Devil's Tor (29 page)

"Come in, Ingrid"

She accordingly advanced a pace or two further, with a slow, wondering self-possession, while intently viewing Saltfleet, who rose. Her queer thought was that it was Hugh's friend, Mr. Arsinal—only it was not in the least like her preconception of him. Helga also got up, to introduce the two; and then Ingrid knew her mistake, and was almost equally disappointed and relieved. Saltfleet's person impressed her a little disagreeably. She found him rather improperly big; his eyes too staring. She looked away from him.

The interruption troubled Helga, not because it was one, but because, somehow, the bare acquaintance of this man seemed not quite right for her child. She was vexed that she had detained her so impulsively—though, of course, if he was to dine with them, they would have to meet. Then, nearly instantly, she had the insight that this irrational dislike of their encountering was but the measure of her own secret dread of him. The dread had only occasionally risen to anything like acuteness during their interview, but now she realised that it had nevertheless been constant in her; that she had generally had to suppress it by her manner of determined urbanity. … He was become Hugh's enemy, she supposed, and that was at the root. And still the impropriety of his even resting his eyes on her daughter continued to oppress and puzzle her. …

Invent a conversation she must, now that they were together in silence, and so she questioned her about Hugh's movements; yet a little negatively, Ingrid thought, as though she wanted her to know nothing.

"He is out walking," she had to reply.

"May I ask if you are aware in which direction?" said Saltfleet. And Ingrid understood, from the compelling force and steadiness of his gaze, that she would be unable to refuse the truth to him at least.

"I expect in the direction of Devil's Tor."

"Is that far out?"

"It's about three miles from here."

"And you fancy he would be there at this time?"

"There, or coming back from there."

"Should I easily strike him, if I went after him?"

"On another day you should have no difficulty, but to-day is foggy."

"But there is only the one direct road?"

"Until you reach the open moor."

Helga felt very sick and chill. All her careful planning, therefore, for Hugh's safety and wellbeing was to be swept away by this incomprehensible certainty of Ingrid's that he had walked out there and nowhere eise. And the
rencontre
on the moor would be calamitous. Whether on or near the Tor, there they would be totally remote from people and houses; imprisoned by the fog. She intervened hurriedly, addressing her daughter.

"Is it reasonable to dispatch Mr. Saltfleet on such an exceedingly doubtful quest? Hugh may not even be in that direction at all."

"He was constantly there yesterday."

"What is the attraction?" smiled Saltfleet.

"There was a shattering of rocks by lightning the day before last, the exposing of a prehistoric tomb in consequence, and yesterday again an earthquake, bringing about the destruction of the same tomb."

"That certainly sounds sufficiently interesting. I think I'll follow him up, then. How does one get to it?"

Ingrid described for him the route from the cross-roads, which he must have passed already in getting to the house. He thanked her; then returned to the mother.

"And the location of what we have been talking about—do you know where he has it?"

"I don't." Her reply was truthful, and yet she coloured. Saltfleet, perhaps remarking the colour, urged her.

"Not at all? Whether here or in London?"

But Ingrid, watching in surprise her mother's half-embarrassment, obtained from it her earliest faint intimation of a mystery relating to the visitor. … Hugh and he must have met abroad; the one was as weather-beaten and tough-looking as the other. And Hugh seemingly held something that this man wanted, only what it was, or to whom it belonged, was not clear. It was why her mother should be endeavouring to keep back a part of her information from the caller, that began to perplex her.

"Yes, I do know so much," Helga answered to his last interrogation. "He has it down here. But whether it is with him, or in its case in this house ."

"A box he keeps it in?"

"Yes."

Saltfleet, in the thought of both women, smiled rather significantly.

"It would simplify matters if we met out-of-doors, and he proved to have it on him. I wonder if you could ascertain at once?"

"It would necessitate my going through his private belongings, a thing I hardly care to do."

"I can't ask it of you."

Quickly succeeding her first mystification, a quiet shock passed through Ingrid of remembrance and enlightenment, that was like the promise of another door, a new direction, for the escape of all her pent thoughts. The box her mother spoke of, surely it could only be the tin one she had handled on her dressing-table before breakfast yesterday morning, just as Peter was approaching the house! So that what this Mr. Saltfleet was inquiring about was what she had taken from the box when her mother was still out of the room, and slipped unthinkingly into her dressing-gown pocket, as she had hurried off to her own room to greet Peter. There it must have stayed ever since, and it was peculiar that neither Hugh nor her mother appeared to be aware of the abstraction. … Unless her mother's uneasy manner a moment ago meant that she had discovered the loss, but had not found the courage to confess it to Hugh. For why should the box have stood on her dressing-table precisely while he was out of the house on a long excursion? She must have taken advantage of his absence to borrow it from his room. Ingrid knew that they had sat up late talking, the night before. It might, in part, have been about this. …

Or else her mother's embarrassment was owing to her knowledge of some unpleasantness coming to Hugh from this Mr. Saltfleet. …

It was unusual that
two
acquaintances should want to look him up during so short a holiday-visit. Wouldn't it be on the same business? One person could have come instead of the other. An association of three men, originating abroad... seeming to have for its object the quite ordinary-looking piece of stone she had misappropriated in innocence. So was it in dispute? Was her mother trying to put off this big, ruthless inquirer? Ingrid was afraid, in that case, that she had frivolously played straight into his hands. …

What could be such a fragment of stone? She was impatient to get upstairs to her dressing-gown, in order to make sure that it was still there, and to inspect it again more particularly. For instance, could it be a specimen piece of ore from some rich mine they had struck in eastern Asia, and was it to make their fortunes? Her mother perhaps would tell her afterwards—though the possession of a mere specimen could hardly be a matter for a quarrel, the location of the mine itself being known to them all. … And she did not think it was that. This person, standing ponderingly before her, evidently still debating in his mind whether it was worth his while to pursue Hugh Drapier in the fog—he had neither the greed nor the financial sharpness in his face that would speak of the chase after riches; while the other, Mr. Arsinal, Hugh had only mentioned in connection with his study of the ancient worship of the Great Mother. …

Then again, why was it just here that they were all assembling? For Mr. Arsinal might yet be to arrive. This locality was the nearest to Devil's Tor, which was in the hour of throwing out its wonders. And there, long ago, one had been buried who in her lifetime and after might well have passed for divine. Hugh, it seemed, had not known the Tor; but Arsinal might know it; and this disputed stone, a token of the Mother-Goddess, might somehow belong to and be to illustrate the Tor. …

The man in the room—she could not place him at all in such a business. There was no reverence of ancient things in his aspect, he could not possibly be a student of the old; yet neither, obviously, was he a mere messenger or subordinate. He must assuredly be the chief, or a chief, in any business he engaged in.

Just because he appeared so very much of the outside world, and was not to be conceived of as being in the slightest degree interested in occult concerns, or as having any other purpose for his visit than a practical one, nowise seeming to touch any of these progressive strangenesses—just because of this, Ingrid was unable to discard as ridiculous the fancy that he too might be involved. For since his active will must still be blind and unconscious about any such fated part for him, that would be the sign.

But of his mode of life she was quite ignorant, except that it was manifest he was used to exposure, and roughness, and perhaps danger. She regarded his coming here at all as very strange, very ominous; and from now onwards began to wonder painfully in what manner he was to be employed.

Thicker white mists rolled past the windows, and Ingrid kept picturing Devil's Tor on such a morning; and Hugh was there. She did not know why she was feeling so fearful on his account. It was as if a voice were saying within her that he was in grave distress on the hill. …

So quickly did the idea mount to conviction, that it occurred to her if the others too could be receiving the message, that they were thus quiet and waiting. But a rapid inquiring glance at their faces told her nothing.

Yet during a whole minute perhaps all the three, herself included, had been standing there, dumb, uneasy, and pursuing their own thoughts; so that an outsider might have imagined them less a group of conversing persons than a strange spirit triangle performing some silent rite in the darkened room. Now she doubted whether Saltfleet ever had been rehearsing his plans since his last speech; the expression of his face, when she had stolen her glance at it, had somehow been less practically considering, more troubled. The trouble in it might be because of an evil sensation concerning Hugh—surely, there was no reason why such a communication should not be made to more than one!... But he looked the unlikeliest man for it. …

The toneless ticking of the mantelpiece clock, which measured the stillness of the room, was just as full of dark meaning to her in her present disquiet. It, certainly, was not speaking of Hugh, and yet this dead silence, permitting its ticking to be heard, was fated; and so it
was
speaking of Hugh. Similarly, might not Saltfleet's pause from speech, that was the reverse of the same fatality, be both due to some ordinary working of his is brain, and, unknown to himself, connected with Hugh? The first words to break the silence should be significant. …

She could not speak again uninvited, but she longed for him to return to the present and definitely decide to go up to Hugh at once. She would have guided him, had not her ankle been still so useless. Peter was not here, to send to the Tor; but in any case she would feel safer and happier if this man went. Energy, hard resolution, sufficiency, command, were impressed on all his features; no better support in a physical emergency could be procured. If only he would be off quickly!...

It was Ingrid herself, however, that was the cause of her mother's contribution to the general silence. For in the unnatural morning dusk of the room the girl's face loomed palely, like some young prophetess's, and, with its fair long-featured beauty, passiveness, yet illusion of a kind of perplexed pain in the away-slanting eyes, intensifying nearly to anguish, was presenting a spectacle not easy to understand, that Helga
knew
the caller was quietly absorbing all the while, even though his regard was never directly upon her child. His quiescence, indeed, could not be ignored, it was grown so absolute. The situation might be thought to be fast becoming peculiar.

Helga was holding her own peace, in part certainly because she wished to hint to her daughter to go again, but principally because she wanted time to feel whether this faint initiation of a new fear stood for something in itself, or whether it were an outflowing from her whole instinctive shrinking from Saltfleet. It seemed to her essential that she should know that. For if it was from general instinct, then so too might be her nameless dread in Hugh's case.

His final threats, which she was still to learn, would show whether she had been unjust and unreasonable, or he was universally abominable; since if he could meditate lawless violence in one set of circumstances, his soul altogether must be of a hateful stamp. … But the worst of all was that she could see how extremely attractive he might be to certain women. Ingrid scarcely yet seemed to her to be grown up, and yet in all things, except actual experience of the world, she was really exceptionally mature; and her intelligence was of the finest. …

It was so absurdly impossible, and still so near; as a person might feel secure from death on a thin sheet of swaying ice. For instance, he was already to dine with them. That first invitation would dictate a second, and a third. He could deliberately protract his business with Hugh, and ingratiate himself generally with the Whitestone establishment. He should have very fascinating manners when unarmed. …

Next, she took it all back; and in one complex surge of feeling was bewildered and distressed by her crudity in sinking so facilely to the common modes of thought of her sex, and still was the more frightened of the man because this latest inchoate alarm was shown to be without any but the flimsiest foundation. For it was all based on a silence of a few moments and a fortuitous contiguity in space; but the truth was, he did not look in the least like a person who would dally with women, nor was Ingrid a girl to cast away her dignity for the sake of a strange man. Then the silly apprehension, unpleasant enough for the few moments it had lasted, must actually have originated in her unconscious appraisal of his general character. He was to be, for her, one who might attempt or do anything. And yet why should she be crediting him with such a capacity for evil? He should at all events be a sincere and honest gentleman, obeying the canons of his education. Surely, he would just as little dream of violence towards Hugh. … And again, because both these fears were shown to be extravagant and irrational, while her fear of his
nature
was to persist even after their dismissal, so she discovered herself the more superstitiously repelled by him, more and more repelled and attracted by him. In what did the secret of his dangerousness consist?—would the time and occasion be hers to ascertain this? He would be gone within five minutes, but she must see him again. …