Public-domain ebook
by LM
Language: en500 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #69310.
The opening · free to read
WHEN the Delancey affair had been brought to a conclusion, it was not uninteresting to note the various opinions set forth regarding its happy termination.
Biddy, at once autocrat and indulger of at least three generations of juvenile Delanceys, maintained, and stoutly, it was entirely due to her own prayers to her patron saint. She took, so to speak, a monopoly of the business as far as any human agency was concerned. But, as one cannot, with any degree of modesty, parade one’s private devotions to the world at large, it was hardly probable that this view of the matter would be universal.
The village in general, with the exception of Mrs. Trimwell, laid the whole credit at the feet of Lady Mary Delancey. Doubtless this was on account of the wave of relief which had surged over it, and which exalted her ladyship, for the time being at least, to a pinnacle of almost giddy height.
Mrs. Trimwell had her own private views on the matter. What they were, will, no doubt, be realized later.
Corin Elmore believed the whole thing due to karma, though it is true that this particular arrangement of karma puzzled him not a little.
John Mortimer, while maintaining on the whole a strictly neutral attitude, allowed his opinion of the credit due to sway slightly, if it swayed at all, in the direction of his sister Elizabeth. And in so doing, he swayed nearer the mark, if you will believe me, than the majority of folk with opinions on the subject.
Father Maloney was heard to announce that “surely to goodness the fella himself might be allowed a taste of the credit.” The “fella” was David Delancey. But more of him anon. Father Maloney made the announcement with a twinkle in his eye, and a slight exchange of glances with Lady Mary. That exchange of glances puzzled more than one of those who had happened to surprise it. Its meaning, however, was never fathomed. There was no question but that Lady Mary and the priest were past masters in keeping their own counsel when they chose. He would be a bold man who put any question savouring of impertinence to Lady Mary. For my part, I had sooner face a whole battery of artillery than have Lady Mary’s tortoiseshell-rimmed lorgnettes turned slowly upon me, her grey eyes glinting through them with steely courtesy. The courtesy was never absent, you may be sure, but then neither--on occasions--was the steeliness. Nor would it be well, if you wished to retain the smallest atom of self-respect, to question Father Maloney unduly. That soft tongue and speech of his could shrivel your complacency to the likeness of a withered leaf when you deserved it. And you may be very sure that, when they did shrivel it, you were left in no manner of doubt as to your deserts in the matter.
Lady Mary herself never ventured the smallest hint of an opinion as to whom the credit was due. In fact from first to last she kept a dignified silence on the whole affair, save when sheer necessity demanded speech from her. Her silence and dignity alone prevented it from sinking to melodrama, and truth obliges me to confess that it had more than once a distinctly suspicious flavour of that obnoxious quality.
But this is beginning at the wrong end of the skein, a proceeding which will indubitably result in a most fearsome tangle. Therefore, with your permission, I will break off and start anew.
“YOUR idea,” said John meditatively, “as far as I can elucidate it from your somewhat wordy discourse, is that I should accompany you to this exceedingly out-of-the-way, this on your own showing entirely remote, secluded, and sequestered spot, for the sole purpose of affording you amusement in your so to speak out of work hours.”
“That,” returned Corin admiringly, “is the idea in toto. It is marvellous with what ease and skill you have grasped and summed up the entire situation.”
John sighed.
“And might one be allowed to question what are the advantages to be gained from such a sojourn? What manner of recreation can the place afford? In a word, where do I come in?”
“Advantages!” Corin raised his eyes to the cobwebby rafters. “Heavens above! Isn’t my companionship an advantage? And for recreation what more can you desire than the contemplation of country lanes and wide moorland this glorious summer weather? Think of it, man! The earth ablaze with purple heather, the sea blue and golden,--breathing, living, colour. Anon there will be blackberries, great luscious clusters of blue-black fruit hanging ready for the plucking in every hedgerow. Again, I ask, what more can you desire?”
John smiled grimly.
“I am not, I would have you observe, either an artist or a boy. Your inducements fail to move me.”
“My companionship,” urged Corin.
“The blatant conceit of the man,” sighed John.
Corin changed his tone, descended to wheedling. “Consider my loneliness,” he remarked pathetically. “From six o’clock--I can’t put in more than an eight-hour day--till midnight alone and unoccupied. Six hours!”
“Go to bed at nine and reduce the six hours by a simple process of subtraction to three, or play patience,” returned John unsympathetically.
“Inhuman brute,” mourned Corin.
John merely laughed.
He was a tall young man, thirty or thereabouts, clean-shaven, bronzed, grey-eyed, and with a thin hooked nose. His mouth, below it, was slightly grim in repose. But, when he smiled, you forgot the grimness, and smiled involuntarily in response. Also, you found yourself watching for the smile to come into play a second time. It had a curious manner of leaping first to his eyes in a sudden and illuminating flash. Deserting them, it passed equally suddenly to his mouth, leaving the eyes sad. It was a disconcerting trick, a baffling magician’s trick, and left you wondering. In the matter of dress he was fastidious to a degree. At the moment his attire was the most immaculate suit of London clothes, grey trousers, frock coat, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. His silk hat, exceeding glossy, reposed on a worm-eaten oak chair near him. He had removed a pile of sketch books and a bunch of dilapidated lilies to make place for the hat. They lay now on the floor.
With Corin, by contrast, clothes were a matter of necessity as mere covering, and no more. His tweed trousers and Norfolk jacket had an out-all-night-in-the-wet-and-then-sat-upon air. In two words they looked loosely crumpled. Paint spots adorned the left sleeve, in the crook of the elbow where his palette was wont to rest. His soft collar, attached to his shirt, was unbuttoned, and merely held together by a smoke-grey tie. Briefly, in the matter of clothes, he was the prototype of the modern novelist’s art-student,--the type that emerges paint-stained, careless-clad, cheerfully Bohemian, from the chapters of such novels as deal with the art world in Chelsea.
But here it behoves me to walk warily lest I should hear a whisper of “glass houses,” for does not this very Corin himself dwell in that most fascinating region of London? Is not his studio within a bare five minutes of the dirty, muddy, grey, but wholly adorable Thames, where it drifts past Carlyle’s statue, smoke-grimed and weather-worn, and on past the old herbalist’s garden set back across the street?
In face, this same Corin was plump, smooth-skinned, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, with short-sighted blue eyes that gazed at you kindly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His own appearance caused him moments of acute anguish.
“Look at me!” he would cry on occasions, having met his reflection in some unexpected mirror in a friend’s house or studio, “Look at me! The soul of an artist, and the appearance of a benign and grown-up baby! If I didn’t know my own nature and character, I vow I’d be taken in. I am taken in when I come upon myself in this disgusting and unexpected fashion. Who’s that odd, kindly, little pink-faced man? I ask myself. And then I realize it’s me, me, ME! And, even while I’m swearing at the sight of myself, I look no more than a cross baby yelling for its feeding bottle. Talk of purgatory! I get ten years of it every time I come opposite a looking-glass. The things ought to be abolished. They ought to be ground to powder, scattered like dust to the four winds of heaven. They merely pander to woman’s vanity. No man wants to look into one. If he looks like a man he doesn’t bother about it. If he looks like me--” At this juncture his anguish would become too acute for further speech.
There was a pause in the conversation, quite an appreciable pause, seeing that it lasted at least two and three-quarter minutes. Then:
“So the matter is definitely settled,” announced Corin with an air of finality, “and on Tuesday next you and I, a couple of boon companions, wend our way to the charming, the altogether adorable and old-world village of Malford, situated, so the guide-books tell us, precisely seven miles from Whortley station, as the crow flies. Why as the crow flies,” he continued ruminatively, “I have never been able to fathom. The information is of remarkably small use to the feathered species, and I have not yet been able to grasp what precise and particular use it is to mankind at large.”
John, whose attention had been wandering, roused himself.
“For sheer pertinacity,” he remarked suavely, “commend me to one, Corin Elmore, painter, poet, musician, theosophist, and fortune-teller; in short, dabbler in the arts and the occult sciences.”
“At all events you can hear Mass at Malford,” retorted Corin succinctly. It would appear that “dabbler in the occult sciences” had pricked.
“Truly?” John’s tone was politely interrogative. “At what distance from Malford, as the crow flies?”
“You can hear Mass in Malford, in the Chapel, in Delancey Castle.” The statement was triumphant.
“Delancey Castle!” ejaculated John. For the first time interest, genuine interest, stirred in his voice. He began, in a manner of speaking, to sit up and take notice.
“Delancey Castle,” reiterated Corin. And then suspiciously, “But why this sudden interest?”
“Merely that I have heard of the place,” said John nonchalantly.
“Who hasn’t?” Corin’s voice was faintly edged with scorn. “One of the oldest baronial castles in England; situated in a park famed for its oaks and copper beeches; Norman in origin, enlarged during the Tudor period; minstrel’s gallery, secret chambers, terraced gardens. From all accounts it breathes the very essence of romance and bygone forgotten days. Heavens above! were there indeed tongues in trees, and sermons in stones, I’ll swear there’s many a tale those old walls and the trees around them might disclose.”
“It is a matter for devout thanks,” returned John piously, “that the tongue of Nature wags, in a manner of speaking, rather in accordance with our mood of the moment than by any actual physical volition of its own. We have quite enough to do to stop our ears to the human tongues around us. But, seriously, I had no idea that Delancey Castle was situated in this sequestered spot of yours.”
“Sequestered spot of mine!” ejaculated Corin. “I lay no claim to the spot. It exists not for my benefit, save in so far, I would have you note, as certain pecuniary advantages will accrue to me for work done in its lonely regions. Nevertheless Delancey Castle is situated there, unless some good or evil genius has seen fit to remove it piecemeal since last Thursday week. I saw it on that date with my own eyes, ‘set on an eminence’--again the guide-books--‘above the small village of Malford. Glimpses of its rugged grey towers may be observed among the lordly oaks and magnificent copper beeches for which the park is justly famed.’ I refer you to page one hundred and twenty-two of Sanderson’s Guide to Country Houses for the accuracy of my quotation.” He broke off to light a fresh cigarette, then looked at John, challenging him through his gold-rimmed spectacles.
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