Books: Huntingtower

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"You should be happy, Dogson," said the Poet. "Here we have all the
materials for your blessed romance--old mansion, extinct family,
village deserted of men, and an innkeeper whom I suspect of being
a villain. I feel almost a convert to your nonsense myself.
We'll have a look at the House."

They turned down the road which ran north by the park wall, past
the inn, which looked more abandoned than ever, till they came to an
entrance which was clearly the West Lodge. It had once been a
pretty, modish cottage, with a thatched roof and dormer windows,
but now it was badly in need of repair. A window-pane was broken
and stuffed with a sack, the posts of the porch were giving inwards,
and the thatch was crumbling under the attentions of a colony of
starlings. The great iron gates were rusty, and on the coat of
arms above them the gilding was patchy and tarnished. Apparently the
gates were locked, and even the side wicket failed to open to
Heritage's vigorous shaking. Inside a weedy drive disappeared among
ragged rhododendrons

The noise brought a man to the lodge door. He was a sturdy fellow
in a suit of black clothes which had not been made for him.
He might have been a butler EN DESHABILLE, but for the presence of a
pair of field boots into which he had tucked the ends of his trousers.
The curious thing about him was his face, which was decorated with
features so tiny as to give the impression of a monstrous child.
Each in itself was well enough formed, but eyes, nose, mouth, chin
were of a smallness curiously out of proportion to the head and body.
Such an anomaly might have been redeemed by the expression;
good-humour would have invested it with an air of agreeable farce.
But there was no friendliness in the man's face. It was set like a
judge's in a stony impassiveness.

"May we walk up to the House?" Heritage asked. "We are here for a
night and should like to have a look at it."

The man advanced a step. He had either a bad cold, or a voice
comparable in size to his features.

"There's no entrance here," he said huskily. "I have strict orders."

"Oh, come now, " said Heritage. "It can do nobody any harm if you
let us in for half an hour."

The man advanced another step.

"You shall not come in. Go away from here. Go away, I tell you.
It is private." The words spoken by the small mouth in the small
voice had a kind of childish ferocity.

The travellers turned their back on him and continued their way.

"Sich a curmudgeon!" Dickson commented. His face had flushed,
for he was susceptible to rudeness. "Did you notice? That
man's a foreigner."

"He's a brute," said Heritage. "But I'm not going to be done in by
that class of lad. There can be no gates on the sea side, so we'll
work round that way, for I won't sleep till I've seen the place."

Presently the trees grew thinner, and the road plunged through
thickets of hazel till it came to a sudden stop in a field.
There the cover ceased wholly, and below them lay the glen of
the Laver. Steep green banks descended to a stream which swept in
coils of gold into the eye of the sunset. A little farther down the
channel broadened, the slopes fell back a little, and a tongue of
glittering sea ran up to meet the hill waters. The Laver is a
gentle stream after it leaves its cradle heights, a stream of clear
pools and long bright shallows, winding by moorland steadings and
upland meadows; but in its last half-mile it goes mad, and imitates
its childhood when it tumbled over granite shelves. Down in that
green place the crystal water gushed and frolicked as if determined
on one hour of rapturous life before joining the sedater sea.

Heritage flung himself on the turf.

"This is a good place! Ye gods, what a good place! Dogson, aren't
you glad you came? I think everything's bewitched to-night.
That village is bewitched, and that old woman's tea. Good white magic!
And that foul innkeeper and that brigand at the gate. Black magic!
And now here is the home of all enchantment--'island valley of
Avilion'--'waters that listen for lovers'--all the rest of it!"

Dickson observed and marvelled.

"I can't make you out, Mr. Heritage. You were saying last night you
were a great democrat, and yet you were objecting to yon laddies
camping on the moor. And you very near bit the neb off me when I
said I liked Tennyson. And now..." Mr. McCunn's command of
language was inadequate to describe the transformation.

"You're a precise, pragmatical Scot," was the answer. "Hang it,
man, don't remind me that I'm inconsistent. I've a poet's licence
to play the fool, and if you don't understand me, I don't in the
least understand myself. All I know is that I'm feeling young and
jolly, and that it's the Spring."

Mr. Heritage was assuredly in a strange mood. He began to whistle
with a far-away look in his eye.

"Do you know what that is?" he asked suddenly.

Dickson, who could not detect any tune, said "No."

"It's an aria from a Russian opera that came out just before the war.
I've forgotten the name of the fellow who wrote it. Jolly thing,
isn't it? I always remind myself of it when I'm in this mood, for
it is linked with the greatest experience of my life. You said, I
think, that you had never been in love?"

Dickson replied in the native fashion. "Have you?" he asked.

"I have, and I am--been for two years. I was down with my battalion
on the Italian front early in 1918, and because I could speak the
language they hoicked me out and sent me to Rome on a liaison job.
It was Easter time and fine weather, and, being glad to get out of
the trenches, I was pretty well pleased with myself and enjoying
life....In the place where I stayed there was a girl. She was a
Russian, a princess of a great family, but a refugee, and of course
as poor as sin....I remember how badly dressed she was among all the
well-to-do Romans. But, my God, what a beauty! There was never
anything in the world like her.... She was little more than a child,
and she used to sing that air in the morning as she went down the
stairs....They sent me back to the front before I had a chance of
getting to know her, but she used to give me little timid good
mornings, and her voice and eyes were like an angel's....I'm over my
head in love, but it's hopeless, quite hopeless. I shall never see
her again."

"I'm sure I'm honoured by your confidence," said Dickson reverently.

The Poet, who seemed to draw exhilaration from the memory of his
sorrows, arose and fetched him a clout on the back. "Don't talk of
confidence, as if you were a reporter," he said. "What about that
House? If we're to see it before the dark comes we'd better hustle."

The green slopes on their left, as they ran seaward, were clothed
towards their summit with a tangle of broom and light scrub.
The two forced their way through it, and found to their surprise
that on this side there were no defences of the Huntingtower demesne.
Along the crest ran a path which had once been gravelled and trimmed.
Beyond, through a thicket of laurels and rhododendrons, they came on a
long unkempt aisle of grass, which seemed to be one of those side
avenues often found in connection with old Scots dwellings.
Keeping along this they reached a grove of beech and holly through
which showed a dim shape of masonry. By a common impulse they moved
stealthily, crouching in cover, till at the far side of the wood they
found a sunk fence and looked over an acre or two of what had once been
lawn and flower-beds to the front of the mansion.

The outline of the building was clearly silhouetted against the
glowing west, but since they were looking at the east face the
detail was all in shadow. But, dim as it was, the sight was enough
to give Dickson the surprise of his life. He had expected something
old and baronial. But this was new, raw and new, not twenty years built.
Some madness had prompted its creator to set up a replica of a
Tudor house in a countryside where the thing was unheard of. All the
tricks were there--oriel windows, lozenged panes, high twisted chimney
stacks; the very stone was red, as if to imitate the mellow brick of
some ancient Kentish manor. It was new, but it was also decaying.
The creepers had fallen from the walls, the pilasters on the terrace were
tumbling down, lichen and moss were on the doorsteps. Shuttered, silent,
abandoned, it stood like a harsh memento mori of human hopes.

Dickson had never before been affected by an inanimate thing with so
strong a sense of disquiet. He had pictured an old stone tower on a
bright headland; he found instead this raw thing among trees.
The decadence of the brand-new repels as something against nature,
and this new thing was decadent. But there was a mysterious life in
it, for though not a chimney smoked, it seemed to enshrine a
personality and to wear a sinister aura. He felt a lively distaste,
which was almost fear. He wanted to get far away from it as fast
as possible. The sun, now sinking very low, sent up rays which
kindled the crests of a group of firs to the left of the front door.

He had the absurd fancy that they were torches flaming before a bier.

It was well that the two had moved quietly and kept in shadow.
Footsteps fell on their ears, on the path which threaded the lawn
just beyond the sunk-fence. It was the keeper of the West Lodge and
he carried something on his back, but both that and his face were
indistinct in the half-light.

Other footsteps were heard, coming from the other side of the lawn.
A man's shod feet rang on the stone of a flagged path, and from
their irregular fall it was plain that he was lame. The two men met
near the door, and spoke together. Then they separated, and moved
one down each side of the house. To the two watchers they had the
air of a patrol, or of warders pacing the corridors of a prison.

"Let's get out of this," said Dickson, and turned to go.

The air had the curious stillness which precedes the moment of
sunset, when the birds of day have stopped their noises and the
sounds of night have not begun. But suddenly in the silence fell
notes of music. They seemed to come from the house, a voice singing
softly but with great beauty and clearness.

Dickson halted in his steps. The tune, whatever it was, was like a fresh
wind to blow aside his depression. The house no longer looked sepulchral.
He saw that the two men had hurried back from their patrol, had met and
exchanged some message, and made off again as if alarmed by the music.
Then he noticed his companion....

Heritage was on one knee with his face rapt and listening.
He got to his feet and appeared to be about to make for the House.
Dickson caught him by the arm and dragged him into the bushes, and
he followed unresistingly, like a man in a dream. They ploughed
through the thicket, recrossed the grass avenue, and scrambled down
the hillside to the banks of the stream.

Then for the first time Dickson observed that his companion's face
was very white, and that sweat stood on his temples. Heritage lay
down and lapped up water like a dog. Then he turned a wild eye on
the other.

"I am going back," he said. "That is the voice of the girl I saw in
Rome, and it is singing her song!"

CHAPTER IV

DOUGAL

"You'll do nothing of the kind," said Dickson. "You're coming home
to your supper. It was to be on the chap of nine."

"I'm going back to that place."

The man was clearly demented and must be humoured. "Well, you must
wait till the morn's morning. It's very near dark now, and those
are two ugly customers wandering about yonder. You'd better sleep
the night on it."

Mr. Heritage seemed to be persuaded. He suffered himself to be
led up the now dusky slopes to the gate where the road from
the village ended. He walked listlessly like a man engaged in
painful reflection. Once only he broke the silence.

"You heard the singing?" he asked.

Dickson was a very poor hand at a lie. "I heard something,"
he admitted.

"You heard a girl's voice singing?"

"It sounded like that," was the admission. "But I'm thinking it
might have been a seagull."

"You're a fool," said the Poet rudely.

The return was a melancholy business, compared to the bright speed
of the outward journey. Dickson's mind was a chaos of feelings,
all of them unpleasant. He had run up against something which he
violently, blindly detested, and the trouble was that he could
not tell why. It was all perfectly absurd, for why on earth should
an ugly house, some overgrown trees, and a couple of ill-favoured
servants so malignly affect him? Yet this was the fact ; he had
strayed out of Arcady into a sphere that filled him with revolt and
a nameless fear. Never in his experience had he felt like this,
this foolish childish panic which took all the colour and zest
out of life. He tried to laugh at himself but failed. Heritage,
stumbling along by his side, effectually crushed his effort to
discover humour in the situation. Some exhalation from that
infernal place had driven the Poet mad. And then that voice singing!
A seagull, he had said. More like a nightingale, he reflected--a bird
which in the flesh he had never met.

Mrs. Morran had the lamp lit and a fire burning in her cheerful
kitchen. The sight of it somewhat restored Dickson's equanimity,
and to his surprise he found that he had an appetite for supper.
There was new milk, thick with cream, and most of the dainties
which had appeared at tea, supplemented by a noble dish of
shimmering "potted-head." The hostess did not share their meal,
being engaged in some duties in the little cubby-hole known as
the back kitchen.

Heritage drank a glass of milk but would not touch food.

"I called this place Paradise four hours ago," he said. "So it is,
but I fancy it is next door to Hell. There is something devilish
going on inside that park wall, and I mean to get to the bottom of it."

"Hoots! Nonsense!" Dickson replied with affected cheerfulness.
"To-morrow you and me will take the road for Auchenlochan.
We needn't trouble ourselves about an ugly old house and a
wheen impident lodge-keepers."

"To-morrow I'm going to get inside the place. Don't come unless you
like, but it's no use arguing with me. My mind is made up."

Heritage cleared a space on the table and spread out a section of a
large-scale Ordnance map.

"I must clear my head about the topography, the same as if this were
a battle-ground. Look here, Dogson....The road past the inn that
we went by to-night runs north and south." He tore a page from a
note-book and proceeded to make a rough sketch...."One end we know
abuts on the Laver glen, and the other stops at the South Lodge.
Inside the wall which follows the road is a long belt of plantation-
-mostly beeches and ash--then to the west a kind of park, and beyond
that the lawns of the house. Strips of plantation with avenues
between follow the north and south sides of the park. On the sea
side of the House are the stables and what looks like a walled
garden, and beyond them what seems to be open ground with an old
dovecot marked, and the ruins of Huntingtower keep. Beyond that
there is more open ground, till you come to the cliffs of the cape.
Have you got that?...It looks possible from the contouring to get
on to the sea cliffs by following the Laver, for all that side is
broken up into ravines....But look at the other side--the Garple glen.
It's evidently a deep-cut gully, and at the bottom it opens out into
a little harbour. There's deep water there, you observe. Now the
House on the south side--the Garple side--is built fairly close to
the edge of the cliffs. Is that all clear in your head? We can't
reconnoitre unless we've got a working notion of the lie of the land."

Dickson was about to protest that he had no intention of
reconnoitring, when a hubbub arose in the back kitchen.
Mrs. Morran's voice was heard in shrill protest.

"Ye ill laddie! Eh--ye--ill--laddie! (crescendo) Makin' a hash o'
my back door wi' your dirty feet! What are ye slinkin' roond here
for, when I tell't ye this mornin' that I wad sell ye nae mair
scones till ye paid for the last lot? Ye're a wheen thievin' hungry
callants, and if there were a polisman in the place I'd gie ye
in chairge....What's that ye say? Ye're no' wantin' meat? Ye want
to speak to the gentlemen that's bidin' here? Ye ken the auld ane,
says you? I believe it's a muckle lee, but there's the gentlemen to
answer ye theirsels."

Mrs. Morran, brandishing a dishclout dramatically, flung open
the door, and with a vigorous push propelled into the kitchen a
singular figure.

It was a stunted boy, who from his face might have been fifteen
years old, but had the stature of a child of twelve. He had a
thatch of fiery red hair above a pale freckled countenance.
His nose was snub, his eyes a sulky grey-green, and his wide mouth
disclosed large and damaged teeth. But remarkable as was his
visage, his clothing was still stranger. On his head was the
regulation Boy Scout hat, but it was several sizes too big, and was
squashed down upon his immense red ears. He wore a very ancient
khaki shirt, which had once belonged to a full-grown soldier, and
the spacious sleeves were rolled up at the shoulders and tied with
string, revealing a pair of skinny arms. Round his middle hung
what was meant to be a kilt--a kilt of home manufacture, which may
once have been a tablecloth, for its bold pattern suggested no known
clan tartan. He had a massive belt, in which was stuck a broken
gully-knife, and round his neck was knotted the remnant of what had
once been a silk bandanna. His legs and feet were bare, blue,
scratched, and very dirty, and this toes had the prehensile look
common to monkeys and small boys who summer and winter go bootless.
In his hand was a long ash-pole, new cut from some coppice.

The apparition stood glum and lowering on the kitchen floor.
As Dickson stared at it he recalled Mearns Street and the band of
irregular Boy Scouts who paraded to the roll of tin cans.
Before him stood Dougal, Chieftain of the Gorbals Die-Hards.
Suddenly he remembered the philanthropic Mackintosh, and his own
subscription of ten pounds to the camp fund. It pleased him to find
the rascals here, for in the unpleasant affairs on the verge of
which he felt himself they were a comforting reminder of the
peace of home.

"I'm glad to see you, Dougal," he said pleasantly. "How are you
all getting on?" And then, with a vague reminiscence of the Scouts'
code--"Have you been minding to perform a good deed every day?"

The Chieftain's brow darkened.

"'Good Deeds!'" he repeated bitterly. "I tell ye I'm fair wore out
wi' good deeds. Yon man Mackintosh tell't me this was going to be
a grand holiday. Holiday! Govey Dick! It's been like a Setterday
night in Main Street--a' fechtin', fechtin'."

No collocation of letters could reproduce Dougal's accent, and I
will not attempt it. There was a touch of Irish in it, a spice of
music-hall patter, as well as the odd lilt of the Glasgow vernacular.
He was strong in vowels, but the consonants, especially the letter
"t," were only aspirations.

"Sit down and let's hear about things," said Dickson.

The boy turned his head to the still open back door, where Mrs.
Morran could be heard at her labours. He stepped across and shut it.
"I'm no' wantin' that auld wife to hear," he said. Then he squatted
down on the patchwork rug by the hearth, and warmed his blue-black shins.
Looking into the glow of the fire, he observed, "I seen you two up by
the Big Hoose the night."

"The devil you did," said Heritage, roused to a sudden attention.
"And where were you?"

"Seven feet from your head, up a tree. It's my chief hidy-hole, and
Gosh! I need one, for Lean's after me wi' a gun. He had a shot at
me two days syne."

Dickson exclaimed, and Dougal with morose pride showed a rent in
his kilt. "If I had had on breeks, he'd ha' got me."

"Who's Lean?" Heritage asked.

"The man wi' the black coat. The other--the lame one--they ca' Spittal."

"How d'you know?"

"I've listened to them crackin' thegither."

"But what for did the man want to shoot at you?" asked the
scandalized Dickson.

"What for? Because they're frightened to death o' onybody going
near their auld Hoose. They're a pair of deevils, worse nor any Red
Indian, but for a' that they're sweatin' wi' fright. What for? says you.
Because they're hiding a Secret. I knew it as soon as I seen the man
Lean's face. I once seen the same kind o' scoondrel at the Picters.
When he opened his mouth to swear, I kenned he was a foreigner, like
the lads down at the Broomielaw. That looked black, but I hadn't got
at the worst of it. Then he loosed off at me wi' his gun."

"Were you not feared?" said Dickson.

"Ay, I was feared. But ye'll no' choke off the Gorbals Die-Hards
wi' a gun. We held a meetin' round the camp fire, and we resolved
to get to the bottom o' the business. Me bein' their Chief, it was
my duty to make what they ca' a reckonissince, for that was the
dangerous job. So a' this day I've been going on my belly about
thae policies. I've found out some queer things."

Heritage had risen and was staring down at the small squatting figure.

"What have you found out? Quick. Tell me at once." His voice was
sharp and excited.

"Bide a wee," said the unwinking Dougal. "I'm no' going to let ye
into this business till I ken that ye'll help. It's a far bigger
job than I thought. There's more in it than Lean and Spittal.
There's the big man that keeps the public--Dobson, they ca' him.
He's a Namerican, which looks bad. And there's two-three tinklers
campin' down in the Garple Dean. They're in it, for Dobson was
colloguin' wi' them a' mornin'. When I seen ye, I thought ye were
more o' the gang, till I mindit that one o' ye was auld McCunn that
has the shop in Mearns Street. I seen that ye didna' like the look
o' Lean, and I followed ye here, for I was thinkin' I needit help."

Heritage plucked Dougal by the shoulder and lifted him to his feet.

"For God's sake, boy," he cried, "tell us what you know!"

"Will ye help?"

"Of course, you little fool."

"Then swear," said the ritualist. From a grimy wallet he extracted
a limp little volume which proved to be a damaged copy of a work
entitled Sacred Songs and Solos. "Here! Take that in your right
hand and put your left hand on my pole, and say after me. 'I swear
no' to blab what is telled me in secret, and to be swift and sure in
obeyin' orders, s'help me God!' Syne kiss the bookie."

Dickson at first refused, declaring that it was all havers,
but Heritage's docility persuaded him to follow suit.
The two were sworn.

"Now," said Heritage.

Dougal squatted again on the hearth-rug, and gathered the eyes of
his audience. He was enjoying himself.

"This day," he said slowly, "I got inside the Hoose."

"Stout fellow," said Heritage ; "and what did you find there?"

"I got inside that Hoose, but it wasn't once or twice I tried.
I found a corner where I was out o' sight o' anybody unless they had
come there seekin' me, and I sklimmed up a rone pipe, but a' the
windies were lockit and I verra near broke my neck. Syne I tried
the roof, and a sore sklim I had, but when I got there there were
no skylights. At the end I got in by the coal-hole. That's why
ye're maybe thinkin' I'm no' very clean."

Heritage's patience was nearly exhausted.

"I don't want to hear how you got in. What did you find,
you little devil?"

"Inside the Hoose," said Dougal slowly (and there was a melancholy
sense of anti-climax in his voice, as of one who had hoped to speak
of gold and jewels and armed men)--"inside that Hoose there's
nothing but two women."

Heritage sat down before him with a stern face.

"Describe them," he commanded.

"One o' them is dead auld, as auld as the wife here. She didn't
look to me very right in the head."

"And the other?"

"Oh, just a lassie."

"What was she like?"

Dougal seemed to be searching for adequate words. "She is..."
he began. Then a popular song gave him inspiration. "She's pure as
the lully in the dell!"

In no way discomposed by Heritage's fierce interrogatory air,
he continued: "She's either foreign or English, for she couldn't
understand what I said, and I could make nothing o' her clippit tongue.
But I could see she had been greetin'. She looked feared, yet
kind o' determined. I speired if I could do anything for her, and when
she got my meaning she was terrible anxious to ken if I had seen a man-
-a big man, she said, wi' a yellow beard. She didn't seem to ken his
name, or else she wouldna' tell me. The auld wife was mortal feared,
and was aye speakin' in a foreign langwidge. I seen at once that
what frightened them was Lean and his friends, and I was just starting
to speir about them when there came a sound like a man walkin' along
the passage. She was for hidin' me in behind a sofy, but I wasn't
going to be trapped like that, so I got out by the other door and down
the kitchen stairs and into the coal-hole. Gosh, it was a near thing!"

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