CHAPTER XXXVII
CLOSED CORRIDORS
To spend one's days perforce in an enormous house alone is a
thing likely to play unholy tricks with a man's mind and lead
it to gloomy workings. To know the existence of a hundred
or so of closed doors shut on the darkness of unoccupied rooms;
to be conscious of flights of unmounted stairs, of stretches of
untrodden corridors, of unending walls, from which the
pictured eyes of long dead men and women stare, as if seeing
things which human eyes behold not--is an eerie and unwholesome
thing. Mount Dunstan slept in a large four-post bed in
a chamber in which he might have died or been murdered a
score of times without being able to communicate with the
remote servants' quarters below stairs, where lay the one man
and one woman who attended him. When he came late to his
room and prepared for sleep by the light of two flickering
candles the silence of the dead in tombs was about him; but it
was only a more profound and insistent thing than the silence
of the day, because it was the silence of the night, which is a
presence. He used to tell himself with secret smiles at the fact
that at certain times the fantasy was half believable--that there
were things which walked about softly at night--things which
did not want to be dead. He himself had picked them out
from among the pictures in the gallery--pretty, light, petulant
women; adventurous-eyed, full-blooded, eager men. His theory
was that they hated their stone coffins, and fought their way
back through the grey mists to try to talk and make love and
to be seen of warm things which were alive. But it was not
to be done, because they had no bodies and no voices, and when
they beat upon closed doors they would not open. Still they
came back--came back. And sometimes there was a rustle and
a sweep through the air in a passage, or a creak, or a sense of
waiting which was almost a sound.
"Perhaps some of them have gone when they have been
as I am," he had said one black night, when he had sat in
his room staring at the floor. "If a man was dragged out when
he had not LIVED a day, he would come back I should come
back if--God! A man COULD not be dragged away--like THIS!"
And to sit alone and think of it was an awful and a lonely
thing--a lonely thing.
But loneliness was nothing new, only that in these months
his had strangely intensified itself. This, though he was not
aware of it, was because the soul and body which were the
completing parts of him were within reach--and without it.
When he went down to breakfast he sat singly at his table,
round which twenty people might have laughed and talked.
Between the dining-room and the library he spent his days
when he was not out of doors. Since he could not afford
servants, the many other rooms must be kept closed. It was a
ghastly and melancholy thing to make, as he must sometimes,
a sort of precautionary visit to the state apartments. He was
the last Mount Dunstan, and he would never see them opened
again for use, but so long as he lived under the roof he might
by prevision check, in a measure, the too rapid encroachments
of decay. To have a leak stopped here, a nail driven or a
support put there, seemed decent things to do.
"Whom am I doing it for?" he said to Mr. Penzance. "I
am doing it for myself--because I cannot help it. The place
seems to me like some gorgeous old warrior come to the end of
his days It has stood the war of things for century after
century--the war of things. It is going now I am all that is
left to it. It is all I have. So I patch it up when I can
afford it, with a crutch or a splint and a bandage."
Late in the afternoon of the day on which Miss Vanderpoel
rode away from West Ways with Lord Westholt, a stealthy
and darkly purple cloud rose, lifting its ominous bulk against
a chrysoprase and pink horizon. It was the kind of cloud
which speaks of but one thing to those who watch clouds, or
even casually consider them. So Lady Anstruthers felt some
surprise when she saw Sir Nigel mount his horse before the
stone steps and ride away, as it were, into the very heart of
the coming storm.
"Nigel will be caught in the rain," she said to her sister.
"I wonder why he goes out now. It would be better to wait
until to-morrow."
But Sir Nigel did not think so. He had calculated matters
with some nicety. He was not exactly on such terms with
Mount Dunstan as would make a casual call seem an entirely
natural thing, and he wished to drop in upon him for a casual
call and in an unpremeditated manner. He meant to reach
the Mount about the time the storm broke, under which
circumstance nothing could bear more lightly an air of being
unpremeditated than to take refuge in a chance passing.
Mount Dunstan was in the library. He had sat smoking
his pipe while he watched the purple cloud roll up and spread
itself, blotting out the chrysoprase and pink and blue, and when
the branches of the trees began to toss about he had looked on
with pleasure as the rush of big rain drops came down and
pelted things. It was a fine storm, and there were some imposing
claps of thunder and jagged flashes of lightning. As one
splendid rattle shook the air he was surprised to hear a
summons at the great hall door. Who on earth could be turning
up at this time? His man Reeve announced the arrival a few
moments later, and it was Sir Nigel Anstruthers. He had, he
explained, been riding through the village when the deluge
descended, and it had occurred to him to turn in at the park
gates and ask a temporary shelter. Mount Dunstan received
him with sufficient courtesy. His appearance was not a thing
to rejoice over, but it could be endured. Whisky and soda and
a smoke would serve to pass the hour, if the storm lasted so
long.
Conversation was not the easiest thing in the world under
the circumstances, but Sir Nigel led the way steadily after
he had taken his seat and accepted the hospitalities offered.
What a place it was--this! He had been struck for the hundredth
time with the impressiveness of the mass of it, the sweep
of the park and the splendid grouping of the timber, as he had
ridden up the avenue. There was no other place like it in the
county. Was there another like it in England?
"Not in its case, I hope," Mount Dunstan said.
There were a few seconds of silence. The rain poured down
in splashing sheets and was swept in rattling gusts against the
window panes.
"What the place needs is--an heiress," Anstruthers observed
in the tone of a practical man. "I believe I have heard that
your views of things are such that she should preferably NOT
be an American."
Mount Dunstan did not smile, though he slightly showed his
teeth.
"When I am driven to the wall," he answered, "I may not
be fastidious as to nationality."
Nigel Anstruthers' manner was not a bad one. He chose
that tone of casual openness which, while it does not wholly
commit itself, may be regarded as suggestive of the amiable half
confidence of speeches made as "man to man."
"My own opportunity of studying the genus American heiress
within my own gates is a first-class one. I find that it knows
what it wants and that its intention is to get it." A short
laugh broke from him as he flicked the ash from his cigar on
to the small bronze receptacle at his elbow. "It is not many
years since it would have been difficult for a girl to be frank
enough to say, `When I marry I shall ask something in exchange
for what I have to give.' "
"There are not many who have as much to give," said
Mount Dunstan coolly.
"True," with a slight shrug. "You are thinking that men
are glad enough to take a girl like that--even one who has not
a shape like Diana's and eyes like the sea. Yes, by George,"
softly, and narrowing his lids, "she IS a handsome creature."
Mount Dunstan did not attempt to refute the statement, and
Anstruthers laughed low again.
"It is an asset she knows the value of quite clearly. That
is the interesting part of it. She has inherited the far-seeing
commercial mind. She does not object to admitting it. She
educated herself in delightful cold blood that she might be
prepared for the largest prize appearing upon the horizon. She
held things in view when she was a child at school, and obviously
attacked her French, German, and Italian conjugations
with a twelve-year-old eye on the future."
Mount Dunstan leaning back carelessly in his chair, laughed--
as it seemed--with him. Internally he was saying that the man
was a liar who might always be trusted to lie, but he knew with
shamed fury that the lies were doing something to his
soul--rolling dark vapours over it--stinging him, dragging away
props, and making him feel they had been foolish things to lean
on. This can always be done with a man in love who has slight
foundation for hope. For some mysterious and occult reason
civilisation has elected to treat the strange and great passion
as if it were an unholy and indecent thing, whose dominion over
him proper social training prevents any man from admitting
openly. In passing through its cruelest phases he must bear
himself as if he were immune, and this being the custom, he may
be called upon to endure much without the relief of striking out
with manly blows. An enemy guessing his case and possessing the
infernal gift whose joy is to dishearten and do hurt with
courteous despitefulness, may plant a poisoned arrow here and
there with neatness and fine touch, while his bound victim can,
with decency, neither start, nor utter brave howls, nor guard
himself, but must sit still and listen, hospitably supplying
smoke and drink and being careful not to make an ass of himself.
Therefore Mount Dunstan pushed the cigars nearer to his
visitor and waved his hand hospitably towards the whisky and
soda. There was no reason, in fact, why Anstruthers--or any
one indeed, but Penzance, should suspect that he had become
somewhat mad in secret. The man's talk was marked merely
by the lightly disparaging malice which was rarely to be missed
from any speech of his which touched on others. Yet it might
have been a thing arranged beforehand, to suggest adroitly
either lies or truth which would make a man see every
sickeningly good reason for feeling that in this contest he did
not count for a man at all.
"It has all been pretty obvious," said Sir Nigel. "There
is a sort of cynicism in the openness of the siege. My
impression is that almost every youngster who has met her has
taken a shot. Tommy Alanby scrambling up from his knees in one
of the rose-gardens was a satisfying sight. His much-talked-of-
passion for Jane Lithcom was temporarily in abeyance."
The rain swirled in a torrent against the window, and
casually glancing outside at the tossing gardens he went on.
"She is enjoying herself. Why not? She has the spirit of
the huntress. I don't think she talks nonsense about friendship
to the captives of her bow and spear. She knows she can
always get what she wants. A girl like that MUST have an
arrogance of mind. And she is not a young saint. She is one
of the women born with THE LOOK in her eyes. I own I should
not like to be in the place of any primeval poor brute who
really went mad over her--and counted her millions as so much
dirt."
Mount Dunstan answered with a shrug of his big shoulders:
"Apparently he would seem as remote from the reason of
to-day as the men who lived on the land when Hengist and
Horsa came--or when Caesar landed at Deal."
"He would seem as remote to her," with a shrug also.
"I should not like to contend that his point of view would not
interest her or that she would particularly discourage him. Her
eyes would call him--without malice or intention, no doubt, but
your early Briton ceorl or earl would be as well understood
by her. Your New York beauty who has lived in the market
place knows principally the prices of things."
He was not ill pleased with himself. He was putting it
well and getting rather even with her. If this fellow with his
shut mouth had a sore spot hidden anywhere he was giving him
"to think." And he would find himself thinking, while,
whatsoever he thought, he would be obliged to continue to keep
his ugly mouth shut. The great idea was to say things WITHOUT
saying them, to set your hearer's mind to saying them for you.
"What strikes one most is a sort of commercial brilliance
in her," taking up his thread again after a smilingly reflective
pause. "It quite exhilarates one by its novelty. There's spice
in it. We English have not a look-in when we are dealing
with Americans, and yet France calls us a nation of shop-
keepers. My impression is that their women take little
inventories of every house they enter, of every man they meet. I
heard her once speaking to my wife about this place, as if she
had lived in it. She spoke of the closed windows and the state
of the gardens--of broken fountains and fallen arches. She
evidently deplored the deterioration of things which represented
capital. She has inventoried Dunholm, no doubt. That will
give Westholt a chance. But she will do nothing until after
her next year's season in London--that I'd swear. I look forward
to next year. It will be worth watching. She has been
training my wife. A sister who has married an Englishman
and has at least spent some years of her life in England has a
certain established air. When she is presented one knows she
will be a sensation. After that----" he hesitated a moment,
smiling not too pleasantly.
"After that," said Mount Dunstan, "the Deluge."
"Exactly. The Deluge which usually sweeps girls off their
feet--but it will not sweep her off hers. She will stand quite
firm in the flood and lose sight of nothing of importance which
floats past."
Mount Dunstan took him up. He was sick of hearing the
fellow's voice.
"There will be a good many things," he said; "there will be
great personages and small ones, pomps and vanities, glittering
things and heavy ones."
"When she sees what she wants," said Anstruthers, "she
will hold out her hand, knowing it will come to her. The
things which drown will not disturb her. I once made the
blunder of suggesting that she might need protection against
the importunate--as if she had been an English girl. It was
an idiotic thing to do."
"Because?" Mount Dunstan for the moment had lost his
head. Anstruthers had maddeningly paused.
"She answered that if it became necessary she might
perhaps be able to protect herself. She was as cool and frank as
a boy. No air pince about it--merely consciousness of being
able to put things in their right places. Made a mere male
relative feel like a fool."
"When ARE things in their right places?" To his credit be
it spoken, Mount Dunstan managed to say it as if in the mere
putting together of idle words. What man likes to be reminded
of his right place! No man wants to be put in his right place.
There is always another place which seems more desirable.
"She knows--if we others do not. I suppose my right place
is at Stornham, conducting myself as the brother-in-law of a
fair American should. I suppose yours is here--shut up among
your closed corridors and locked doors. There must be a lot
of them in a house like this. Don't you sometimes feel it too
large for you?"
"Always," answered Mount Dunstan.
The fact that he added nothing else and met a rapid side
glance with unmoving red-brown eyes gazing out from under
rugged brows, perhaps irritated Anstruthers. He had been
rather enjoying himself, but he had not enjoyed himself enough.
There was no denying that his plaything had not openly
flinched. Plainly he was not good at flinching. Anstruthers
wondered how far a man might go. He tried again.
"She likes the place, though she has a natural disdain for
its condition. That is practical American. Things which are
going to pieces because money is not spent upon them--mere
money, of which all the people who count for anything have
so much--are inevitably rather disdained. They are `out of
it.' But she likes the estate." As he watched Mount Dunstan
he felt sure he had got it at last--the right thing. "If
you were a duke with fifty thousand a year," with a distinctly
nasty, amicably humorous, faint laugh, "she would--by the
Lord, I believe, she would take it over--and you with it."
Mount Dunstan got up. In his rough walking tweeds he
looked over-big--and heavy--and perilous. For two seconds
Nigel Anstruthers would not have been surprised if he had
without warning slapped his face, or knocked him over, or
whirled him out of his chair and kicked him. He would not
have liked it, but--for two seconds--it would have been no
surprise. In fact, he instinctively braced his not too firm
muscles. But nothing of the sort occurred. During the two
seconds--perhaps three--Mount Dunstan stood still and looked
down at him. The brief space at an end, he walked over to the
hearth and stood with his back to the big fireplace.
"You don't like her," he said, and his manner was that of a man
dealing with a matter of fact. "Why do you talk about her?"
He had got away again--quite away.
An ugly flush shot over Anstruthers' face. There was one
more thing to say--whether it was idiotic to say it or not.
Things can always be denied afterwards, should denial appear
necessary--and for the moment his special devil possessed him.
"I do not like her!" And his mouth twisted. "Do I not?
I am not an old woman. I am a man--like others. I chance to
like her--too much."
There was a short silence. Mount Dunstan broke it.
"Then," he remarked, "you had better emigrate to some
country with a climate which suits you. I should say that
England--for the present--does not."
"I shall stay where I am," answered Anstruthers, with a
slight hoarseness of voice, which made it necessary for him
to clear his throat. "I shall stay where she is. I will have
that satisfaction, at least. She does not mind. I am only a
racketty, middle-aged brother-in-law, and she can take care
of herself. As I told you, she has the spirit of the huntress."
"Look here," said Mount Dunstan, quite without haste,
and with an iron civility. "I am going to take the liberty
of suggesting something. If this thing is true, it would be as
well not to talk about it."
"As well for me--or for her?" and there was a serene
significance in the query.
Mount Dunstan thought a few seconds.
"I confess," he said slowly, and he planted his fine blow
between the eyes well and with directness. "I confess that
it would not have occurred to me to ask you to do anything
or refrain from doing it for her sake."
"Thank you. Perhaps you are right. One learns that one
must protect one's self. I shall not talk--neither will you. I
know that. I was a fool to let it out. The storm is over.
I must ride home." He rose from his seat and stood smiling.
"It would smash up things nicely if the new beauty's appearance
in the great world were preceded by chatter of the unseemly
affection of some adorer of ill repute. Unfairly enough
it is always the woman who is hurt."
"Unless," said Mount Dunstan civilly, "there should arise
the poor, primeval brute, in his neolithic wrath, to seize on the
man to blame, and break every bone and sinew in his damned body."
"The newspapers would enjoy that more than she would,"
answered Sir Nigel. "She does not like the newspapers.
They are too ready to disparage the multi-millionaire, and
cackle about members of his family."
The unhidden hatred which still professed to hide itself in
the depths of their pupils, as they regarded each other, had its
birth in a passion as elemental as the quakings of the earth,
or the rage of two lions in a desert, lashing their flanks in the
blazing sun. It was well that at this moment they should
part ways.
Sir Nigel's horse being brought, he went on the way which
was his.
"It was a mistake to say what I did," he said before going.
"I ought to have held my tongue. But I am under the same
roof with her. At any rate, that is a privilege no other man
shares with me."
He rode off smartly, his horse's hoofs splashing in the rain
pools left in the avenue after the storm. He was not so sure
after all that he had made a mistake, and for the moment
he was not in the mood to care whether he had made one or not.
His agreeable smile showed itself as he thought of the obstinate,
proud brute he had left behind, sitting alone among his
shut doors and closed corridors. They had not shaken hands
either at meeting or parting. Queer thing it was--the kind
of enmity a man could feel for another when he was upset
by a woman. It was amusing enough that it should be
she who was upsetting him after all these years--impudent little
Betty, with the ferocious manner.
