Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://www.archive.org/details/watchersnovel00masorich
THE WATCHERS
THE
WATCHERS
A Novel
BY
A. E. W. MASON
AUTHOR OF "THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE
BUCKLER," ETC.
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1899_.
_By Frederick A. Stokes Company_.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. TELLS OF A DOOR AJAR AND OF A LAD WHO STOOD BEHIND IT.
II. DICK PARMITER'S STORY.
III. OF THE MAGICAL INFLUENCE OF A MAP.
IV. DESCRIBES THE REMARKABLE MANNER IN WHICH CULLEN MAYLE
LEFT TRESCO.
V. THE ADVENTURE IN THE WOOD.
VI. MY FIRST NIGHT UPON TRESCO.
VII. TELLS OF AN EXTRAORDINARY INCIDENT IN CULLEN MAYLE'S
BEDROOM.
VIII. HELEN MAYLE.
IX. TELLS OF A STAIN UPON A WHITE FROCK AND A LOST KEY.
X. IN WHICH I LEARN SOMETHING FROM AN ILL-PAINTED PICTURE.
XI. OUR PLANS MISCARRY UPON CASTLE DOWN.
XII. I FIND AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND.
XIII. IN THE ABBEY GROUNDS.
XIV. IN WHICH PETER TORTUE EXPLAINS HIS INTERVENTION ON MY
BEHALF.
XV. THE LOST KEY IS FOUND.
XVI. AN UNSATISFACTORY EXPLANATION.
XVII. CULLEN MAYLE COMES HOME.
XVIII. MY PERPLEXITIES ARE EXPLAINED.
XIX. THE LAST.
THE WATCHERS
CHAPTER I
TELLS OF A DOOR AJAR AND OF A LAD WHO
STOOD BEHIND IT
I had never need to keep any record either of the date or place. It
was the fifteenth night of July, in the year 1758, and the place was
Lieutenant Clutterbuck's lodging at the south corner of Burleigh
Street, Strand. The night was tropical in its heat, and though every
window stood open to the Thames, there was not a man, I think, who did
not long for the cool relief of morning, or step out from time to time
on to the balcony and search the dark profundity of sky for the first
flecks of grey. I cannot be positive about the entire disposition of
the room: but certainly Lieutenant Clutterbuck was playing at ninepins
down the middle with half a dozen decanters and a couple of silver
salvers; and Mr. Macfarlane, a young gentleman of a Scottish regiment,
was practising a game of his own.
He carried the fire-irons and Lieutenant Clutterbuck's sword under his
arm, and walked solidly about the floor after a little paper ball
rolled up out of a news sheet, which he hit with one of these
instruments, selecting now the poker, now the tongs or the sword with
great deliberation, and explaining his selection with even greater
earnestness; there was besides a great deal of noise, which seemed to
be a quality of the room rather than the utterance of any particular
person; and I have a clear recollection that everything, from the
candles to the glasses on the tables and the broken tobacco pipes on
the floor, was of a dazzling and intolerable brightness. This
brightness distressed me particularly, because just opposite to where
I sat a large mirror hung upon the wall between two windows. On each
side was a velvet hollow of gloom, in the middle this glittering oval.
Every ray of light within the room seemed to converge upon its
surface. I could not but look at it--for it did not occur to me to
move away to another chair--and it annoyed me exceedingly. Besides,
the mirror was inclined forward from the wall, and so threw straight
down at me a reflection of Lieutenant Clutterbuck's guests, as they
flung about the room beneath it.
Thus I saw a throng of flushed young exuberant faces, and in the
background, continually peeping between them, my own, very white and
drawn and thin and a million years old. That, too, annoyed me very
much, and then by a sheer miracle, as it seemed to me, the mirror
splintered and cracked and dropped in fragments on to the floor,
until there was only hanging on the wall the upper rim, a thin
curve of glass like a bright sickle. I remember that the noise and
hurley-burley suddenly ceased, as though morning had come unawares
upon a witches' carnival and that all the men present stood like
statues and appeared to stare at me. Lieutenant Clutterbuck broke the
silence, or rather tore it, with a great loud laugh which crumpled up
his face. He said something about "Old Steve Berkeley," and smacked
his hand upon my shoulder, and shouted for another glass, which he
filled and placed at my elbow, for my own had disappeared.
I had no time to drink from it, however, for just as I was raising it
to my lips Mr. Macfarlane's paper ball dropped from the ceiling into
the liquor.
"Bunkered, by God!" cried Mr. Macfarlane, amidst a shout of laughter.
I looked at Macfarlane with some reserve.
"I don't understand," I began.
"Don't move, man!" cried he, as he forced me back into my chair, and
dropping the fire-irons with a clatter on to the floor, he tried to
scoop the ball out of the glass with the point of Clutterbuck's
sword-sheath. He missed the glass; the sheath caught me full on the
knuckles; I opened my hand and----
"Sir, you have ruined my game," said Mr. Macfarlane, with considerable
heat.
"And a good thing too," said I, "for a sillier game I never saw in all
my life."
"Gentlemen," cried Lieutenant Clutterbuck, though he did not
articulate the word with his customary precision; but his intentions
were undoubtedly pacific. He happened to be holding the last of his
decanters in his hand, and he swung it to and fro. "Gentlemen," he
repeated, and as if to keep me company, he let the decanter slip out
of his hand. It fell on the floor and split with a loud noise. "Well,"
said he, solemnly, "I have dropped a brooch," and he fumbled at his
cravat.
Another peal of laughter went up; and while it was still ringing, a
man--what his name was I cannot remember, even if I ever knew it; I
saw him for the first time that evening, and I have only once seen him
since, but he was certainly--more sober than the rest--stooped over my
chair and caught me by the arm.
"Steve," said he, with a chuckle,--and from this familiarity to a new
acquaintance I judge he was not so sober after all,--"do you notice
the door?"
The door was in the corner of the room to my right. I looked towards
it: the brass handle shone like a gold ball in the sun. I looked back
at my companion, and, shaking my arm free, I replied coldly:
"I see it. It is a door, a mere door. But I do not notice it. It is
not indeed noteworthy."
"It is unlatched," said my acquaintance, with another chuckle.
"I suppose it is not the only door in the world in that predicament."
"But it was latched a moment ago," and with his forefinger he gently
poked me in the ribs.
"Then someone has turned the handle," said I, drawing myself away.
"A most ingenious theory," said he, quite unabashed by my reserve,
"and the truth. Someone _has_ turned the handle. Now who?" He winked
with an extreme significance. "My dear sir, who?"
I looked round the room. Mr. Macfarlane had resumed his game. Two
gentlemen in a corner through all the din were earnestly playing putt
with the cards. They had, however, removed their wigs, and their
shaven heads gleamed unpleasantly. Others by the window were
vociferating the chorus of a drinking song. Lieutenant Clutterbuck
alone was near to the door. I was on the point of pronouncing his name
when he lurched towards it, and instantly the door was closed.
"It was someone outside," said I.
"Precisely. Steve, you are not so devoid of sense as your friends
would have me believe," continued my companion. "Now, who will be
Lieutenant Clutterbuck's timorous visitor?" He drew his watch from
his fob: "We may hazard a guess at the sex, I think, but for the
rest---- Is it some fine lady from St. James's who has come in her
chair at half-past one of the morning to keep an appointment which her
careless courtier has forgotten?"
"Hardly," I returned. "For your fine lady would hurry back to her
chair with all the speed her petticoats allowed. She would not stay
behind the door, which, I see, has again been opened."
The familiar stranger laid his hand upon my shoulder and held me back
in my chair at arm's length from him.
"They do you wrong, my dear Steve," said he, gravely, "who say your
brains are addled with drink. Your"--his tongue stumbled over a long
word which I judged to be "ratiocination"--"is admirable. Never was
logician more precise. It is not a fine lady from St. James's. It will
be a flower-girl from Drury Lane, and may I be eternally as drunk as I
am to-night, if we do not have her into the room."
With that he crossed the room, and seizing the handle suddenly swung
the door open. The next instant he stepped back. The door was in a
line with the wall against which my chair was placed, and besides it
opened towards me so that I could not see what it was that so amazed
him.
"Here's the strangest flower-girl from Drury Lane that ever I saw,"
said he, and Lieutenant Clutterbuck turning about cried:
"By all that's wonderful, it's Dick Parmiter," and a lad of fifteen
years, with a red fisherman's bonnet upon his head and a blue jersey
on his back, stepped hesitatingly into the room.
"Well, Dick, what's the news from Scilly?" continued Clutterbuck. "And
what's brought you to London? Have you come to see the king in his
golden crown? Has Captain Hathaway lost his _Diodorus Siculus_ and
sent you to town to buy him another? Come, out with it!"
Dick shifted from one foot to another; he took his cap from his head
and twisted it in his hands; and he looked from one to another of
Lieutenant Clutterbuck's guests who had now crowded about the lad and
were plying him with questions. But he did not answer the questions.
No doubt the noise and the lights, and the presence of these
glittering gentlemen confused the lad, who was more used to the lonely
beaches of the islands and the companionable murmurs of the sea. At
last he plucked up the courage to say, with a glance of appeal to
Lieutenant Clutterbuck:
"I have news to tell, but I would sooner tell it to you alone."
His appeal was received with a chorus of protestations, and "Where are
your manners, Dick," cried Clutterbuck, "that you tell my friends flat
to their faces they cannot keep a secret?"
"Are we women?" asked Mr. Macfarlane.
"Out with your story," cried another.
Dick Parmiter shrank back and turned his eyes towards the door, but
one man shut it to and leaned his shoulders against the panels, while
the others caught at the lad's hesitation as at a new game, and
crowded about him as though he was some rare curiosity brought by a
traveller from outlandish parts.
"He shall tell his story," cried Clutterbuck. "It is two years since I
was stationed at the Scilly Islands, two years since I dined in the
mess-room of Star Castle with Captain Hathaway of his Majesty's
Invalids, and was bored to death with his dissertations on _Diodorus
Siculus_. Two years! The boy must have news of consequence. There is
no doubt trouble with the cray fish, or Adam Mayle has broken the head
of the collector of the Customs House----"
"Adam Mayle is dead. He was struck down by paralysis and never moved
till he died," interrupted Dick Parmiter.
The news sobered Clutterbuck for an instant. "Dead!" said he, gaping
at the boy. "Dead!" he repeated, and so flung back to his noise and
laughter, though there was a ring of savagery in it very strange to
his friends. "Well, more brandy will pay revenue, and fewer ships will
come ashore, and very like there'll be quiet upon Tresco----"
"No," interrupted Parmiter again, and Clutterbuck turned upon him with
a flush of rage.
"Well, tell your story and have done with it!"
"To you," said the boy, looking from one to other of the faces about
him.
"No, to all," cried Clutterbuck. The drink, and a certain anger of
which we did not know the source, made him obstinate. "You shall tell
it to us all, or not at all. Bring that table, forward, Macfarlane!
You shall stand on the table Dick, like a preacher in his pulpit," he
sneered, "and put all the fine gentlemen to shame, with a story of the
rustic virtues."
The table was dragged from the corner into the middle of the room. The
boy protested, and made for the door. But he was thrust back, seized
and lifted struggling on to the table, where he was set upon his feet.
"Harmony, gentlemen, harmony!" cried Clutterbuck, flapping his hand
upon the mantelshelf. "Take your seats, and no whispering in the side
boxes, if you please. For I can promise you a play which needs no
prologue to excuse it."
It was a company in which a small jest passed easily for a high stroke
of wit. They applauded Lieutenant Clutterbuck's sally, and drew up
their chairs round the table and sat looking upwards towards the boy,
with a great expectation of amusement, just as people watch a
bear-baiting at a fair. For my part I had not moved, and it was no
doubt for that reason that Parmiter looked for help towards me.
"When all's said, Clutterbuck," I began, "you and your friends are a
pack of bullies. The boy's a good boy, devil take me if he isn't."
The boy upon the table looked his gratitude for the small mercy of my
ineffectual plea, and I should have proceeded to enlarge upon it had I
not noticed a very astonishing thing. For Parmiter lifted his arm high
up above his head as though to impress upon me his gratitude, and his
arm lengthened out and grew until it touched the ceiling. Then it
dwindled and shrank until again it was no more than a boy's arm on a
boy's shoulder. I was so struck with this curious phenomenon that I
broke off my protest on his behalf, and mentioned to those about me
what I had seen, asking whether they had remarked it too, and
inquiring to what cause, whither of health or malady, they were
disposed to attribute so sudden a growth and contraction.
However, Lieutenant Clutterbuck's guests were only disposed that night
to make light of any subject however important or scientific. For some
laughed in my face, others more polite, shrugged their shoulders with
a smile, and the stranger who had spoken to me before clapped his hand
in the small of my back as I leaned forward, and shouted some ill-bred
word that, though might he die of small-pox if he had ever met me
before, he would have known me from a thousand by the tales he had
heard. However, before I could answer him fitly, and indeed, while I
was still pondering the meaning of his words. Lieutenant Clutterbuck
clapped his hands for silence, and Dick Parmiter, seeing no longer any
hope of succour, perforce began to tell his story.
It was a story of a youth that sat in the stocks of a Sunday morning
and disappeared thereafter from the islands; of a girl named Helen; of
a negro who slept and slept, and of men watching a house with a great
tangled garden that stood at the edge of the sea. Cullen Mayle,
Parmiter called the youth who had sat in the stocks, son to that Adam
whose death had so taken Lieutenant Clutterbuck with surprise. But I
could not make head or tail of the business. For one thing I have
always been very fond of flowers, and quite unaccountably the polished
floor of the room blossomed into a parterre of roses, so that my
attention was distracted by this curious and pleasing event.
For another, Parmiter's story was continually interrupted by intricate
questions intended to confuse him, his evident anxiety was made the
occasion of much amusement by those seated about the table, and he was
induced on one excuse and another to go back to the beginning again
and again and relate once more what he had already told. But I
remember that he spoke with a high intonation, and rather quickly and
with a broad accent, and that even then I was extremely sensible of
the unfamiliar parts from which he came. His words seemed to have
preserved a smell of the sea, and through them I seemed to hear very
clearly the sound of waves breaking upon a remote beach--near in a
word to that granite house with the tangled garden where the men
watched and watched.
Then the boy's story ceased, and the next thing I heard was a sound of
sobbing. I looked up, and there was Dick Parmiter upon the table,
crying like a child. Over against him sat Lieutenant Clutterbuck, with
a face sour and dark.
"I'll not stir a foot or lift a finger," said he, swearing an oath,
"no, not if God comes down and bids me."
And upon that the boy weakened of a sudden, swayed for an instant upon
his feet, and dropped in a huddle upon the table. His swoon put every
one to shame except Clutterbuck; everyone busied himself about the
boy, dabbing his forehead with wet handkerchiefs, and spilling brandy
over his face in attempts to pour it into his mouth--every one except
Clutterbuck, who never moved nor changed in a single line of his face,
from his fixed expression of anger. Dick Parmiter recovered from his
swoon and sat up: and his first look was towards the lieutenant, whose
face softened for an instant with I know not what memories of days
under the sun in a fishing boat amongst the islands.
"Dick, you are over-tired. It's a long road from the Scillies to
London. Very like, too, you are hungry," and Dick nodded "yes" to each
sentence. "Well, Dick, you shall eat here, if there's any food in my
larder, and you shall sleep here when you have eaten."
"Is that all?" asked Parmiter, simply, and Clutterbuck's face turned
hard again as a stone.
"Every word," said he.
The boy slipped off the table and began to search on the ground. His
cap had fallen from his hand when he fell down in his swoon. He picked
it up from beneath a chair. He did not look any more at Clutterbuck;
he made no appeal to anyone in the room; but though his legs still
faltered from weakness, he walked silently out of the door, and in a
little we heard his footsteps upon the stone stairs and the banisters
creaking, as though he clung to them, while he descended, for support.
"Good God, Clutterbuck!" cried Macfarlane "he's but a boy."
"With no roof to his head," said another.
"And fainting for lack of a meal," said a third.
"He shall have both," I cried, "if he will take them from me," and I
ran out of the door.
"Dick," I cried down the hollow of the staircase, "Dick Parmiter," but
no answer was returned, save my own cry coming back to me up the well
of the stairs. Clutterbuck's rooms were on the highest floor of the
house; the stone stairs stretched downwards flight after flight
beneath me. There was no sound anywhere upon them; the boy had gone. I
came back to the room. Lieutenant Clutterbuck sat quite still in his
chair. The morning was breaking; a cold livid light crept through the
open windows, touched his hands, reached his face and turned it white.
"Good-night," he said, without so much as a look.
His eyes were bent upon memories to which we had no clue. We left him
sitting thus and went down into the street, when we parted. I saw no
roses blossoming in the streets as I walked home, but as I looked in
my mirror at my lodging I noticed again that my face was drawn and
haggard and a million years old.