Devil's Tor (21 page)

"
As now!
So you instinctively realised that that different landscape was the phantom of an earlier stage of the present one?"

"Yes—I knew I was seeing a phantom of the past, and why not? For if haunted houses can be, why not haunted landscapes as well? And if you object that the landscape was not only haunted, but metamorphosed, which doesn't happen to a haunted house, I reply that, given the necessary vividness of manifestation, it might happen to a haunted house too, and the rooms and furniture might be changed. In effect, my sensations, that endured as long as the phenomenon went forward, certified the supernatural character. A slight horror and quaking went on continuously in me to the end; meaning, first that my blood scented the presence of an alien world (dogs have the same instinct very powerfully developed, as in bristling and howling on account of the unseen)... and secondly, that my logical brain was raising no protest of the non-existence and impossibility of what I saw, as presumably it must have done had the thing been simple passing hallucination. It would have sought to rectify the illusion at once; and would have succeeded; but this vision and quaking went on."

"But would there be no term to such a haunting of a landscape, Peter?"

"At least, before we can assign a term, we must know what is to wear out in the haunting. … Here there were elephants in England—or shall I say at once,
mammoths?
I have no science, but imagine that should give us very much more than ten thousand years, for example. So this particular haunting, if true, is proved to be practically unwearoutable. Shall I now resume?

"The funeral train—the persons composing it were half-bare savages, clad in a single animal skin apiece, with flowing manes over their shoulders; brandishing primitive weapons. Caesar's Britons must have scorned them for aborigines; and indeed, they were little more than apes. Their squat trunks, brief legs, gorilla-like arms, crouching balance, and tangle of unclipped hair, were absolutely in the character of apes. And they came along that cliff face in file, an endless string of them, all stamping and dancing outrageously, in true savage style. Only the covered death-hurdle—that made it a funeral for me—required a pair of supporters at either end, and they, in reason, could not dance. The outer two looked to me to be very precariously balanced over the edge of the ledge.

"All were just grey shapes. The colouring and sex were indistinguishable; except that they appeared as little like women as could be. Yet, dim as they were—perhaps additionally because of that dimness—their advance was singularly awful to my imagination. What must have been in my mind was that the path they were dancing along was the equivalent of the path
we
know, leading to the Tor. So they were making for Devil's Tor, and I was on it."

Ingrid touched his sleeve.

"Peter, were they going to bury their dead on Devil's Tor?"

"It was my instinct that they were."

"The monument of course would not be up till the grave was filled. So did you see a grave?"

"No, I neither saw nor looked for one."

"I would have looked for it—still, the entrance may have been temporarily covered. What have you to say about that dead one, Peter?"

"The bier was hidden by a hanging skin or cloth. Its length was unusual—abnormal, even—but whether the corpse was of a length corresponding, was not disclosed. I thought it might be. In fact, that prodigious drawn-out extension of the bier was the most dream-like feature of the whole business. The rest was spectral, but possible; this a fantasy—"

"It necessarily was a bier?"

"Yes, all the signs were of a funeral."

"So there was nothing to show if it were a woman or a man?"

"The question to ask is, what would a dead person, taller than our tallest men, be doing amongst those thick-set gnomes? By the honours being paid, he should be some prisoner of war, treated during his lifetime like a god. A woman, on all those accounts, would be less likely."

Ingrid already knew his error, but was silent; and he proceeded:

"The six leading creatures were blowing into conches, that sounded across the valley like far-off French horns—most thin and weird; above a perpetual thunder of invisible waters. A long way down the grotesque snake-line of mourners came the quiet burden, out of it all—and it suggested to me, my dear, what I have just said: a captive of high race, civilisation and rank, fallen into the hands of those simians, and worshipped by them, but never let go during the term of his natural life."

"And then, Peter ...?"

"That was the whole. The present landscape began to reappear through the ancient, the stronger light melted it away to nothingness, and the sun came out. Very shaken and moved, I found myself still sitting on my stump of rock; with your cousin, just as helpless, behind me.

"In a minute or two I got up and went to him. Before long he came round, and when his first desperate daze was past, we exchanged a few words, but we neither of us told our experience. It was somehow not the thing. I had the feeling that we had seen different visions. … He informed me of the earthquake, said that there actually had been a tomb, and that he had been down to it earlier to-day; but gave me no details; and refused my company off the hill. So I left first."

His recital being ended, he put a cigarette between his lips and lit it, but Ingrid, sitting on, with hands clasped above her lap, incorporated in silence the story with her other bewilderments. She wondered how Peter could have beheld such a marvel but an hour or so ago, and come straight from it, to talk to her of marriage. He must be trying to hide his own shock, in his English way. Some men, the more deeply they were moved by a solemnity, the more taciturn were about it. Others might be responsive at the time to a supernatural happening, yet the impression might quickly wear off with them, their own affairs being always too insistent. Thus Uncle Magnus had never cared to visit Devil's Tor a second time. … Or, having fixed the appointment with her for this afternoon, Peter had felt morally bound to go through with it, though disinclined. She asked herself what Hugh could have seen simultaneously. His trance had begun sooner, finished later, and must have been heavier. But she knew he wouldn't speak about it. In Peter's words, "it was not the thing."

So Hugh
had
cared to visit the hill again. Twice to-day he had been up, and perhaps was there now for a third time—she had seen him disappear with his hat on directly after lunch. He was certainly psychic, as Peter couldn't be. Possibly art was a channel that drew off all one's sense of reality into representation, so that even a quite fearful ghostly experience might become for the artist softened and unreal. But this couldn't be their incompatibility that Peter had referred to.

She must go up again. To-day it was not possible; but perhaps to-morrow. She must doctor and rest her ankle in readiness. What was Peter now expecting her to say? ... But he was resuming, turning to her through a wreath of smoke.

"Well, what do you make of it? Of course you accept the
bona fides
of the adventure? I did see these shapes and hear these sounds, exactly as I've reported; and I wasn't asleep and dreaming—you accept that?"

"I accept it all, just as you have told it to me."

"Nor have I distorted. Drapier has said nothing, though? Have you seen him since?"

"Yes, he was back to lunch, but said nothing; and ate nothing."

"I'm not surprised. I only sat down to mine because it was got ready. What did he find in the tomb?"

"Two stone tables, and nothing else."

"Enough to work him up, at the least, since we meet him on the hill a second time."

"Yes, I think he regards it seriously."

"A pity! These mediumistic trances, if they continue and he is going to keep on with them, look like leading him straight into nervous lunacy. His face was ghastly. Let those follow up the topsy-turvy affair whose professional work it is. … Anyway, I'm very glad your hurt prevents
you.
"

"You aren't to follow it up then, Peter?"

He slowly expelled a cloud from his mouth before making reply.

"No, I'm not going to. I considered the point on my way back, and found there was nothing to gain by my going further into it.

"What has happened, I take it, is this. After a number of years a stack of rocks on one of the minor heights of Dartmoor has been blown down, and an ancient grave uncovered. A resulting strong physical effluence from that opening is being able to affect the physical brains of those standing near by in such a way as to reproduce, photographically and phonographically, former happenings on the spot. It is very curious, very interesting, and essentially a case for science. But it is not a case for art. At first I was tempted to believe it might be—that optically and philosophically I could get something from it. I still might, but the charge is too high. For just as I would not swallow cocaine or opium for the sake of enriching my general imagery, so, my dear girl, I will not play Tom-Tiddler's-ground with the world of spooks for the same purpose. Ghosts have never done the human race one atom of good. I should be excited, brought to a fever, poisoned for the milder stimulations—and left. … Accordingly, your cousin must do what he likes about it—though, if you're a helpful young woman, you'll pass him on my warning—I, for my part, propose to walk out after this first act. The play threatens to be too realistic and exacting. I hope on due reflection you'll do the same."

Ingrid returned him a quiet look.

"You see I am a prisoner. I quite approve your decision, and admire you for it, but don't let us speak of the matter any more. Thank you for telling me what you have."

"I am very willing to leave it. So let's get back to our proper business."

"Say exactly what you want me to do."

"I have said. For years I must have had this feeling about you, but now the march of our intimacy seems to have brought us to a point where it can't any longer be ignored, and I want to hear from you whether it is a possibly right or a definitely wrong feeling. … You were quite correct about its being unnecessary for us to be the complementary halves of each other. Obviously we have differences; and they don't matter, and are not at all the sort of thing I mean. What does matter, my dear, is whether a marriage to me would permit you your best and finest life. So I beg you to examine your sources—and believe me, the significance of it goes very much deeper down than any mere brave planning of good intentions. Everyone has two wills, an active and an instinctive, and woe betide the person who thinks to construct his or her life wholly according to the active! Though for another girl and another marriage it might be all right."

"How is my case different?"

"You know you care for none of the things that girls do care for. At present, in this household, you're as fast asleep as the Sleeping Beauty. You'll have to wake up some time—to what? Shall I be with you when you wake up?"

"I hear these words from no one but you, Peter."

"The question is, if they are true words."

"Can one ever do more with one's life than go on living from day to day, advancing, if one does advance, by choosing the good that offers, and rejecting the bad?"

"That cannot satisfy," said Peter.

"If I marry, I shall have children perhaps; and they may safisfy."

"Should they be worth the love and care."

"That's in the hands of no woman."

"Of no ordinary woman."

At this, Ingrid glanced suddenly round to him.

"Do you mean anything special by that, Peter? Have you been leading me up to talk of children?"

"No I wasn't going to refer to it. I am not sure if it is immediately in my intuition, though, I think, necessarily implied. If a woman needs one man for a husband, and no other man, it seems to follow that Nature is speaking in her and that his completing qualities aren't for her alone. It's difficult for me to explain these matters without crossing the line, but you can't have forgotten the picture in your mother's room. I had the conception so long ago."

"Of a girl beginning to feel her instincts?"

"Do you imagine Christ's birth to have been miraculous? For if so, my argument drops to the ground. But if Mary bore her wonder-child from a mortal man, then wouldn't you say that Joseph was essential for her?"

"I am not Mary."

"Listen! A line of phenomenal women has always existed in the world, and it is not going to cease by reason of our modern vulgarities and mechanical improvements. So long as the world is to be saved by its great men, so long will those great men have fated mothers. By what signs may they be known, those fated mothers? Perhaps only he can recognise them, who is to be warned off. And perhaps you are such a fated mother, and I am to be warned off, and that is my intuition."

"This is madness."

Both stood up, facing each other. Peter had pitched away his cigarette a minute before.

"It may be that," he replied to her. "As I'm refraining from going heartily in to win you, probably my reasons should be fantastic to madness. Or else the madness of it may be only a point of view—that of the rule, denying sanity to the exception. The rule is that all the affairs of the world shall come under chance; which is an 'x' quantity, that may or may not be equivalent to long fate. The exception occurs when for once in a way this fate is seen actively displaying its hand, thus ruling out chance. Men, you see, have worked out their scheme on the hypothesis of chance; so must deny intention. But God is not an insurance actuary, and this terrific frame of flaming suns and their attendant whirling planets has not been put together from statistics and averages and probabilities. The miraculous human exception, over ages, will appear, and disappear, and reappear. It appears springing out of flesh-and-blood mothers, who have been known, spoken to, criticised by their sister-women, and familiarly met. Nevertheless they have been distinguished from other women by their
fatal
character. And, Ingrid,
you
have marks of distinction from the rest of girls and older women. Where is my madness if I see them somewhat more clearly than other people, and dimly apprehend what they may stand for? They discern a noble nature merely. I earnestly trust it may be no more; but have been told that you are too rare a girl not to represent a concrete purpose."