partner) said promptly, “Did you play
the deuce?” Our hostess is more tactful than her husband.
Belvoir gave a thin Italian sort of snicker. “He’s trying to,” he
said.
I just made out the low, luscious voice of Mrs. Belvoir: “Ted, that
wasn’t good. Half a crown, please.”
“The family penalty for a pun,” explained Maryvale.
Ludlow gave a sudden sneeze, a whooping big sneeze, which must have
disturbed the cards on the table. “I beg—” he said, and sneezed again.
My face being turned toward Maryvale, and Ludlow’s back being toward
me, I had no more than an imperfect glimpse out of the tail of my eye
at what happened next. Our noble friend drew his handkerchief out of
his breast-pocket with a bit of a flourish, and something white and
smaller came out along with it. At that precise instant Ludlow was
preoccupied with a third sneeze which took him unawares and made his
plumed head bob down to the green board. There was consternation at
his table, amusement at the other, but I was the only one who saw the
object fly off to the left, poise for the cleaving of an instant in
flight, and glide and swoop gracefully down to the floor beside the
long-case clock in the corner. There it lay, a slightly crumpled slip
of notepaper, scrawled upon.
I gave some small exclamation, crossed in front of Maryvale, picked up
the morsel. It was certainly not my intention to scrutinize the
writing, but it was impossible in the act of recovery not to see some
words. All that made the least imprint in my consciousness were the
two concluding lines:
“. . . you leave it in the mail—you know where; I’ll come and
get it.”
Not even the signature gave me any impression; but it, I must confess,
looked like an intentional enigma.
A step or two across the floor would have taken me and the slip to the
discomposed Ludlow, but in my way was a large reddish hand, attached
to a long arm, and the arm hung on the shoulder of an Irishman whose
naturally red face was filling with unaccustomed blood.
“Mine, sir,” said the bridegroom-to-be.
I shook my head. “No, Mr. Cosgrove, you must be mistaken. I saw—”
“No doubt. Mine, I said.”
“But I saw it come out of the pocket of Lord Ludlow.”
“No doubt.” Cosgrove swung about in his chair with a ruddy scowl. “And
I’ll trouble his Lordship to explain how a piece of my private
correspondence arrived in his pocket, and will he please tell me what
use he thought to make of it?”
Our minds play us pranks. The quarrel itself should have engrossed me,
but an absurd irrelevant detail about Cosgrove seized my attention.
This was the first time that I had seen the back of his head. His
black hair, I have stated, was short cut, and at the rear the recent
clipping had left a broad streak of white between his splay ears, so
that a person seeing him from behind for the first time, far from
supposing him the wealthiest bachelor in Ireland, might take him for a
yokel just come from his potato patch, rawly scissored for the fair,
to complete with other yokels for the favour of rustic beauties.
Then my glance shifted to Lord Ludlow, who also had swung about in his
chair, stiff and upright, his small bright green eyes sparkling, his
face full of indignation, like an affronted gerfalcon’s.
“What do you mean, sir? I have no interest in your correspondence, I
am sure.”
“Leave your pretences, shame on you, sir!” said Cosgrove (to whom I
had in impotence surrendered the slip). “This is a private
communication. I repeat, what presumption—”
“You’re mad,” scoffed Lord Ludlow. “I know nothing about your
communications. I don’t carry them about—”
Quite half-wittedly I interjected a hasty, “But my dear Ludlow, I saw
it fall when your handkerchief—”
This was mere idiocy, diverting the wrath of the god to my own
shoulders. The thin man turned spryly upon me. “If you will kindly
confine yourself to your own business, Mr. Bannerlee, without
excursions into the fantastic.”
“Mr. Bannerlee is right, I have no doubt,” asserted Sean Cosgrove with
ponderous emphasis; “and he is prying into no one’s business when he
tells the lawful truth.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee!” cackled Ludlow.
_Explicit!_ Here, with the hurly-burly of the quarrel is completed the
exposition; what admired disorder ensued in the next fifteen minutes I
described at the outset of my half-the-night’s scribbling.¹ What has
it meant? What does it portend? I am sure now that the intangible
feeling impressed upon me in the Hall was one of hostility, not the
sort divulged by semi-secret looks and half-heard imprecations, but a
congeries of criss-crossed feuds hidden completely by the thick veneer
of social amenity.
¹ All this is more than four times as much as I wrote that night,
but I did set down something more than five thousand words.
(Author’s note.)
Well! sleep we must in spite of thunder. I have written as often I
used to, feverishly, with absorption, but never with such a theme!
What will to-morrow bring? What shall I have to relate to-morrow
midnight? Nothing dull, I hope; I trust nothing grievous.
(Eve Bartholomew, whom I thought I heard prowling an hour ago, left a
slip of paper under the door: “Money! I’ve known Sir Brooke to forget
it before.”
Poor devil of a woman?)