Devil's Tor (38 page)

"He was killed by a rolling boulder," began Helga again then. "One of those that composed the overthrown stack. His death was either instantaneous, or nearly so. Mr. Saltfleet claims to have arrived on the scene soon after. … He was the first to find Hugh."

"
Claims,
mother!" The two were apart again.

"There must be an inquest, and he is staying on at the 'Bell' to attend it. It will all come out then. … A party is on its way to the Tor. Poor Hugh will be taken to the 'Bell'."

"Is that right?"

"We must give the first consideration to Uncle Magnus. And I must break the news to him now..."

"Mother..."

"Yes, dear?"

"You must not go by the clock. You must not think horrible things. …"

"I am not thinking them—I am trying not to think them."

"You mustn't. There would be no sense."

"I shall send Hugh's stone round to him this evening, and then I wish never to see or have anything to do with him again."

Ingrid could not yet realise the stroke, its shock was too numbing. She wanted Peter to come back quickly. He must already know; he must have met them. She wanted to get hold of Mr. Saltfleet. She felt that a vast piled lake of consequences was being dammed within her head by her present ice-barrage of paralysed thought. She had the instinct to escape suddenly—out-of-doors, or to her bedroom. …

"What can I do, mother?"

"You? You can do nothing. You had better wait for Peter. He should be back soon, with the confirmation... and I am also expecting Mr. Dunn. You might watch for him, and see that he does not get to your uncle first. I am going to your uncle now. I wish Mr. Dunn shown into this room."

Old Colborne received the bolt more composedly than Helga had dared to expect. He asked few questions, made little comment, and even screwed his features to the shadow of a sardonic contempt, though this, she knew, could not be his feeling, but a disguise. He seemed content that his nephew was not to be brought back to the house. It was only as, relieved in heart, she was quitting him again, that he prevented her with a dour half-grin.

"The danger-notice was needed after all, it appears! It would not, however, have saved your cousin, who suggested it and was therefore alive to the risk. One concludes that he was dreaming; and the Drapiers have always had that vein of absent-mindedness, which has still consorted well enough with their holdfast temper. But I am not to disparage a man of my own blood, lying unburied. I wish to say this only. Your cousin I have never liked. I had excellent cause intensely to detest his father while he lived, and I have strained not one point, but many, to receive the son in this house at all. He constantly angered me. So I shall observe the customary decencies, Helga, since I can do no less; but I shall not pretend to grieve at heart, and in this respect I beg of you others to spare me. Being women, you will or will not put on mourning garments for him, as the fashion of the time dictates and I cannot—I ask you, however, to let everything else in the house go on as usual.

"I shall be too soon dead myself. There is little enough in death, that we should make so lamentable a disaster of it. I am to understand that this is the third attempt on Hugh Drapier's life on Devil's Tor within the compass of a few days; successful at last. If you are superstitious, you will put the circumstance to its best use, and in fact I have already told you that the hill is not as other hills. But on that account to pronounce it a
doom,
is to assume a wisdom that we do not possess. Supposing that death be the best for us, as easily it may be, then this imagined deliberate aiming at your cousin may just as well represent his
reward.
He himself has been the fittest judge of whether he has kept alive the spark that can alone seem to go through to another life. The life of the self is for the self only.
It
must go out."

Far too distracted was Helga to follow him to such regions. She kept silence for a space; then found words to assure him quietly that the house's routine would continue as nearly as possible without change. But when for the second time she was on the point of leaving him, she remembered that there was still something he must know at once.

"I am not sure if Hugh told you, uncle, that his estate passes to Ingrid and myself. I am executrix. I wouldn't mention it at such a moment, except that there is the question of the arrangements, with which I now want you not to be bothered."

Her uncle stared at her; and the stare fell into a scowl.

"How much are you to get between you?"

"I have only his own rough estimate of nineteen thousand pounds."

"It will secure your independence."

"We don't want independence, uncle. Nothing is to be altered."

"I am very glad to hear it. Ingratitude is the commonest, but also the meanest, of vices. I have no doubt, however, that Ingrid will soon be thinking of her marriage.''

"It seems fitting in this time of cruel trouble that I should hear your wishes about that, once for all. You know she is very fond of Peter."

"If she desires to marry Peter, I have only to say that I shall raise no obstacle. The youngsters may live here, if they please, in rooms of their own; or she may leave home when she likes. If they have still not enough money for an establishment, let Peter come to me, to talk it over."

"It can't be gone into now, uncle dear! ..." She kissed his forehead. "I am expecting Mr. Dunn, and I must go."

"Send Dunn along before he leaves the house," replied her uncle. "I wish to speak to him too."

At half-past three Peter returned. He was breathless with fast walking, pale and agitated. He had been all the way to the Tor, having reached the scene of death upon the very heels of the village party headed by the doctor. Not waiting for their slower return, he had viewed the preliminary proceedings in dumbness, heard the doctor's pronouncement, and started back at once. He saw Ingrid the first, and a single glance by each at the other's face informed them that there was nothing to be told. She took him to her mother, who was again in her room.

Peter made his superfluous report, and accepted a whisky-and-soda. His upset condition was very natural, yet Ingrid felt a slight involuntary resentment and scorn on account of it. It was as if, in spite of his accepted high idealism and wildness of genius, he were being shocked from his manhood by this ugly interruption of the domestic course of things. Death, surely, was fearful enough; but not so fearful. For herself, it was the day's grim reality, scarcely its human tragedy, that already began to raise her bewildered spirits to grandeur and amazement. Hugh was dead; and now it was no longer a play or fantasy, but the true working of that which lay behind and moved the practical world. So her soul was confirmed. Its long littleness, perhaps, was being cast at last...

The instinct was with her that she must now very soon be summoned to make her own sacrifice. Hugh's death stood for that. Together they had stood on the Tor but two evenings ago, and together the supernatural had spoken to them. She could never forget her vision on the Tor. Was she too to die? Her sensations should be different—far more complicated. Her death, she felt, would be too simple a solution. …

They were all sitting, and her mother was speaking of Hugh's stone, that Mr. Saltfleet had called for. She was addressing Peter.

"There is one thing you can do for me, Peter—or perhaps I had first better have both your opinions. The Mr. Saltfleet who was the earliest to find poor Hugh, and whom you were inquiring about this morning... I will tell you under what circumstances they met. When Hugh was in Tibet this spring, as he was coming out of the country again towards civilisation, his caravan encountered that of a pair of Englishmen, one of whom was Mr. Saltfleet; the other, a Mr. Arsinal. They were moving further into the land, with the definite idea of robbing a certain native monastery of a certain rarity. They parted; and when Hugh was close upon the frontier, he was overtaken by a runner from the two, who put in his hands the prize they had been going after. They had got it, but the theft had been discovered, and they were in imminent danger of being captured by an overwhelming body, so this was the expedient they adopted for its safeguarding.

"Accordingly, Hugh took charge; but in the meantime came to be attracted on his own account by the little treasure, and hastened back to England with it, to keep out of their way. In justice to him, I should explain, Peter, that the thing apparently has no money value. … Then, when he arrived down here, he confessed the whole imbroglio to
me;
and begged me, in the event of his near death, to restore the property to these men, on application.

"And I undertook to do so. But now, this morning, Mr. Saltfleet turned up here unexpectedly, to have it all out with Hugh, and Ingrid, knowing nothing, sent him after Hugh to Devil's Tor..."

Peter glanced at her, to understand the abrupt stop.

"You mean, your cousin had no intention of giving it up, so a row was threatened?"

"Something unpleasant certainly was to have happened, had they met in life."

"This surely isn't a suggestion that there is more to it than has yet appeared?"

"No, Peter. … I daren't. … But the service I was to ask of you was to go round to Mr. Saltfleet, at the 'Bell', during the day, and hand him back the curiosity in question. It is a small fractured piece of stone like flint. It looks nothing at all—and yet is in such very great request. … However, since the serious doubt has occurred to me, you had better first state your opinion. Ought the whole matter to be brought up at the coroner's inquest? For, if so, it seems to me it may be my duty to retain the stone for the proceedings, and in view of any international complications afterwards."

"Give the story in the witness-box by all means, supposing you want to furnish all England and the world with a sensational titbit! Forbidden Tibet, and a raid on a Buddhist monastery, and a stone of unnatural potency, and a mysterious death on a foggy moor!—forgive me for smiling in such an hour, but the newspapers will thank you, Mrs. Fleming. Keep it severely back, if you are wise."

"You have considered that it may be in the coroner's sphere?"

"Only if this accident were suspected to be no accident.
Then
you might come forward with your motive."

"You wish to throw the responsibility on me, Peter!"

Peter studied his finger-nails.

"Not at all. I would say you are not concerned. And with regard to the detained prize, considering you've not stolen or profited by it, but are merely innocently carrying out instructions, I can't at all see why you shouldn't return it to the man within the next half-hour."

"What do you say, Ingrid?"

"Mother, you aren't yourself. The public must know about Hugh's fatal accident, since that is the law; but nothing of all the rest is in the least connected. If you give the story, it will mean you think it
is
connected. Then you must either express in plain words in a public court what you must be afraid at the present moment to express even to yourself in the most shrinking thoughts—or else you must stop short of that, and everyone will think and call you malicious."

"I have no doubt you are both quite right. Then you had better take it to him, Peter. Ingrid has it. … But not now. I shall want you this afternoon—you mustn't go away. … And I ask you both to forget what has been said here in this room this afternoon; even between yourselves. My justification has been double. My head is whirling all the time; and Mr. Saltfleet is... a terrible man. …"

"So you will be all the better quit of him," returned Peter.

"Though I could still pass it to my lawyers, for restitution to the rightful owners, through the Indian Government."

Ingrid laid a hand on her arm.

"Mother, if you are to refuse Hugh's wishes, you must provide yourself with a perfect reason."

"Why are you so anxious to get this thing returned, my dear?"

"Do I seem anxious? And yet I would rather keep it myself... or, failing that, negotiate with it for the coming here of Mr. Arsinal, to receive it in person. Hugh thought I might have the opportunity of meeting him, but now, unless we did this, I never shall. But it would not be honest—and another thing is, I feel we ought not to interfere."

"But why do you wish to meet him?"

"He may know something—perhaps not
about
Devil's Tor, but to throw another light on it. I think Hugh said distinctly that, only I can't recollect his exact words. … So if I seem anxious, mother, to get it restored to Mr. Saltfleet as soon as possible, it must be because I want to put myself right with my own motives. I want to feel that I am not exercising the smallest will. I wish I could explain, or you understand. … Then, too, I suppose I want to cut short your worry of indecision. There is really nothing for you to be undecided about. You treat him like a ghost. He frightens you, and therefore you leap to the conclusion that you, or someone belonging to you, is or may have been threatened, and all sorts of lurid and ghastly imaginings fill your brain. … So I am going round to him at the inn with Peter, and that, I hope, will prove to you that I, at all events, don't find him to be feared."

"No, you can't go!"

"I must. You are forcing me, mother. … And I also want to speak to Mr. Saltfleet."

"Why?" demanded Helga curiously.

Her daughter regarded her as from a distance.

"But do I want to speak to him? ... I sensed a tomb on the Tor, I saw Hugh dead to-day... and I have seen something else that was not there... and now, I suppose, I don't need to speak to Mr. Saltfleet—I've nothing really to say to him... yet I've the feeling that such a conversation is necessitated; that something will spring out of it that is fated to come about..."

"Is it conviction, or only fancy?" asked Peter.

"I can simply answer that it is troubling me, Peter."

"Has it to do with the man himself?"

"Strangely, it does seem to have; but my knowledge of all these events is so adding to it, that I hardly know what is pure intuition in it."