Devil's Tor (45 page)

"I know it too," said Helga quietly. She sat a little away, upright in her chair with the back of her head thrust to rest against its top, while her eyes now seemed tired. … "You think you have seen into me, my dear, but either you couldn't be bothered, or—you
haven't.
I have been nearly as miserable over Ingrid as you."

"But not, surely, on Saltfleet's account?"

"Yes, on his account. My feelings about him may not have the precise colour or the certainty of yours, but I hated to see them in the room together. And yesterday, when you both left me, to call on him, and I had to stay behind picturing the scene—I couldn't rest, I couldn't sit down. … It is very, very strange and uncanny, Peter, but you are perfectly right, and he is a man Ingrid has to fear—an unthinkable change is coming to this household, unless God averts it, by our endeavours or otherwise. … Yet that vaguer ground," she added wearily, "hardly belongs, and I don't know how it is. When you were here to tea two afternoons ago—your first day down here before ever Saltfleet was here in the place... I felt then that something was approaching us all."

"Like a disturbance, reaching our finer nerves first. Much would I give to be allowed to treat this ironically in my mind, Mrs. Fleming; but, in fact, there is nothing even silly in it. It is a question of equipment. It appears that you, as well as I, are equipped to receive fine messages, from God knows where. Some blight is darkening our little sky. We cannot discuss it, for we are ignorant of its origin, quarter, mode of attack, and exact peril; we can only take what practical steps are available to keep away unpromising and undesirable persons from outside."

"She is not a shallow or fickle girl, Peter."

"Now I must tell you that I don't know her. That second nature of hers is coming into the open at last, that all these years I have dreaded. If you mean, dishonour is not in her soul, no, it surely is not—yet of what consequence are honour and honesty in an affair of destiny? The truest heart will find a way; or a way will be found for it. A thing fated to happen employs itself only with the realities. … And shallow! Had she been shallower, she would have been more immune against a fellow like this. He is not to go for her vanity or voluptuousness. He is a great silent
magnet.
"

"If it would help you to understand him, Hugh Drapier was very insistent that he resembles in person a certain celebrated bust of Cornelius Sulla, the Roman Dictator—I think he said, at Rome."

"That may be. So let us ensure that he does not dictate here!..."

Peter got up. After smoking in abstraction for some moments, he proceeded:

"What is in our favour is that we can talk alone like this for once; and we had better turn it to profit. Ingrid may be back soon—and if she is, I shall probably forgive her so thoroughly, that she will get her own way towards perdition once more. I ask you to support me in burning our boats, while she is still away."

"How?" The question followed a slow, intent look.

"Thus," said Peter. "Saltfleet, you hope and assume, is to be off after to-morrow's inquest. Then let us see to it that he is. But until his friend Arsinal has both his prizes in his pocket, I doubt they will
not
be off. And yesterday afternoon you heard with your own ears how Ingrid was wanting and wanting her interview with this Arsinal—and how she was feeling herself drawn, too, to Saltfleet,
without
wanting it; without the ghost of any explainable motive, indeed. … So I've to reply to this note in my pocket, and if the meeting at my place is arranged and comes off, then, as certainly as one step down a flight of stairs is followed by others, supplementary conferences will be demanded by all the persons interested. They might remain on the spot for a week or fortnight, talking and talking with your daughter, even after she had promised them what they wanted. On what account? That isn't for me to say. But Arsinal, whom I understand to be the intellectual expert of the two, would doubtless furnish the sustaining means; while his big bodyguard, with the grey magician's eyes, would eternally sit there as a third, reducing her, minute by minute, to helplessness, discord and
ruin. …
Do you wish that?"

"Some excuse they must find for behaving so."

"It lies to their hand, in Devil's Tor. That could be Arsinal's study in these parts. It is a place of vast antiquity, and the centre of our many occult happenings. It would also serve marvellously well as a
rendezvous;
one is quite out of the way there, and not easily surprised."

"But you are speaking of Ingrid, Peter!"

"It is the worst of a business like hers, that, with the sincerest nature in the world, one is very soon up to the eyes in deceit. You cannot hide one feature, and bring another into undue prominence, without entering upon the whole work of art. She has already hidden this desired meeting from you; as I
know
that she is hiding things from me. … And so we must stop it all in time. These fellows must be given at once what they are after. By you—for you have the right and the power, and nobody else has any to interfere. Then to-morrow, the inquest being past, there can be no inducement whatsoever for them to stop longer in a place like Belhill, since the Tor, without its exponent, will not hold Arsinal's interest beyond, possibly, a single visit. … And Ingrid must begin her process of returning to her normal self."

"You suggest my re-offering them what she omitted taking round last evening?"

"Yes; finish the job."

"On what conditions?"

"Leave all to me. I shall stipulate—no meetings; and the whole acquaintance with your daughter to end."

"Won't that be insulting them?"

"No. I'll say, what is the truth, that you, her mother, are solicitous on account of her health."

"I can't see why they should not agree, Peter."

"Nor I. They're to keep what they've got as well, and the concession is really very thorough."

"But Ingrid...?"

Peter was silent.

"Who is to bear that brunt, you or I?" asked Helga, watching him through half-closed lids.

"I will, since the advice is mine," he answered slowly at last.

"Will you dare to, Peter? You may lose her."

"I trust not. But I'd rather be dismissed than see her go on the rocks."

"I mean, the final responsibility of course is mine, Peter and I have made no sort of promise. You had better not appear in this."

"No, if I have been crooked with her, she must know it. I am most anxious that she shall understand I am not at all worrying, about my own welfare. What I have done and am doing is for her."

"Then who is to ask her for the stone? For she has it still."

"Could you lay your hand on it?"

Helga smiled faintly, while she shook her head.

"I think I won't show so much fear of my own daughter."

"And she would rightly resent it—perhaps even more than the actual killing of her plans. We must spare her all we can, Mrs. Fleming. A proud soul, in the throes of an obsession, should hate merely to be watched; it wants a world of blindness and darkness. … But that we needn't discuss. Now I'll be off to the 'Bell', as your envoy, with the conditional offer; and inform our men that the negotiated article will follow during the morning or afternoon. When Ingrid comes in, whether I am back or not, you must see her first, tell her what has been done, and insist on the immediate return of the stone to you without debate. Don't be drawn into any argument, but insist on your office—and, if you like, on the impossibility of your going against Drapier's emphatic wishes. Speak to her, not as her mother, but as the person invested by law. … And
then
refer her to me. It is I who advised the cancelling of the meeting with Arsinal, though he is specially down. It is I who have fortified you in your executorship, though Ingrid, I well knew, had come to regard this affair as her own. It is I who am seeking to block for her all the avenues leading from a normal life, although for the moment such an escape appears to her the one thing worth while. She must abominate me for everything; and in the word 'treachery' she will find my conduct's ready-made description. Afterwards, however, I hope she will come to recognise that all has been but the moving of my great love for her. She is too just to suppose that I have been impelled by petty jealousy. Let her want meetings with any other man, and I will stand aside."

"I know that, Peter. Yet I'm afraid. … I'm afraid! ... Why couldn't you put all this to her beforehand?"

"Because I am in the right, but the right cannot always, or even generally, make itself appear such to other persons. Unless the thing is fixed before she returns, her character is so entirely obedient to the intuitions of her brain, and the sub-intuitions of her heart, that she will almost surely elect to act without me, and without you; and meet these men alone in a place we may both of us regard as deplorable."

"Are we doing the best, my dear? We are taking it so much for granted that our view of her attraction to these people must be the wise one. It is a step we can't recall. Wouldn't you allow her to state her own attitude first?"

"She has stated it. I know it well."

"I have the horrid feeling that instead of closing a door, we shall be opening one. She may break with you quite, Peter; and that may be the beginning of the end of all our old happiness."

"If it is doomed," said Peter, shrugging.

"Have you no such misgiving?"

"Perhaps."

"And you dare to offer her the affront?"

"There is a storm coming, and its centre
seems
to be that way towards all that medley, supernatural or sinister, of Devil's Tor, and Drapier's counterpart stones, and our two birds of ill omen flapping their wings at the inn. The actual fork to strike us may descend from another quarter of the sky; but assuredly, while we retain our wits, we have to move from the
obvious
threat."

Helga viewed him.

"Is it to be soon, Peter?"

"The tension seems to be fairly high inside all of us."

"What does it mean?"

"Ask a wild beast, creeping for shelter in front of thunder, what its fears are. Neither do I know anything. I know that I am becoming irrational and wish to urge you to send Drapier's accursed stone out of the house, before it has had time to work any more mischief."

"My dear! How can you suppose—"

"The man who brought it here is lying dead, anyway."

Helga stood facing him in silence.

"Are you serious in this?" she asked.

"I know nothing else of the one you have, but if they belong, it should be as damnable as the other, which they hold. I ran across Drapier on the Tor two days ago, and he was playing with it, and it showed me a landscape full of ghosts. … Some other time you shall hear about it. Yes, Ingrid knows. So I can quite understand the enormous craving of these two men to get such treasures into their keeping; and I say in full seriousness: 'Let them have the stones,
and
the devil that inhabits them, death-dealing or otherwise!'"

"You think that all these matters are evil, Peter?"

"An untimely death is evil, the abnormal is evil, morbid cravings are evil, a young girl's forgetting of her friends and turning to strangers, that is evil too."

"And your way is the only way?"

"I must have said enough now to show you your daughter's situation," replied Peter. "And if you still can't apprehend my stand in preferring her lasting prosperity to the easiness of pleasing her for an hour or a day, then I fear that more than one of us is fey."

She returned no answer in words, but a moment later the artist left the room, determined to act as though he were empowered with the full commission.

When he got back to the house with the account of his failure, Ingrid had still not returned. Helga heard him with a sort of listlessness.

"And so you might as well not have gone," was her subdued comment, "for, since it is to depend on her, she will not consent."

"She must be made to consent. You must exert your authority."

"I doubt I shall have none here."

She went on. "And now, Peter, you may see for yourself how hopeless it is ever to dream of opposing that man's will. I tried to keep him from following Hugh to the Tor; but he went. We have tried to keep him from Ingrid, and he has refused, and they will meet. But what does he want with her? Of what possible use can her conversation be to these men? ... Or does he despise
me
so thoroughly, that he will not accept the thing from my hand?"

"That is nonsense, for why should he despise you?"

"He knows I—fear him."

"Then you must tell Ingrid so, and perhaps she will not wish to see her mother scorned."

There was a pause.

"She is a long time out," said Helga. "I hope she has nor gone to Devil's Tor. They may make their way up there, too."

The suggestion startled Peter, who, however, took a minute to consider it, and then quieted down.

"One, at least, is to remain in. It is very improbable that they will part company, and anyway there is little for Saltfleet up there, while the other would wait to be conducted. They may be interested later in the day."

She had not proposed that he should go in search of Ingrid, and somehow he felt the strongest disinclination to do so, which was not indolence, but something more psychological. His pride was silent, and his anger had died down—it was like some invisible wall of objection stretching right across his taking further action of any sort towards Ingrid's insulation from this business. He was conscious of a defeat, and was obstinate in his following apathy, but the apathy was also active; it was laid upon him like a paralysing hand, for a purpose. He was dimly aware that a result was to come from the visit he had just paid. He
had
acted sufficiently; and therefore must act no more, but wait.

He lit a new cigarette, and presently went out of the room, but not from the house. Helga was left alone, with her nameless agitation that grew and grew.