Hag's Nook dgf-1 Page 5

  "I hope I meet Mrs. Colonel Granby," she said, breathlessy. She seemed to think this a wicked idea, and turned a flushed face over her shoulder, eyes dancing. "It's nice, it's nice.- Ugh! I'm glad I have on low-heeled shoes."

  "Want to speed it up?"

  "Beast! I'm warm already. I say, are you a track man?" "Hmf. A little."

  A little. Through his brain ran white letters on black boards, in a dusky room off the campus, where there were silver cups in glass cases and embalmed footballs with dates painted on them. Then, with the road flying past, he remembered another scene of just such an exhilaration as he felt now. November, with a surf of sound beating, the rasp of breathing, and the quarterback declaiming signals like a ham actor. Thick headache. Little wires in his legs drawn tight, and cold fingers without feeling in them. Then the wheeze and buckle of the line, and thuds. Suddenly the cold air streaming in his face, a sensation of flying over white lines on legs wired like a puppet's, and a muddy object he plucked out of the air just under the goal-posts. . . . He heard again that stupefying roar, and felt his stomach opening and shutting as the roar lifted the dusky air like a lid off a kettle. That had been only last autumn, and it seemed a thousand years ago. Here he was on a weirder adventure in the twilight, with a girl whose very presence was like the tingle of those lost, roaring thousand years.

  "A little," he repeated, suddenly, drawing a deep breath. They were into the outskirts of the village, where thick waisted trees shaded white shop-fronts, and the bricks of the sidewalks ran in crooked patterns like a child's writing exercise. A woman stopped to look at them. A man on a bicycle goggled so much that he ran into the ditch and swore.

  Leaning up against a tree, flushed and panting, Dorothy laughed.

  "I've had enough of your silly game," she said, her eyes very bright. "But, O Lord! I feel better!"

  From the furious excitement which had possessed them, neither knowing why, they passed to deep contentment and became carefully decorous. They got the cigarettes, the tobacconist explaining as 'ow he had stopped there after hours, and Rampole gratified a long-cherished wish to buy a church-warden pipe. He was intrigued by the chemist's shop; with its large glass vats of red and green and its impressive array of drugs, it was like something out of a mediaeval tale. There was an inn, called The Friar Tuck, and a public-house called The Goat and Bunch of Grapes. Rampole was steered away from the latter only by the girl's (to him) inexplicable refusal to accompany him into the bar. All .in all, he was much impressed.

  "You can get a shave and a hair-cut in the cigar store," he continued to muse. "It isn't so different from America, after all."

  He felt so fine that even the trials were nothing. They ran into Mrs. Theodosia Payne, the lawyer's wife, who was stalking grimly along the High Street with her ouija board under her arm. Mrs. Payne had a formidable hat. She moved her jaws like a ventriloquist's dummy, but spoke like a sergeant-major. Nevertheless, Rampole listened with Chesterfieldian politeness while she explained the vagaries of Lucius, her "control" - apparently an erratic and dissipated member of the spirit world, who skidded all over the board and spelled with a strong cockney accent. Dorothy saw her companion's face looking dangerously apoplectic, and got him away from Mrs. Payne before they both exploded into mirth.

  It was nearly eight o'clock before they started back. Everything pleased these two, from the street lamps (which resembled glass coffins, and burnt a very consumptive sort of gas) to a tiny shop with a bell over the door, where you could get gilt-covered gingerbread animals and sheets of long-forgotten comic-songs. Rampole had always had a passion for buying useless junk, on the two sound principles that he didn't need it and that he had money to spend; so, finding a kindred spirit who didn't think it was childish, he indulged. They went back through a luminous dusk, the song-sheets held between them like a hymnal, earnestly singing a lament called, "Where Was You, ‘Arry, on the Last Bank 'Oliday?" -and Dorothy was sternly ordered to repress her hilarity in the pathetic parts.

  "It's been glorious," the girl said when they had almost reached the lane leading to Dr. Fell's. "It never occurred to me that there was anything interesting in Chatterham. I'm sorry to go home."

  "It never occurred to me, either," he said, blankly. "It just seemed that way this afternoon."

  They meditated this a moment, looking at each other.

  "We've got time for one more," he suggested, as though that were the most important thing in the world. "Do you want to try `The Rose of Bloomsbury Square'?"

  "Oh no! Dr. Fell's an old dear, but I've got to preserve some dignity. I saw Mrs. Colonel Granby peeping through the curtains all the time we were in the village. Besides, it's' getting late...."

  "Well-"

  "And so-"

  They both hesitated. Rampole felt a little unreal, and his heart was pounding with enormous rhythm. All about them the yellow sky had changed to a darkling light edged with purple. The fragrance of the hedgerows had become almost overpowering. Her eyes were very strong, very living, and yet veiled as though with pain; they went over his face with desperate seeking. Though he was looking only there, he somehow felt that her hands were extending....

  He caught her hands. "Let me walk home with you," he said, heavily; "let me-"

  "Ahoy there!" boomed a voice from up the lane. "Hold on! Wait a minute."

  Rampole felt something at his heart that was like a

  physical jerk. He was trembling, and he felt through her warm hands that she was trembling, too. The voice broke such an emotional tensity that they both felt bewildered; and then the girl began to laugh.

  Dr. Fell loomed up, puffing, out of the lane. Behind him Rampole saw a figure that looked familiar; yes, it was Payne, with the curved pipe in his mouth. He seemed to be chewing it.

  Dread, coming back again after a few brief hours....

  The doctor looked very grave. He stopped to get his breath, leaning one cane up against his leg.

  "I don't want to alarm you, Dorothy," he began, "and I know the subject is taboo; all the same, this is a time for speaking straight out-"

  "Er!" said Payne, warningly, making a rasp in his throat. "The---er-guest?"

  "He knows all about it. Now, girl, it's none of my business, I know-"

  "Please tell me!" She clenched her hands.

  "Your brother was here. We were a bit worried about the state he's in. I don't mean the drinking. That'll pass off; anyway, he was sick, and he was almost cold sober when he left. But it's the fright he's in; you could see it in the wild and defiant way he acted. We don't want him to get wrought up and do himself an injury over this silly business. Do you see?"

  "Well? Go on!"

  "The rector and your cousin took him home. Saunders is very much upset about this thing. Look here, I'll be absolutely frank. You know, of course, that before your father died he told Saunders something under a sort of seal of confession; and Saunders just thought he was out of his head at the time? But he's beginning to wonder. Now there may not be anything in this, but - just in case -we're going to keep guard. The window of the Governor's Room is plainly visible from here, and this house isn't much over three hundred yards from the prison itself. Do you see?"

  "Yes!";

  "Saunders and I, and Mr. Rampole, if he will, are going to be on the watch all the time. There'll be a moon, We can see Martin when he goes in. All you have to do is walk to the front of the lawn, and you have a good view of the front gates. Any noise, any disturbance, anything at all suspicious -Saunders and the young un here will be across that meadow before a ghost could vanish." He smiled, putting his hand on her shoulder. "This is all moonshine, I know, and I'm just a crazy old man. But I've known your people a long time - you see? Now, then, what time does the vigil commence?"

  "At eleven o'clock."

  "Ah, I thought so. Now, then, just after he's left the Hall, telephone us. We'll be watching. Naturally, you're not to mention this to him; it isn't supposed to be done, and if he knew it he might be in just such
a state of nervous bravado to go the other way and block our plans. But you might suggest to him that he sit somewhere near the window with his light."

  Dorothy drew a deep breath. "I knew there was something in it," she said, dully. "I knew you were all keeping something from me. . . . O my God! why does he have to go, anyway? Why can't we break a silly custom, and-"

  "Not unless you want to lose the estate," Payne said, gruffly. "Sorry. But that's the way it's arranged. And I have to administer it. I have to deliver several keys - there's more than one door to be got through - to the heir. When he returns them to me, he must show me a certain thing from inside that vault, never mind what, to show me he's really opened it.

  Again the lawyer's teeth gripped his pipe hard. The whites of his eyes looked luminous in the dusk.

  "Miss Starberth knew all that, gentlemen, whether the rest of you did or not," he snapped. "We grow frank. Very well. Permit me to shout my affairs from the church spire. My father held this trust from the Starberths before me. So did my grandfather, and his grandfather. I state these details, gentlemen, so as not to seem a fool for technicalities. Even if 1 wanted to break the law, I tell you frankly I wouldn't break the trust."

  "Well, let him forfeit the estate, then! Do you think any of us would care a snap of our fingers-"

  Payne cut her short, testily: "Well, he isn't such a fool, however you and Bert feel about it. Good Lord! girl, do you want to be a pauper as well as a laughingstock? This procedure may be foolish. Very well. But it's the law and it's a trust." He brought the palms of his hands together with a sort of hollow thock. "I'll tell you what is more foolish. Your fears. No Starberth has suffered harm like that since 1837. Just because your father happened to be near the Hag's Nook when his horse threw him-"

  "Don't!" the girl said, wretchedly.

  Her hand quivered, and Rampole took a step forward. He did not speak; his throat felt hot and sanded with fury. But he thought, If I hear that man's voice a minute longer, by God! I'll break his jaw.

  "You've said enough, Payne, don't you think?" grunted Dr. Fell.

  "Ah," said Payne. "Just so."

  Anger was in the air. They heard a small noise of Payne sucking his leathery jaws in against his teeth. He repeated, "Just so!" in his low, dry voice, but you knew that he felt the licking flames.

  "If you will excuse me, gentlemen," he continued, very impassive, "I shall accompany Miss Starberth. . . . No, sir," as Rampole made a movement, "on this occasion, no. There are confidential matters I must express. Without interference, I hope. I have already discharged a part of my duty in handing over the keys to Mr. Martin Starberth. The rest remains. As – ah - possibly an older friend than the rest of you," his thin voice went high and rasping, and he almost snarled, "I may possibly be permitted to keep some matters confidential."

  Rampole was so mad that he came close to an absurd gulp. "Did you say `manners'?" he asked.

  "Steady," said Dr. Fell.

  "Come along, Miss Starberth," said the lawyer.

  They saw him shoot in his cuffs and hobble forward, and the white flash of his eyes as he glanced

  his shoulder. Rampole pressed the girl's hand; then both of them were gone. . . .

  "Tut, tut!" complained the doctor, after a pause. "Don't swear. He's only jealous of his position as family adviser. I'm much too worried to swear. I had a theory, but ... I don't know. It's going all wrong. All wrong. . . . Come along to dinner."

  Mumbling to himself, he led the way up the lane. Something cried aloud in Rampole's heart, and the dusk was full of phantoms. For a moment the released, laughing creature with the wind in her hair as she raced; the wistfulness of the square sombre face, wry-smiling on a bridge; the practicality, the mockery, the little Puckish humours; then suddenly the pallor by the hedge, and the small gasp when these terrors crept back. Don't let anything happen to her. Keep good watch, that no harm may touch her. Keep good watch, for this is her brother....

  Their footfalls rustled in the grass, and the insect-hum pulsed in shrill droning. Distantly, in the thick air to the west, there was a mutter of thunder.

  Chapter 5

  HEAT. Heat thick and sickly, with breezes that came as puffs out of an oven, made a gust in the trees, and then died. If this cottage had really been a Swiss barometer, the little figures would have been wildly swinging in their chalet now.

  They dined by candlelight, in the little oak room with the pewter dishes round the walls. The room was as warm as the dinner, and the wine warmer than both; Dr. Fell's face grew redder as he kept filling and refilling his glass. But his blowings and easy oratory were gone now. Even Mrs. Fell was quiet, though jumpy. She kept passing the wrong things, and nobody noticed it.

  Nor did they linger over coffee, cigars, and port, as was the doctor's; custom. Afterwards Rampole went up to his room. He lighted the oil-lamp and began to change his clothes. Old soiled tennis-flannels, a comfortable shirt, and tennis shoes. His room was a small one with a sloping roof, under the eaves, its one window looking out towards the side of Chatterham prison and the Hag's Nook. Some sort of flying beetle banged against the window-screen with a thump that made him start, and a moth was already fluttering round the lamp.

  It was a relief to be doing something. He finished dressing and took a few restless strides about. Up here the heat was thick with a smell of dry timber, like an attic; even the paste behind the flowered wall-paper seemed to give out a stifling odour; and the lamp was worst of all. Putting his head against the screen, he peered out. The moon was rising, unhealthy and yellow-ringed; it was past ten o'clock. Damn the uncertainty! A travelling-clock ticked with irritating nonchalance on the table at the head of his four-poster bed. The calendar in the lower part of the clock-case showed a staring figure where he had been last July 12th; and couldn't remember. Another gust of wind swished in the trees. Heat, prickling out damply on him and flowing over the brain in dizzy waves; heat.... He blew out the lamp.

  Stuffing pipe and oilskin pouch into his pocket, he went downstairs. A rocking-chair squeaked tirelessly in the parlour, where Mrs. Fell was reading a paper with large pictures. Rampole groped out across the lawn. The doctor had drawn two wicker chairs round to the side of the house looking towards the prison, where it was very dark and considerably cooler. Glowing red, the bowl of the doctor's pipe moved there; Rampole found a cold glass put into his hand as he sat down.

  "Nothing now," said Dr. Fell, "but to wait."

  That very distant thunder moved in the west, with a noise which was really like a bowling-ball curving down the alley, never to hit any pins. Rampole took a deep drink of the cold beer. That was better! The moon was far from strong, but already the cup of the meadow lay washed in a light like skimmed-milk, which was creeping up the walls.

  "Which is the window of the Governor's Room?" he asked, in a low voice.

  The red bowl gestured. "That large one - the only large one. It's in an almost direct line from here. Do you see it? Just beside it there's an iron door opening on a small stone balcony. That's where the governor stepped out to oversee the hangings."

  Rampole nodded. The whole side was covered with ivy, bulging in places where the weight of the masonry had made it sink into the crest of the hill. In the skimmed-milk light he could see tendrils hanging from the heavy bars in the window. Immediately beneath the balcony, but very far down, was another iron door. In front of this door, the limestone hill tumbled down sheer into the pointed fir trees of the Hag's Nook.

  "And the door below," he said, "is where they took the condemned out, I suppose?"

  "Yes. You can still see the three blocks of stone, with the holes in them, that held the framework of the gallows. . . . The stone coping of the well is hidden in those trees. They weren't there, of course, when the well was in use."

  "All the dead were dumped into it?"

  "Oh yes. You wonder the whole countryside isn't polluted, even after a hundred years. As it is, the well is a rare place for bugs and vermin. Dr. Markley had b
een agitating about it for the last fifteen years; but he can't get the borough or council to do anything about it, because it's Starberth land. Hmf."

  "And they won't let it be filled in?"

  "No. That's a part of the old mumbo-jumbo, too; a relic of the eighteenth-century Anthony. I've been going over Anthony's journal again. And when - I think of the way he died, and certain puzzling references in the journal, I sometimes think ..."

  "You haven't yet told me how he died," Rampole said, quietly.

  As he said it he wondered whether he wanted to know. Last night he thought, he was certain, that something wet had been looking down from the prison wall. In daytime he had not noticed it, but now he was aware of a distinct marshy smell, which seemed to be blowing across the meadow from the Hag's Nook.

  "I forgot," muttered the old lexicographer. "I was going to read it to you this afternoon when Mrs. F. interrupted us. Here." There was a rustle of paper, and a thick bundle of sheets was put into his hand. "Take it upstairs later; I want you to read it and form your own opinions."

  Were those frogs croaking? He could hear it plainly above the twitching and pulsing of insects. By God! that marshy odour was stronger; it was no illusion. There must be some natural explanation of it - the heat of the day released from the ground, or something. He wished he knew more about nature. The trees had begun to whisper uneasily again. Inside the house, a clock bonged out a single note.

  "Half-past ten," grunted his host. "And I think that's the rector's car coming up the lane."

  Unsteady headlights were gleaming there. Bumping and rattling, a high old Model T Ford - the kind they used to tell the jokes about-swung round to a stop, the rector looking huge on his perch. He hurried over in the moonlight, catching up a chair from the front of the lawn. His bluff and easy airs were not so much in evidence now; Rampole had a sudden feeling that they were assumed, for social purposes, to cover an intense self-consciousness. They could not see his face well in the gloom, but they knew he was perspiring. He panted as he sat down.