Devil's Tor (59 page)

"You here, gentlemen! I very little thought of such a move on your part. … But say if you wish to come in."

"Perhaps it will be better to talk in a room, unless we are in the way." Arsinal replied this.

"I'm alone. Please follow me upstairs."

They went up. Saltfleet, going last, refrained from shutting the front door after him; an omission he was afterwards to find queer; but at the moment, being on this visit almost from the scorn of his own will, which wanted it not, he seemed to himself only to think to make it quick and informal. Peter either noticed nothing, or let it pass.

The studio was as light and airy as it should be. Its north windows, facing the patch at the back, were open, the south ones, towards the street, closed and curtained. A divan at one end of the room's long length was opposite a standing easel and platform at the other, but the easel was bare, while the few unframed boards and canvases against a wall were turned to disappoint curiosity. Some chairs, a rug or so, a floor litter of prints, portfolios and sheets torn from magazines for some interest of illustration, and a glass-topped table smeared with working paints, nearly completed the furnishing of the den, whose empty grate was strewn with cigarette-ends. Peter lit another cigarette now, and pushed the box along the table in the direction of the callers, but the action was ignored.

"Sit down."

A silence followed, for Arsinal, believing that this young man, however unfriendly towards them and possibly rude by temperament he might be, would yet have guessed their errand, wished not to say the wrong thing in being too quick to speak; while Peter was obstinate in declining to help him... Saltfleet, a glint of his eye informed him, was not to talk till aroused, he sat there grim and quiet, the other was to be the interlocutor. … Yet another sort of contact should be acting through that silence. Indeed, each in the room felt the same background, that in this new talk they were not resuming where they had left off in the morning, but that the incidents and wonders of the day had changed something else besides the negotiable situation. Hardly
now
were they associates, even in a business quickly growing more bewitched for all; only, to each it was seeming as though the others too were oppressed and depressed by the same labourings as his own. A dark magic had stolen into the air. The debate about to be renewed must not only be at a later stage, but also in this stranger peace, that was no peace.

And still they persisted, and could not well lie down together Peter's fear, and grief, and spite, Arsinal's secret incandescence, Saltfleet's scorn: accordingly could that other identity of undertow spell no harmony. Each was no more than understanding it as a fish might understand the common helplessness of it and its fellows within an invisible drag-net. …

Arsinal leant forward in his chair at last to Peter, who was alone on the divan, smoking restlessly.

"It is hard to know how much I need say to you, Mr. Copping; and, to tell the truth, we have been half-hoping
you
might have some communication for us in your pocket. … You prefer to reserve the direct answer to that. It is legitimate to ask, however, if you have now seen Miss Fleming?"

"I haven't."

"Nor been to the house since her return from Devil's Tor?"

"Yes, I spoke with her mother."

"But didn't Miss Fleming appear at all?"

"She was lying prostrated in her room," said Peter, with a dry bitterness. "A girl is not a man... though Mr. Saltfleet here may care nothing for the difference."

Saltfleet frowned. "I am sorry for the prostration, but am hardly responsible for it."

"Not immediately; but you are an increasing part of the whole responsible cause of her whole condition. We won't go into that."

"She was to notify us, one way or the other, about a meeting for to-day," said Arsinal. "But we have had nothing from her... and so, Mr. Saltfleet conceiving a very strong sense that a personal application at the house would be taken amiss, we have come to you, as the only other recourse within our means. I know that any such meeting was negatived earlier; Miss Fleming offered the hope, however, that her mother might reconsider it."

"Certainly you must be hard up for shifts, to come here! I thought I had made my attitude sufficiently clear this morning. A set interview between yourself and Miss Fleming is both unnecessary and improper, and therefore I don't approve of one, and won't lend myself to one. You are no friends of mine, gentlemen."

"A meeting is not indispensable, but I wish to learn where I stand."

"I warned you this morning, and you would not listen. You can't take and expect to be given as well."

"That is your view, then," said Arsinal more coldly. "Pray what is Mrs. Fleming's?"

"How do you know that I am still acting for her?"

"I don't, of course—yet it is scarcely possible that a difference of opinion between you has brought about such a breach that you are washing your hands of the matter. Rather, Mr. Copping—I am going upon a certain reluctance and reticence in your present manner... you may have been begged actually to communicate a message to us, and are still debating its advisability in your mind. …"

"You are acute. Doesn't it make me out rather weak, though?"

"I should need to know the circumstances. If you have a message, I can only suggest it will do little good to seek to suppress it."

"Perhaps. As a matter of fact, I was lying down, revolving it all, when your knock sounded. The message was a quite good guess of yours. Only, to whom should it be said to belong—to the sender, to the intended recipient, or to the agent? My sole pay for its delivery would consist in the spectacle of the consummation of a bad blunder, as I see it."

"I have but to wait on Mrs. Fleming, to get it from her own lips." He turned to Saltfleet. "I personally have mismanaged nothing with her, that she should refuse to see
me
."

"On this information, no... still, you'll have to go alone."

Peter gave an uneasy stretch. "I'll not put you to the trouble—having registered my protest. … But I'd better explain my own office first. I never blessed the proposition. Mrs. Fleming was so firmly insistent, however... so in another place altogether, if I could try to describe a mood in her that I haven't known before... that I might as well not have been occupying her time. In any case, whosoever the messenger, the decision is hers, no one else's. I gave the sort of promise to see you, just to get back here and reflect in quietness what it all stood for... and if you conceive, gentlemen, that I was thereby balking your business—you must... or you may choose to give me credit for a pause not of malice, and that, if I am at all acquainted with my own incentives, will be nearer the mark. Perhaps you will find a reason for flatly declining the scheme: then you will have me pulling
with
you. I take it, for instance, that you are extraordinarily in earnest in wanting what you do want, whereas this may be thought...
pageantry.
I don't assert that Mrs. Fleming is going for the pictorial effect, but it happens that I cannot visualise her plan without a picture—that I wish was
only
absurd. …

"The purport is, that the little property all this pother is about, left behind on Devil's Tor today—supposing that you haven't retrieved it already—shall be delivered to you two on the spot, by Mrs. Fleming herself, in her legal right, at nine to-morrow evening. Miss Fleming as well shall be there, to stop further difficulties from you on that score; and I, at my option, to see fair play—or anything... The proviso that you shan't attempt more communications with Miss Fleming is withdrawn, since you so obviously mean to please yourselves in the matter. She will just keep away from you, except on this single occasion in her mother's company; and
her
undertaking to the effect is regarded as security enough. … Then, once being given your thing, you shall make all reasonable speed to evacuate the district; and return no more. Thus a business exceedingly dubious and disagreeable, launched in a tragedy, will be dispatched for good and all. There should be a less elaborate means, in my view; but this is Mrs. Fleming's solution."

The callers exchanged looks.

"It cannot be this evening?" inquired Arsinal.

"No. Miss Fleming is unfit."

"What is her attitude towards the plan?"

"I learn that she is as indifferent to
all
programmes as a nearly complete physical collapse can make her."

Then Saltfleet spoke, glancing doubtfully away. "Only, there is never an end to it; and here we are being invited to wait for a ladder to a fruit within reach. The absurdity, as you call it, may pass, and the delay is of small account, but how came Mrs. Fleming by such an extravagance? I believe you that her daughter has had no hand in it. This stone is offered us unconditionally; yet we are not to be allowed to walk up there now and fetch it away."

"I hear you had your chance this morning."

"So I did, but then I wished to leave open Miss Fleming's talk with Arsinal."

"Don't you take your engagements rather lightly?"

"You know if there was one, Mr. Copping. In any event, on a bad road one cannot decide steps ahead."

"I can't acquiesce that you are under any moral obligation to choose Miss Fleming's next steps for her. She has surely well-wishers and advisers of her own. … Anyway, she doesn't now want a meeting to talk."

"But that is new." He shrugged, then rose to move to the window, and look out into the garden of weeds. Peter glanced malevolently after him.

Arsinal addressed him:

"Nevertheless, Mr. Saltfleet's question was the natural one to ask. Before replying to Mrs. Fleming's invitation—I don't know if the reply is to be transmitted through you... ?"

"I will tell her."

"... We must be made acquainted with the whole intention. As Mr. Saltfleet suggests, we have but to fetch the stone away. Has so very simple a procedure not occurred to Mrs. Fleming? or what else has she in mind?"

"Why, I think we are all to lose our wits, but the women first! ... Doubtless, it is largely a case of impulsion. I know of no reason... but ghosts and influences are lively on the Tor, so she must see them too. … One cannot even describe it as an indefensible whimsy."

"Then she has no pity on her daughter?"

"An apt question! ... Yet it must be exactly her alarm for her daughter that has driven her to this caprice... seeking to probe a mischief rather too underground for normal eyesight."

"What do you fear from—such a caprice, Mr. Copping, that you should be so opposed to it, even to the extent of nearly suppressing the message? You called it just now, a 'bad blunder'."

"It is one,
thus.
Accidents, incidents, phenomena, disturbances spiritual and mental, in a series seemingly connected—in these past days they have been selecting certain persons among us for attack. Drapier was most venomously attacked, and yesterday killed. So there is to be no quarter given. I myself have been attacked, more mercifully; or slightingly. Mr. Saltfleet here has not come off scot-free. But the most frequent, and, short of death, the most vicious attacks hitherto have been directed against a girl, a child, delicate more than robust... who sees no escape for herself, nor any around her who will consent to pocket their curiosity for the good of her soul's health. Now, in four-and-twenty horns longer, she is cited to the seat and stronghold of these congregated phantoms, that know how to hurl the elements, and recreate the no longer possible, and bring back chaos to the world, and move whatsoever feet and hearts they desire... for my speech rises to poetry, yet I defy you to indicate
one
exaggeration in this account of the Devil's Tor elf-hall. … Here, then, at the week's very end and as a fitting climax to its five or six days' flaying of the fair skin of the world for that number of persons, the chief victim—also happening to be the most defenceless and innocent—is cited; no doubt, to receive her final sentence and punishment, since much more her spirit cannot endure. … I cannot proceed in this vein; but ask yourself if
you
find the blunder to be other than a bad one! I will not suppose that you don't understand every word of what I have said."

Arsinal quietly called across to his associate at the window, who, at the first special sound of his voice, turned round.

"Saltfleet, are you willing to have our afternoon's business touched on?"

"Yes, if you wish."

"You used an expression—'ghosts and influences'—Mr. Copping. The 'ghosts' I perhaps could talk of too, but I have no clear notion whether, by 'influences', you mean the intangible impressing of imaginations, or a second order of more definite phenomena: not ghosts, but not mere atmosphere either."

"You have been up, during the day?"

"Yes; with Mr. Saltfleet, this afternoon."

"You have brought nothing away? You have both been talking as if you hadn't; but that might be to prepare me. You are offering it as the simplest way out, so perhaps you have already done it? I shall be very glad if you have; but if you have, please don't waste my time, gentlemen."

"The deposit is still there, unless another has taken it."

"Then it is almost a pity that you should be so honest where honesty could well be dispensed with, not quite so honest in observing contracts. … The word, 'influences', as applied to Devil's Tor, slipped out as a more or less comprehensive one. On the one hand, you have the hill's attraction: persons must foot it there, once, twice, and perpetually. On the other hand, there is its spell, acting on one person
through
another. I have no doubt it is so. Without such a magnetic aid, a day—a day and a half—would be all too short a time. …"

"Here is a riddle!" said Saltfleet, gruffly.

"It is my advantage, that I have to do with intelligent men."

"You take another, to use your excellent control of language to shave dangerous corners, Mr. Copping. I shall have to be more direct for us both. You charge me with improperly keeping alive Miss Fleming's interest in a forbidden case? What concern is it of mine to do so? And who is now to feed her interest? You, who have brought us this unholy arrangement for to-morrow? or I, who would elect to stand altogether out of it, were it not for other circumstances? ... But you are doubly inexact; for supposing I had in any way been able to coerce Miss Fleming, and were still merely this Tor's instrument or machine, as you have just said, then where would be my iniquity? ... In fact, in such a weird business, for which my life has afforded me no preparation whatever, the chances are that she would be far more a principal than I. I am little accustomed to be a vent for the malignity of strangers who have happened to find me and their trouble on the same spot. From Miss Fleming's mother I must endure it, no doubt; but you are a man, Mr. Copping, and my patience has generally been thin."