THE MILE-CASTLE AGAIN
Messrs. Green, Son & Wilkinson, who had the care of Miss Innes's legal
affairs, were much inclined to advise her to think more than twice
before purchasing a Border Pele. In like manner they had striven to
persuade her not to face the tremendous expenditure of running a private
hospital. The result was the same in both cases. Miss Innes, as she
gently pointed out, was no longer a child. She was now well on in her
twenties, and when she had made up her mind to do a thing she did it.
She did not come to them for Advice, but to have her orders carried out.
They told her that the land to be sold with the tower was inconsiderable
and of poor quality. The Pele itself needed to have a large sum laid
out upon it in order to make it fit for residence. The country was
exposed, the distance from the railway great, the difficulties of water
supply and electric light alike formidable.
She listened, smiled, said she knew the place well, and had set her
heart upon it. She declined to entertain the idea of a lease, would buy
only the freehold; and stipulated that the present tenant, Mr. Guyse,
should not be told the name of the purchaser.
She was perfectly willing to agree to the somewhat stiff terms of sale,
namely, that she undertook, under heavy penalties, not to divide the
land, not to pull down the Tower, not to build cheap houses on the
property, and a dozen other restrictions which seemed to her very
absurd, but which were, none the less, insisted upon.
There actually was another would-be buyer in the market, besides
herself--an American; and she gave instructions that whatever this
gentleman offered, her own representatives should offer more. The
result was that, although she came off victorious, she had to pay more
than Messrs. Green, Son & Wilkinson thought a fair price.
Little cared she!
It seemed to her that never had she really grasped the happiness of
being rich, until she actually held in her hands the bulky title-deeds,
the precious documents which made her the owner of the Pele, which gave
Ninian's future, so to speak, into her tyrant hands.
It was not until this transaction was accomplished that she realised how
completely she had burnt her boats. The capital sum paid down must
appreciably cripple her own income. Suppose that her worst fears were
true--that Ninian had never loved her, and did not want her--what was
she to do?
What would the rest of life be like, after she had made over the Pele to
him?
She shut her ears to all such maddening thoughts. She was going to see
him, or die in the attempt.
"_He has never got over your turning him down._" So Wolf had said.
That might, however, easily be true, even though he had no spark of love
for her. Had she accepted him, his home need never have been sold.
Here was matter enough for regret from his point of view. It must be
the loss of the fortune and not the woman that he lamented. Wolf's lip
had curled as he said, "You can have your pick of the fortune-hunters
now. You'll not find a man among them fit to tie up old Nin's
shoe-string." In her heart she admitted the exact truth of this.
As soon as she received Lily Guyse's letter she determined not to see
Wolf again for the present. She coaxed Aunt Maud to leave town, and
they went to a hotel a few miles out, whence she could easily motor in
and interview her lawyers. During the time that the negotiations were
pending, she was in a state of mind so unlike herself that Miss Wilson
confided to General Grey her wish that Olwen would take a fancy to
somebody and marry soon. "If she doesn't, she will be quite soured,"
said she with a sigh.
"Is there anybody?" he asked.
"Not that I know of. I always had an idea that there was something or
somebody, but it was while she was staying away. There was a young
doctor--it is possible she is fretting for him. I thought that very
irresistible Colonel Guyse might have a chance, but somehow I don't
fancy he has made much impression. I suppose the poor child feels that
everybody must be after her money."
"Oh, but she is attractive. She need not feel that. She is a girl who
would always have had lovers."
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Holroyd would have married her long before anybody
dreamed she would be rich. But I am glad she did not care for him. He
is not the husband for her; she wants a more dominant person, for she is
very wilful and impetuous."
The wilfulness and impetuosity of her niece were more clearly
demonstrated in the course of a very few days. Miss Innes announced her
intention of starting upon a tour in the north of England.
Miss Wilson was seriously annoyed. She was wrapped up in her own
affairs at the time, very busy, every moment occupied, London full,
plenty of interest, the General just in the stage when a man may or may
not go further according to opportunity.
"What has made you all of a sudden turn against London?" she asked with
natural vexation. "You were wild to come here at first."
"I know. One has to find out one's mistakes, and I have found out mine.
There are disadvantages that I never foresaw. One is the way in which
men keep on asking me to marry them without caring one bit for me, and
expect me to take their devotion for granted."
"Nonsense, Olwen!"
"It isn't nonsense. I wish they wouldn't do it. I said to Mr. Lambert
only the other day, 'You don't know what love means, you haven't any
idea! I am younger than you, but I know and you don't.' He took me up
very quickly. 'Do you know by personal experience?' he wanted to know,
and I asked him what he meant. 'Has a man made violent love to you--has
he kissed you?' he asked. I told him nobody ever had done that; though
five men, counting Ben Holroyd, have asked me to marry them. So he said
I couldn't know. But I do, so what's the good of arguing? Heigh-ho!
One man is just the same as another to me, and I'm sure they all go to
the same tailor."
"Don't get bitter, child."
"If any of them looked different, or--weather-stained, or--even did
things at a different time from anybody else, like the Snark you
know--breakfasted at five o'clock tea and dined on the following day.
But in London people are not like that. We are just like the
carpet-bedding in the parks, we look all right in the mass, but if you
examine any one of us individually, it is a poor little specimen, and if
we grew too tall or too big, the gardener would snip us and trim us to
make us match the others."
Miss Wilson had no reply to make to this, and the heiress continued
after a minute.
"Have you ever heard that if a man brings the girl he loves into a house
where a corpse is lying he will never marry her?"
"Really, Ollie, what unpleasant things you sometimes say! No, I never
heard of such a thing."
"Well, I did. I believe it's true, too. Superstitions often are. They
grow out of wild nature. In some parts of the world wild nature is
still alive, and strong enough to hurt. The elements--cold and wind and
snow--might kill you there. They have power! But for all that you
would be free; ever so much more free than we are here, where
everybody's thoughts are coloured by the latest novel that everybody
else is reading, too."
"I'm really not sure what you are talking about."
"Oh, I'm not talking, merely thinking aloud. You have got to bear that
now and then. If you knew how often I brood over things like this, and
how seldom I bore you with them, you would think yourself lucky. I have
just now got a craving for solitude and savagery. I want to see a black
crag with a frozen lake at its base, and a low grey sky, a flurry of
snow, the mist blotting out all the rest of the world--and in the midst
of it all just one little place of refuge...."
"At the end of June, I'm afraid, even in the wildest parts of this
country, you won't be able to indulge your desire," said Aunt Maud with
irony. "Do you want to go abroad?"
"N-no. Only to the north."
"Well, I am afraid I really can't leave town for another fortnight at
least."
"Then you mustn't think me a beast if I go off without you. You can
join me, wherever I happen to be, can't you? You had better let me go,
for I shall be poor company. I have nothing to do, I am at a loose end,
and I think if I go somewhere where I can walk and walk and walk till I
am so tired that I drop off to sleep the moment I have eaten my supper,
I shall regain a more normal view of life. I'll go in the car. Aunt
Ethel's in town this week, and she would love it if I were to motor her
and Marjorie back to Leeds with me, and drop them at Mount Prospect on
my way."
"My child! Go travelling alone! Grandpapa would not like that."
Olwen smiled serenely. "He won't be asked, bless him! Dear aunt,
consider my advanced age! Chaperons and dodos now occupy the same glass
case in most museums. I'll take Parkinson, and then Heaven knows I shall
be respectable enough!"
The plans thus made were duly carried through, as plans made by Olwen
had a habit of being.
Mrs. Whitefield, since her niece's accession to wealth, had varied in
her feelings between envy and a desire to stand well with the heiress.
She accepted all favours offered, but could not forbear disparaging
criticism. She was pleased to travel north in the fine Rolls-Royce, but
vexed because she could not understand why Ollie should continue her
tour alone, instead of taking Marjorie with her. Marjorie had grown
stout, and was stolid and uninteresting. Olwen was kindly disposed to
her, but just now she felt that her continual company would be quite
unbearable, and breathed a sigh of relief, when, after spending a night
in the overpowering magnificence of Mount Prospect, she was free to
pursue her journey unhindered.
She passed by way of Watling Street, up to the Tyne, pausing when she
reached Corbridge, to wander down to the river's edge, and trace the old
line of the great highway, through Corstopitum. She slept that night at
the Wheatsheaf, and early next morning passed through Hexham and
Fourstones, to Bardon Mill, and thence over the shoulder of Barcombe.
The hedgerows as they passed were crimson with the glow of such
brier-roses as seem to grow only in Northumbria; but when they had
passed Vindolana and the Roman milestone, and come out upon Wade's Road,
they had reached the end of the hedgerows.
At the Twice-Brewed Inn they stopped, and she left the car with
Parkinson and Goddard, the chauffeur, to do as they liked until her
return. She was going off by herself to slake her desire to behold once
more Duke's Crag and the Hotwells Lough.
Over her head was a sky of cloudless blue, in which larks sang and
curlews wheeled, with their mewing cry, over the lonely land. She had a
map with her, and was able to make straight for the mile-castle.
She had hardly left the road, and set her face northward, before she was
out of sight of all habitations. Before her, on the ridge, lay the long
line of the outer vallum, and beyond it the swell of the height which
carried the Wall itself, and was precipitous upon its northern face.
After she had climbed some way she could, shading her eyes from the
glare, descry, far away to her left, the smoke from the chimney of Hazel
Crag, drifting idly on the warm breeze; and she lived again the moment
of the opening door, and the face of Balmayne as he recognised the night
wanderers.
The cry of sheep, straying on the moor, came to her ears like a far away
lament.
_Silence and passion, joy and peace,_
_An everlasting wash of air_
_Rome's ghost since her decease! ..._
This was Ninian's native land. Its freedom, its loneliness, were alike
typical of him in her mind. The short turf on which she trod was
enamelled with the purple and gold of wild pansies. "There's pansies,
that's for thoughts," she found herself whispering; and thoughts were
thronging almost unbearably.
In the long, awful months and years of his captivity, how must his wild
heart have turned with sick longing to those broad spaces, that
galloping wind, that fullness of liberty, that crowded solitude of his
native north! She had a fantastic notion that for every time he or she
had visited the place in spirit, one little thought-flower had sprung to
bear witness of the dream!
She was making for the Gap, like a mountain pass in miniature, which
brings one through, close to the dark Lough. The water to-day looked
temptingly cool and clear. Somewhere in its depths lay the stone which
had struck her head. She did not descend to the plain beyond her, but
turned westward and made her way along the ridge to the mile-castle.
To her active feet the distance seemed very short in the fair weather.
It was hard even to picture the drifting snow, like cold foam about
clogged feet--the keenness of the driving blast, the furious opposition
of the elements.
Her imagination brought Ninian so near that she stopped and faced
quickly about, with some idea of being followed. There was no one, only
the memory-laden landscape looked her in the face, whispered in her
ear.... How he had suffered since then! ... She used to read in the
papers of the horrors of Griesslauen, harrowing details of typhoid, of
bad water, of half rations, of torture.... Had she known what he was
enduring she never could have borne it. The very memory forced drops
from her eyes as she dwelt upon it.
She reached the mile-castle, where it lay open to the sun. Over its
broken wall she could descry the corrugated iron roof of the shed which
had sheltered them. Her feet were noiseless on the grass, and her
approach was unseen, unheard by the man who sat within, upon a remnant
of inner wall.
He was seated sideways, so that she saw his profile. His head was
downbent, his elbows rested on his knees. In his hands he held something
which at first she took to be a skein of silk, which he was idly pulling
through his fingers. His hat lay on the ground beside him, and Olwen
saw his hair, thickly sprinkled with grey.
What was it which his fingers ceaselessly caressed? The sun glinted upon
it, and it fell in a shower of gold. _It was a tress of hair_.
A mixture of amazement, joy, and wicked triumph so flooded her that she
could hardly see. Hair! It was her own hair! It was the big tress
which, to Sunia's rage, Dr. Balmayne had been obliged to cut away in
order to sew the wound on her head.
There is no word to describe what she felt, as she fought for composure,
schooled the trembling of her limbs and the muscles of her mouth.
His gaze was fixed upon something which lay on the ground between his
knees; something too small for her to see. Having made herself ready
for the encounter, she let a bit of stone fall, with a rattling noise.
He looked up.
Nin it was, but the change in him was at first sight awful.
His face was lined and parchment-like. There were puckers about his
eyes, which looked sunken. He might have passed for ten years older
than Wolf. For a long instant his look met hers as though he did not
see her. Then suddenly there awoke, in his bewildered stare, something
that resembled the Ninian she had known. With a swift movement he
thrust the tress of hair into his breast pocket, snatched up what lay
upon the grass, and with a flicker, a characteristic glance, he opened
fire.
"Ah, well, you haven't succeeded in growing any taller, you know, in
spite of all your new dignities." His manner, at least, was unchanged,
though his voice sounded forced and unnatural.
His words pulled Olwen together wonderfully. She had been on the very
verge of self-betrayal--of a burst of silly tears. The familiar mocking
seemed to put them back at once, just at the place where they left off,
and she summoned her strength to fence with him as of old. "Yes," she
replied, with a conventional smile, not moving forward, but speaking
from her post in the entrance. "I am still a mouse, as your brother
reminded me the other day; only the country mouse has become a town
mouse."
A quiver crossed his face as her voice was heard. "Oh," he said, "so
you really are, are you? I've once or twice thought I saw you before
to-day--slipping round a corner or peeping over a wall; but never face
to face like this. How did you get here?"
"My car is waiting at Twice-Brewed. I have walked from there, and am
very hot. I didn't expect to find you here."
"Obviously not," he replied, with a grin which showed his teeth to be as
good as ever. "You looked as if you had found a black-beetle in the
sugar-basin. However, I'm not a fixture, you know." As he spoke, he
laid down the thing he held in his hand, as it were furtively, on the
stone at the farther side of him, out of sight.
Determined to know what this was, she came suddenly forward and sank on
the grass at his feet with a flutter of white skirts. The manoeuvre
found him unprepared. Quickly he covered the little square bit of card
with his hand; but her eyes were very keen, and she had seen that it was
her own photo. She remembered that she had extracted it from a drawer
while at the Pele, with the intention of sending it to her father, and
had placed it on the mantelshelf in her room. She had never noticed the
fact that it was not among the things so carefully packed and returned
after her departure.
Now, it told her all! She found him here, in this place, sacred to a
memory which she alone could share; and with him he brought her picture
and a tress of hair!
Her courage rose with one bound, for all doubt was solved. Her lips
curved with mischief as she looked up at him provocatively, bold in the
delightful knowledge that she was prettier than she used to be, and that
her clothes set her off to the best advantage.
"Since you don't ask me to be seated, I do so without ceremony!"
"My manners have gone to pieces since I saw you last. Pretty annoying,
isn't it, to think how you wasted time and instruction on me?"
"Oh," was her retort, "I'm not surprised. I remember you had decided
that you could not keep it up! You prepared me for a lapse."
"It's worse than a lapse. It's what you might describe as a _debacle_
if you knew as much French as I do."
She was below him, facing him, and she looked up steadily at him as she
replied:
"Ah, well, I suppose I shall have to begin all over again."
That moved him. "No, by God you don't--not again," he answered
defiantly.
"Do you suppose that you can stop me, if my mind is made up?"
"Upon my word, you have the cheek of the----"
"Cheek! I should think I have. Don't be under the impression that you
can browbeat me."
"If you'll take my advice, you'll run away to that car of yours as fast
as your expensively shod feet will take you. I'm not good company
to-day for the wealthy and frivolous."
"I know, you always did find me a bore. But you can't get rid of me so
easily as all that. I had the intention of coming to the Pele to call
upon Madam, but as we have met here, perhaps you will take this as a
call--like the two ladies in _Punch_, who met while bathing? Now let us
begin to talk properly, and remember as much as you can of the nice
manners I once taught you. How is your mother, Mr. Guyse?"
His face, which had changed a dozen times as she teased him, settled
into a scowl. "She is very ill," he said gruffly, "and she is getting
worse. That's a topic I can't joke about."
"I don't ask you to joke. I think you ought to consider it very
seriously. Madam needs change of air and scene. Why don't you take her
away somewhere--say to the Riviera?"
He looked at her as if he could box her ears with pleasure. "Oh, just
because I don't choose," he answered savagely. "I like to thwart her,
just for the sake of thwarting her, as you ought to know by this time."
"I do know, but I like to force you to admit it," said she with a demure
smile. "I am wondering whether I could not do something to help cheer
her up. I often think with regret of the fact that I refused to do what
she wanted me to do so badly. I--I wonder whether it would do any good
now.... Or whether it is too late."
She pulled a blade of grass from beside her, and twisted it round her
fingers, carefully keeping her eyes fixed upon it.
"Afraid I can't help you to a decision," he said harshly.
"Oh, yes, you can. In fact, it all depends on you," she replied, in a
very small voice. "Do you remember our last talk at the Pele--when you
came in to tea and I was so kind, I had kept yours hot for you, and I
stayed to pour it out? And do you remember that on that occasion, in
the intervals of drinking your tea, you did me the honour to ask me to
marry you?"
"Did I? I must have been an ass."
"Well, perhaps you were. But I really am not sure. Perhaps I was the
ass for saying NO. Anyway, it has been in my mind that I ought to have
said Yes, on account of Madam. Don't you agree?"
He sprang to his feet. "Not in the humour to-day for any more twaddle,"
he said, laughing, with a catch in his breath. "I--I know I've been a
beast and--and drawn this on myself, but have a little pity for me.
This morning I've heard that the last blow has fallen. I'm now not
merely a beggar but an outcast. I can't sit bandying words with you, I
tell you I can't stand it."
She did not move, but answered with a quiet which disarmed him. "Well,
I won't keep you long, but as we have met, I wish you would just put up
with me for a few minutes longer. You have roused all my curiosity and
I think you ought to satisfy it. What do you mean by saying that you
are not merely a beggar but an outcast?"
"Just what I say. When I did the one thing I shall regret all my life,
and asked you to marry me, I did think I had something to offer a woman.
Now I've nothing. It is sold over my head--the Pele I mean--and I shall
have to take Madam on my back and tramp the country, asking the
charitable for shelter."
He had sunk down in his place again, and sat there, eyes fiercely fixed
on the contemplation of his troubles.
"Oh, Nin," she said softly, "don't you think even having to marry me
might be better than that? It does sound so uncomfortable for poor
Madam."
He looked at her, marvelling at her cruelty, and made a shrinking
movement, as if hurt. "Out there," he said, after a pause, "out in
Griesslauen I used to think I had endured everything a man could, and
that hereafter I might reckon myself immune to pain. But I--I expect
you have the right. If you get any satisfaction out of baiting me, go
on. It's up to me to take what you give."
She rose deliberately from where she had been sitting, and went away a
few paces. He raised his head. She had gone to the door of the shed in
which they had sheltered and stood staring in. After a while she turned
slowly and caught his look fixed upon her. The colour flowed warm over
her face.
"Perhaps," said she in a low voice, "perhaps your mother was right.
It--it was very unconventional, wasn't it? Do you think--perhaps--on
those grounds--I was wrong to say 'No'?"
He stood up, and his face was rigidly set. "I think you had better go,"
was all he said.
She turned to him, looking not into his face but somewhere about his
second waistcoat button. "So you won't marry me on Madam's account--nor
because it would be more _comme il faut_. Would you marry me--now tell
the truth--if by doing so you could get back the Pele?"
"No!" he shouted wrathfully. "No, no, and yet again no! I wouldn't
marry you if you were hung all over with silver and gold--not if you
were Venus and Diana rolled into one----"
"Well, well, well, you needn't make such a noise about it. I'm not a
bit deaf--"
He broke off, seeming to swallow rage in gulps. For a moment he
surveyed her critically, as if he sneered at her fine clothes, then he
turned abruptly on his heel. "Good-bye," he said shortly, making for
the entrance.