From London Far (17 page)

‘There is no doubt that he made too much.’ Miss Isabella was decided. ‘The truth is that in our retired situation we were a little thrown off balance by the appearance of a man of the world.’

‘Properjohn is that?’

‘After a somewhat
outré
fashion – yes. He wore a ridiculous tartan which greatly perplexed my sister. His mode of address was both vulgar and peculiar. But he had a certain cosmopolitan and polyglot charm such as one sometimes finds in persons of no breeding who have been brought up in half a dozen corners of the world.’

‘I see. But you speak of him as one whom you have not met for a considerable time?’

‘We met him but the once, when he came with his proposals for the guano. After that the matter was arranged by correspondence. He is a bachelor, it seems, and when he settled nearby we thought it not necessary to call. Nor did he again visit us. And, after this number of years, I do not suppose that he will find occasion to trouble us again.’

Miss Isabella paused, and turned inquiringly to where Mrs Cameron had presented herself in the doorway.

‘Mr Properjohn,’ Mrs Cameron said.

Had Mrs Cameron announced Allan Ramsay, Sir Henry Raeburn, or the curly-headed dog-boy himself, she could scarcely have achieved a more pronounced sensation. Miss Dorcas dropped a bannock, Miss Isabella looked as if she would much like to summon a dozen armed retainers from the hall, Meredith jumped up positively prepared for fisticuffs, and Jean Halliwell seized a poker.

Coming hard upon all this, the entrance of Mr Properjohn was something of an anticlimax. He no longer sported tartan, spurious or otherwise, and favoured instead knickerbockers of meagre cut, an ancient leather-trimmed jacket of Connemara cloth, a deerstalker hat, and the sort of grey and droopy moustache commonly found on gentlemen who have been in the Guards a long time ago. Mr Properjohn, plainly, had been learning all the time, and was now able to put up what was, in patches, a thoroughly colourable effect. He walked across the floor as country gentlemen walk across each other’s floors in the best Shaftesbury Avenue theatres. ‘Miss Macleod,’ he said, ‘I hope you will admit this very belated call from a neighbour and old acquaintance. Miss Dorcas, how do you do?’ Mr Properjohn paused upon all this as if to let it sound sweetly on his own ear. And his pleasure in the result was such that he suddenly became more expansively cordial all round. ‘And how do you do?’ he said cheerfully to Meredith and Jean. And then the country gentleman rubbed his hands together and glanced at the decanters. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘looks like maybe you got a whisky?’

Miss Dorcas (since along with this she had received something like a nod commissioning refreshment) reached for a glass. Miss Isabella performed introductions and with some severity of gesture indicated a chair. ‘It is possible’, she said, ‘that your call is occasioned by some difficulty on Inchfarr?’

‘On Inchfarr?’ Mr Properjohn’s features, although naturally acute, radiated vagueness to all corners of the room. ‘Oh, Inchfarr! Really, I have heard jally little about it – jally little indeed. But I should think it is goin’ along very nicely.’ He turned abruptly to Meredith. ‘Live round these parts?’

Meredith shook his head. ‘I have come for a little hunting,’ he said.

‘Huntin’? Now, by gad, do you know I haven’t heard of that?’ Mr Properjohn looked vexed. ‘How jally! Natchally, I have shootin’ and fishin’ bang on my own land, and we’ve done a little deerstalkin’ too. But nobody told me about the huntin’. Foxes, do you mean?’

‘It might be
Flying
foxes.’ Just as in Mr Bubear’s repository, Meredith’s speech was suddenly prompted from irrational depths.

But there was nothing irrational in the eye he kept cocked on Properjohn the while. And Properjohn reacted at once – with laughter that cannoned so startlingly about the vaulted roof that one almost expected to see Landseer’s
Monarchs of the Glen
and
Deer Browsing
to lift their antlered heads and bolt from their frames. ‘Dam’ goot!’ said Mr Properjohn – and smothered this exclamation in a cough. ‘Amusin’,’ said the country gentleman; ‘most amusin’, ’pon my word.’ And he, in his turn, cocked an eye at Meredith. Was it a suspicious – or was it rather a conspiratorial – eye?

Meredith was in doubt. And so, it seemed, was Jean. She had been sitting in a window embrasure, her head sunk in a hand and her gaze on a remote southern horizon. Now she raised her chin and addressed the company at large. ‘Has any of you seen this morning’s paper?’ she asked inconsequently. ‘Kobe’s going.’

‘And Tokio’s gone.’ Properjohn was emphatic. ‘Swept by fire from end to end.’

‘In America’, said Meredith easily, ‘they say that Japanese art is in great demand among collectors. People like Neff, for instance.’

‘Ah,’ said Properjohn.

‘And it seems a pity to think of it being all smashed up. Fujiwara lacquer and Arita porcelain lying around the streets. Kosé and Tosa paintings flapping about in the wind. Terrible, if you ask me. Think what you could raise for Kanaoka’s
Waterfall of Nachi
if you had it to sell in New York.’

Properjohn was so moved by this that for the first time he reverted to his old polyglot manner of utterance.
‘Schrecklich
!’ he said.
‘Quelle horreur
!’ Again he hastily coughed. ‘Very distressin’ thing.’ He shook his head. ‘And to think you just can’t get your hands on it.’

‘It is to be supposed’, said Miss Isabella equably, ‘that these wicked but artistic people will have put their finer things securely away.’

‘And it’s wonderful what a lot of galleries and the like managed to do that in Europe.’ Properjohn looked dejectedly into his glass – perhaps simply because it was empty. Then he set it down and rose to his feet. ‘Miss Macleod, Miss Dorcas,’ he said, ‘jally to have seen you again.’ His glance travelled to the decanter. ‘And a deuced good spot.’ It travelled farther to Meredith. ‘Nice walks round about. Mainland, just over the head. Particularly jally in afternoon.’ And Mr Properjohn picked up his deerstalker hat, apportioned hand-shakes and bows correctly among the company, and left the room with the perfect deportment of a young lady fresh from finishing-school.

‘Really an odd man,’ said Miss Dorcas. ‘And I fear he has lost what attractiveness he had. Do you know, it seemed to me as if he were endeavouring after spurious refinement?’

‘It is strange’, said Miss Isabella, ‘that he should pay a formal call after all these years.’

‘Almost’, said Miss Dorcas, ‘it is as if he were spying out the land. Which was the occasion of his previous visit too, after all.’

‘I must explain that he was spying on Miss Halliwell and myself.’ Meredith spoke frankly. ‘He had heard of our arrival and wanted to make what he could of us. And just what conclusion he did come to I would very much like to know. He has virtually invited us to confer with him on the mainland this afternoon.’

‘Hold to the castle.’ The hereditary Captain was suddenly decisive. ‘Stay to luncheon. Dine here. Spend the night, letting Dorcas find you what quarters she can. We know nothing of the forces he can muster in an hour. A sortie would be madness. But we are well provisioned and can defy them till the siege be raised. Shamus must pass through their lines and urge my brother to call out the clan.’

Miss Isabella, then, was uncompromisingly on the side of the angels. It was also evident that her sister had spoken by no means idly when she had mentioned her tendency to wander into the past. Not but what – Meredith felt – calling out the clan might be a sound way of dealing with Properjohn and his associates when the right time came. Miss Isabella’s line of thought, moreover, gave promise of a larger hospitality than had been adumbrated when Mrs Cameron brought in the bannocks – and this too might have its convenience. So Meredith spoke approvingly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is much to be advanced in favour of that point of view. At the moment a sortie would assuredly not be the right thing. But perhaps a reconnaissance might be ventured this afternoon.’

Jean was still balancing in her hand the poker which she had picked up upon Properjohn’s entrance. ‘The portcullis,’ she asked, ‘does it come down still?’

‘Of course it comes down, child.’ The hereditary Captain frowned at so ill-conceived a question. ‘Only they may have ordnance.’ She got up and strode energetically to one of the narrow windows. ‘They may bring up bombards. And we cannot stand long against them.’

Meredith was covertly fingering his pipe in the pocket of his jacket. If only he could smoke, he was thinking, he might clear his mind sufficiently to distinguish in this business between sense and fantasy. Jean’s question about the portcullis had been perfectly sober. Was it a fact, then, that they might really be besieged?

Had Consignment 100 or whatever it might be – with the Titian and the Giotto and Bubear if he had survived – turned up yet at the terminus of the Flying Foxes? Had Properjohn known more than simply this: that a couple of strangers had arrived at Castle Moila? And what was the state of his knowledge when he had hinted an appointment on the mainland this afternoon? Did he believe that he had exchanged his absurd sign and countersign with the expected Vogelsang? Or did he very well know…?

It was useless thus to string questions together in air. Perhaps some consideration of Properjohn himself might be more helpful. As a figure who should stride upon the scene carrying a massive aura of sinister suggestion, this supposed master-criminal was altogether a frost. As one resolved to pass for a local laird, his efforts were so inept as to be decidedly funny. But the pervasive vulnerability which this suggested might be an illusion; and Properjohn, away from this hobby-horse and on his own professional ground, might be astute and formidable enough. It was even possible – Meredith with some subtlety discerned – that the comic laird business might be in some degree at least a self-discounting device to render more confident adversaries whom he was concerned to lure rapidly into his grasp. Was it his aim to get the known impersonator of Vogelsang and the supposed girl from Marsden’s gang safely back across the double barrier of the causey and the Sound? And, that accomplished, would there be waiting a furniture van, a requisition-book open at the appropriate page, and a couple of sacks into which clerkly men would mildly invite one to step? Meredith was back with his vain questions. For there was no answer – and could be none until that reconnaissance was indeed made in some three hours’ time. Unless Jean and he were content to lurk in the castle until contact were made with the rule of law, there was nothing for it except another plunge into the unknown – which was what they had come for, after all. And Meredith turned to Miss Isabella. ‘We shall be very glad to stay to luncheon,’ he said. ‘And then, in the afternoon–’

From somewhere outside the castle a long, melancholy wail broke the island stillness and drowned the words on Meredith’s lips. It rose, hung for a moment strident upon the ear, ebbed rapidly away. And Miss Dorcas sprang up and clapped her hands. ‘Tibbie,’ she cried out, ‘it’s the
Oronsay
!’

Surprisingly, Miss Isabella too clapped her hands like a child. ‘Captain Maxwell already! But – to be sure – I noticed this morning that it is the second Thursday of the month.’

The hereditary Captain of Moila, Meredith thought, seemed a good deal more reliable on the current calendar than on the centuries. And certainly a steamer was approaching the island, since it was now possible to hear the throb of engines. But was not the
Oronsay
a sizeable Orient liner? It seemed altogether improbable that such a giant – Meredith’s speculations were interrupted by much bustle around him. Mrs Cameron had come in with a tablecloth and a tray of silver; at the same time Miss Dorcas, now oblivious of Mr Properjohn, his Foxes, and whatever further problems, military or economic, he posed, was wrapping herself in shawls and bonnet for some excursion in the open air. ‘Come along,’ said Miss Dorcas – and her tone was animated and even gay. ‘How fortunate that you should have come on a second Thursday! Tibbie, you had best not venture out of doors. But do you think that Shamus will have remembered to collect the flock? And will the cow be ready, I wonder?’ She made sweeping gestures towards the staircase which wound directly into the room. ‘But come along, or we shall be too late for the tying up.’

And Miss Dorcas and her guests hurried down to ground level and across a series of courtyards. It was noon and the Flying Foxes were stationary; those farther away, suspended on their almost invisible cables, were like great bats unnaturally hovering in air. A light breeze blew through innumerable cracks and crannies in the castle’s outer walls, producing a sort of low whistling upon a score of notes which blended with the farmyard noises from the base-court and the beat of surf far below. Clover and seaspray and dry grass scented the air. From somewhere startlingly close at hand the incoming steamer hooted again and a thousand gulls rose at the sound, their wings catching or eluding the sun as they wheeled and wheeled again. Meredith found himself quite breathless as the old lady hurried him towards the seaward and deserted side of their domain. ‘Is it’, he asked, as a third hoot rose seemingly through the very rock beneath his feet, ‘one of the paddle steamers?’

Miss Dorcas looked at him in dismay. ‘But, dear me, no! My sister would be most upset at such a suggestion. There have been none of them for years, I am glad to say. This is the
screw
steamer – Captain Maxwell’s, a most charming man. He is often kind enough to join us at luncheon and bring us a breath of the wider world. He is always full of news, and often he executes any small commission we may have… Pray be careful!’

Miss Dorcas had been hurrying forward with such precipitation, and had come so abruptly to a halt, that Meredith had scarcely time to notice that another step on his own part would assuredly have been his last. For the party now stood upon a narrow platform of turf, scarcely three feet wide, between a crumbled but still gigantic bastion of the ruined castle and a precipice dropping from beneath their feet to blue–black water far below – a precipice so sheer as scarcely to afford more than an occasional nesting-place for Moila’s omnipresent gulls.