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THE HAND IN THE DARK
BY ARTHUR J. REES
AUTHOR OF "THE SHRIEKING PIT"
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
Copyright, 1920
PRESS OF
THE VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON, N. Y., U. S. A.
THE HAND IN THE DARK
CHAPTER I
Seen in the sad glamour of an English twilight, the old moat-house,
emerging from the thin mists which veiled the green flats in which it
stood, conveyed the impression of a habitation falling into senility,
tired with centuries of existence. Houses grow old like the race of men;
the process is not less inevitable, though slower; in both, decay is
hastened by events as well as by the passage of Time.
The moat-house was not so old as English country-houses go, but it had
aged quickly because of its past. There was a weird and bloody history
attached to the place: an historical record of murders and stabbings and
quarrels dating back to Saxon days, when a castle had stood on the spot,
and every inch of the flat land had been drenched in the blood of serfs
fighting under a Saxon tyrant against a Norman tyrant for the sacred
catchword of Liberty.
The victorious Norman tyrant had killed the Saxon, taken his castle, and
tyrannized over the serfs during his little day, until the greater
tyrant, Death, had taught him his first--and last--lesson of humility.
After his death some fresh usurper had pulled down his stolen castle,
and built a moat-house on the site. During the next few hundred years
there had been more fighting for restless ambition, invariably connected
with the making and unmaking of tyrants, until an English king lost his
head in the cause of Liberty, and the moat-house was destroyed by fire
for the same glorious principle.
It was rebuilt by the freebooter who had burnt it down; one Philip
Heredith, a descendant of Philip Here-Deith, whose name is inscribed in
the Domesday Book as one of the knights of the army of Duke William
which had assembled at Dives for the conquest of England. Philip
Heredith, who was as great a fighter as his Norman ancestor, established
his claim to his new estate, and avoided litigation concerning it, by
confining the Royalist owner and his family within the walls of the
moat-house before setting it on fire. He afterwards married and settled
down in the new house with his young wife. But the honeymoon was
disturbed by the ghost of the cavalier he had incinerated, who warned
him that as he had founded his line in horror it would end in horror,
and the house he had built would fall to the ground.
Philip Heredith, like many other great fighters, was an exceedingly
pious man, with a profound belief in the efficacy of prayer. He
endeavoured to thwart the ghost's curse by building a church in the
moat-house grounds, where he spent his Sundays praying for the eternal
welfare of the gentleman he had cut off in the flower of his manhood.
Perhaps the prayers were heard, for, when Philip Heredith in the course
of time became the first occupant of the brand-new vault he had built
for himself and his successors, he left behind him much wealth, and a
catalogue of his virtues in his own handwriting. The wealth he left to
his heirs, but he expressly stipulated that the record of his virtues
was to be carved in stone and placed as an enduring tablet, for the
edification of future generations, inside the church he had built.
It was a wise precaution on his part. The dead are dumb as to their own
merits, and the living think only of themselves. Time sped away, until
the first of the Herediths was forgotten as completely as though he had
never existed; even his dust had been crowded off the shelf of his own
vault to make room for the numerous descendants of the prolific and
prosperous line he had founded. But the tablet remained, and the old
moat-house he had built still stood.
It was a wonderful old place and a delight to the eye, this mediaeval
moat-house of mellow brick, stone facings, high-pitched roof, with
terraced gardens and encircling moat. It had defied Time better than its
builder, albeit a little shakily, with signs of decrepitude here and
there apparent in the crow's-feet cracks of the brickwork, and decay
only too plainly visible in the crazy angles of the tiled roof. But the
ivy which covered portions of the brickwork hid some of the ravages of
age, and helped the moat-house to show a brave front to the world, a
well-preserved survivor of an ornamental period in a commonplace and
ugly generation.
The place looked as though it belonged to the past and the ghosts of the
past. To cross the moat bridge was to step backward from the twentieth
century into the seventeenth. The moss-grown moat walls enclosed an
old-world garden, most jealously guarded by high yew hedges trimmed into
fantastic shapes of birds and animals; a garden of parterres and lawns,
where tritons blew stone horns, and naked nymphs bathed in marble
fountains; with an ancient sundial on which the gay scapegrace Suckling
had once scribbled a sonnet to a pair of blue eyes--a garden full of
sequestered walks and hidden nooks where courtly cavaliers and
bewitching dames in brocades and silks, patches and powder, had played
at the great game of love in their day. That day was long since dead.
The tritons and nymphs remained, to remind humanity that stone and
marble are more durable than flesh and blood, but the lords and ladies
had gone, never to return, unless, indeed, their spirits walked the
garden in the white stillness of moonlit nights. They may well have done
so. It was easy to imagine such light-hearted beauties visiting again
the old garden to revive dead memories of love and laughter: shadowy
forms stealing forth to assignations on the blanched, dew-laden lawn,
their roguish faces and bright eyes--if ghosts have eyes--peeping out of
ghostly hoods at gay ghostly cavaliers; coquetting and languishing
behind ghostly fans; perhaps even feeding, with ghostly little hands,
the peacocks which still kept the terrace walk above the moat.
The spectacle of a group of modern ladies laughing and chatting at tea
in the cloistered recesses of the terrace garden struck a note as
sharply incongruous as a flock of parrots chattering in a cathedral.
It was the autumn of 1918, and with one exception the ladies seated at
the tea-tables on the lawn represented the new and independent type of
womanhood called into existence by the national exigencies of war. The
elder of them looked useful rather than beautiful, as befitted patriotic
Englishwomen in war-time; the younger ones were pretty and charming, but
they were all workers, or pretended workers, in the task of helping
England win the war, and several of them wore the khaki or blue of
active service abroad. They were all very much at ease, laughing and
talking as they drank their tea and threw cake to the peacocks perched
on the high terrace walk above their heads.
The ladies were the guests of Sir Philip Heredith. Some months before,
his only son Philip, then holding a post in the War Office, had fallen
in love with the pretty face of a girl employed in one of the
departments of Whitehall. He married her soon afterwards, and brought
her home to the moat-house. It was the young husband who had suggested
that they should liven up the old moat-house by inviting some of their
former London friends down to stay with them. Violet Heredith, who found
herself bored with country life after the excitement of London war work,
caught eagerly at the idea, and the majority of the ladies at tea were
the former Whitehall acquaintances of the young wife, with whom she had
shared matinee tickets and afternoon teas in London during the last
winter of the war.
The hostess of the party, Miss Alethea Heredith, sister of the present
baronet, Sir Philip Heredith, and mistress of the moat-house since the
death of Lady Heredith, belonged to a bygone and almost extinct type of
Englishwoman, the provincial great lady, local society leader, village
patroness, sportswoman, and church-woman in one, a type exclusively
English, taking several centuries to produce in its finished form. Miss
Heredith was an excellent, if somewhat terrific, specimen of the class.
She was tall and massive, with a large-boned face, tanned red with
country air, shrewd grey eyes looking out beneath thick eyebrows which
met across her forehead in a straight line (the Heredith eyebrows) and a
strong, hooked nose (the Heredith falcon nose). But in spite of her
massive frame, red face, hooked nose, and countrified attire, she looked
more in place with the surroundings than the frailer and paler specimens
of womanhood to whom she was dispensing tea. There was a stiff and
stately grace in her movements, a slow ceremoniousness, in her
politeness to her guests, which seemed to harmonize with the
seventeenth-century setting of the moat-house garden.
At the moment the ladies were discussing an event which had been
arranged for that night: a country drive, to be followed by a musical
evening and dance. The invitations had been issued by the Weynes, a
young couple who had recently made their home in the county. The husband
was a popular novelist, who had left the distractions of London in order
to win fame in peace and quietness in the country. Mrs. Weyne, who had
been slightly acquainted with Mrs. Heredith before her marriage, was
delighted to learn she was to have her for a neighbour. She had arranged
the evening on her behalf, and had asked Miss Heredith to bring all her
guests. The event was to mark the close of the house party, which was to
break up on the following day. Unfortunately, Mrs. Heredith had fallen
ill a few hours previously, and it was doubtful whether she would be
able to join in the festivity.
"I hope you will all remember that dinner is to be a quarter of an hour
earlier to-night," said Miss Heredith, as she handed a cup of tea to one
of her guests. "It is a long drive to the Weynes' place, so I shall
order the cars for half-past seven."
The guests glanced at their hostess and murmured polite assent.
"I am looking forward to the visit so much," said the lady to whom Miss
Heredith had handed the cup. "It will be so romantic--a country dance in
a lonely house on a hill. What an adorable cup, dear Miss Heredith! I
love Chinese egg-shell porcelain, but this is simply beyond anything!
It's----"
"Whatever induced Dolly Weyne to bury herself in the country?" abruptly
exclaimed a young woman with cropped hair and khaki uniform. "She
loathed the country before she was married."
"Mrs. Weyne is a wife, and it is her duty to like her husband's home,"
said Miss Heredith a little primly. She disapproved of the speaker,
whose khaki uniform, close-cropped hair, crossed legs, and arms a-kimbo
struck her as everything that was modern and unwomanly.
"Then what induced Teddy Weyne to bury himself alive in the wilds? I'm
sure it must be terrible living up there alone, with nothing but earwigs
and owls for company."
"Mr. Weyne is a writer," rejoined Miss Heredith. "He needs seclusion."
"My husband doesn't," said a little fair-haired woman. "He says
newspaper men can write anywhere. And we know another writer, a Mr.
Harland, I think his name is, who writes long articles in the Sunday
newspapers----"
"I don't think his name is Harland, dear," interrupted another lady.
"Something like it, but not Harland. Dear me, what is it?"
"Oh, the name doesn't matter," retorted her friend. "The point is that
he writes long articles in his London office. Why can't Mr. Weyne do the
same?"
"Mr. Weyne is a novelist--not a journalist. It's quite a different
thing."
"Is it?" responded the other doubtfully. "All writing is the same, isn't
it? Harry says Mr. Harland's articles are dreadfully clever. He
sometimes reads bits of them to me."
"Mrs. Weyne feels a little lonely sometimes," said Miss Heredith. "She
has been looking forward to meeting Violet again. It will be pleasant
for both of them to renew their acquaintance."
"I should think she and Violet would get on well together," remarked the
young lady with the short hair. "They both have a good many tastes in
common. Neither likes the country, for one thing." The other ladies
looked at one another, and the speaker, realizing that she had been
tactless, stopped abruptly. "How is Violet?" she added lamely. "Do you
think she will be well enough to go to-night?"
"I still hope she may be well enough to go," replied Miss Heredith. "I
will ask her presently. Will anyone have another cup of tea?"
Nobody wanted any more tea. The meal was finished; but the groups of
ladies at the little tables sat placidly talking, enjoying the peaceful
surroundings and the afternoon sun. Some of the girls produced
cigarette-cases, and lit cigarettes.
There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel walk. A tall, good-looking
young officer was seen walking across the garden from the house. As he
neared the tea-tables he smilingly raised a finger to his forehead in
salute.
"I've come to say good-bye," he announced.
The ladies clustered around him. It was evident from their manner that
he was a popular figure among them. Several of the younger girls
addressed him as "Dick," and asked him to send them trophies from the
front. The young officer held his own amongst them with laughing
self-possession. When he had taken his farewell of them he approached
Miss Heredith, and held out his hand with a deferential politeness which
contrasted rather noticeably with the easy familiarity of his previous
leave-taking.
"I am sorry you are compelled to leave us, Captain Nepcote," said Miss
Heredith, rising with dignity to accept his outstretched hand. "Do you
return immediately to the front?"
"To-night, I expect."
"I trust you will return safely to your native land before long, crowned
with victory and glory."
Captain Nepcote bowed in some embarrassment. Like the rest of his
generation, he was easily discomposed by fine words or any display of
the finer feelings. He was about twenty-eight, of medium height,
clean-shaven, with clear-cut features, brown hair, and blue eyes. At the
first glance he conveyed nothing more than an impression of a handsome
young English officer of the familiar type turned out in thousands
during the war; but as he stood there talking, a sudden ray of sunlight
falling on his bared head revealed vague lines in the face and a
suspicion of silver in the closely cropped hair, suggesting something
not altogether in keeping with his debonair appearance--secret trouble
or dissipation, it was impossible to say which.
"Will you say good-bye to Mrs. Heredith for me?" he said, after a slight
pause. "I hope she will soon be better. I have said good-bye to Sir
Philip and Phil. Sir Philip wanted to drive me to the station, but I
know something of the difficulties of getting petrol just now, and I
wouldn't allow him. Awfully kind of him! Phil suggested walking down
with me, but I thought it would be too much for him."
They had walked away from the tea-tables towards the bridge which
spanned the entrance to the moat-house. Miss Heredith paused by two
brass cannon, which stood on the lawn in a clump of ornamental foliage,
with an inscription stating that they had been taken from the
_Passe-partout_, a French vessel captured by Admiral Heredith in the
Indian Seas in 1804.
"It is hard for Phil, a Heredith, to remain behind when all young
Englishmen are fighting for their beloved land," she said softly, her
eyes fixed upon these obsolete pieces of ordnance. "He comes of a line
of great warriors. However," she went on, in a more resolute tone, "Phil
has his duties to fulfil, in spite of his infirmity. We all have our
duties, thank God. Good-bye, Captain Nepcote. I am keeping you, and you
may miss your train."
"Good-bye, Miss Heredith. Thank you so much for your kindness during a
very pleasant visit. I've enjoyed myself awfully."
"I am glad that you have enjoyed your stay. I hope you will come and see
us again when your military duties permit."
"Er--yes. Thank you awfully. Thank you once more for your kindness."
The young officer uttered these polite platitudes of a guest's farewell
with some abruptness, bowed once more, and turned away across the old
stone bridge which spanned the moat.