Devil's Tor (7 page)

Drapier, even after a week's stay in the house, hardly knew which, of two or three lower rooms at its wing end, her private den was. But artificial light came shining through the crack of a door ajar at the end of the passage, so there he turned in; and found his assumption correct. Helga, indeed, was temporarily out of the room—no doubt she was still with Ingrid upstairs. A lighted lamp, however, stood on the table, the fire had been newly stoked, chairs were drawn up on either side of the hearth. He wondered if these deliberate preparations meant that she was to challenge him about the real purpose of his visit. Well, he was anticipating the challenge. Beside the lamp on the table he set, as a preliminary, the small tin box that he had brought down with him from his room.

For a minute longer he remained gazing incuriously about the room. The window curtains were drawn, and in the dead quiet of the house the periodic spattering of rain against the panes spoke of a night going from bad to worse. This femininely-appointed little chamber was nothing to him; in spirit he was scarcely there. He came to a stand before an oil-painting—a girl's likeness—hanging by the door. It had subconsciously drawn his eye on first entering, and now he saw that the portrait was Ingrid's.

She was younger than now; perhaps seventeen or eighteen. And her lovely yellow hair was long and undressed, flowing over her shoulders, while she also appeared to be in some sort of Eastern fancy costume. A long dark-red cloak hid most of a simple yet foreign-looking blue dress reaching to her feet, as she stood in the doorway of a hut, gazing out at the night; a raised hand on the lintel. A yellow beam from a lamp not shown illuminated her profile. The hut was otherwise dark; and outside it was blacker still, except for the last long faint line of what must have been a red sunset, underneath the silver finger-nail of a moon.

Drapier mused upon the picture, finding it as beautiful as oddly-conceived. Though the clue was wanting to the puzzle, it was anyway evident that whoever had painted the work must have seen fairly deeply into the possibilities of Ingrid's character. The face was set in an expression almost too old for it. It was calm, displeased, troubled, expectant; all at once. She was
waiting
for somebody or something.

Helga came in while he was yet looking at it.

"It's Ingrid as the girl Madonna in her father's home, before the arrival of her supernatural destiny. I more or less keep it here to avoid the trouble of explaining this to visitors. Peter Copping, a friend of ours, did it. He may be down before you go. He is a great admirer of Ingrid's genius, and possibly understands her better than any of us."

"She mentioned him. You say, her genius; what is her genius?"

Helga's smile seemed sad, as she gently led her cousin from his stand before the painting to the remoter of the chairs by the fire. She herself dropped into the other.

"I have to confess to being a little jealous of her, Hugh, and that's why these unkind things sometimes escape me. You see, I never enjoyed such adulations when I was a girl. No one ever predicted a mystical career for me. I was just a simple young woman, who was rather lucky to have secured a good husband. The luck, however, was not to be!"

"There of course you don't do yourself justice, for you were always the young queen of your set. However, I do agree that your daughter may be something exceptional in the way of girls—and very proud of the fact you should feel, Helga. But what is her true bent?"

"She is very unlikely to do anything great or outstanding of herself, but she may be a source of inspiration to some man of parts. I hope she may be. She is the last hope of the Colbornes, at all events; for somehow one hardly identifies
you,
my dear."

She rose again, with a brighter smile. "But I am being frightfully inhospitable. What will you take?"

"Nothing at all, thanks."

"I know you are teetotal, but medicinally?"

"Really no, thanks. I am not in the ranks of the fanatics, but I've so often had to go long spells without either alcohol or tobacco, that now the resumption of the double-habit appears not worth while."

So Helga sat down again. She had not failed to notice the japanned box. Ingrid, also, had mentioned to her upstairs that Hugh was proposing a chat with her, probably on business, but not financial business. She knew that this box must be in connection with it. She was well trained to patience and civility, however, and would say nothing before he was ready. There was no fear of their
tête-à-tête
being interrupted.

He glanced more than once across at her, and thought how in spite of this long passage of years she was still the old Helga. He remembered that she must be forty-three or four; but her peculiar fascination for him had never been in her features or contours, but in that intimate tranquil searching of her green-hazel eyes, which was at once like a cool hand resting upon him and a mild electric stimulation of all his soul. Given a longer and more serene leisure, he might even still be in love with her, as when he had been a gawky boy, all red hair, freckles and joints, and she an already grown-up young reigning beauty of that vanished Sydenham society, consorting with responsible men on equal terms. Truly the spell had begun to work again, he realised, only now the antidote was within his blood, and the entire surrender was happily no longer possible.

She had taken good care of her looks, too, and in her highly becoming evening frock of black and gold was remaining a most attractive woman, to be reckoned with. He supposed she must be vain. Possibly all women were—though he was unsure about Ingrid, who gave him the impression of caring nothing for dress and the artificialities of the toilet. Helga's aesthetically-arranged, stylish brown hair, with its golden lights, distinctly spoke of vanity: her hands also were white, and he imagined that her gown should be from an expensive shop. Yet all this was not a crime; while her calm, languid, intelligent features continued as thin and as lovely as ever. He could not escape from the idea that the vague constant shadow of a great disappointment was hanging over her life. Her smiles were so often melancholy, and into the searching of her eyes there seemed to have crept something wistful. Then she was as tall as her daughter, and still quite slender, which physical type and contradiction of her years likewise permitted the faint note of tragedy.

He conceived that repression over a long period had done its work. For the sake of this home and the expected after-reward for her sacrifice, she had buried herself and her daughter in a halfdead house in the depths of the country, to tend a crabbed old misanthrope, who doubtless ruled out every sort of society; and the effect upon a cultured, lively mind, yearning for its proper atmosphere, must be immense. Her sudden reduction to a state of comparative poverty upon the hapless death of her husband Dick must also have shocked her tremendously; while now he recalled that her unfortunate mother's last illness a few years earlier had been of a particularly distressing nature. He could not even wonder that, with her high personal attractions, she had never married a second time. Uncle Magnus was reputedly so well-off that the temptation would need to have been very great. Now, however, she was probably suffering for her good sense and long views. In fact, a woman of her age, feeling all the time that romance is slipping faster and faster out of her existence, must be depressed (he ruminated) as often as she allowed her thoughts to take a flight from the things of every day.

Sitting there, opposite to her, he discovered in himself some difficulty in approaching the subject which doubtless both wanted. For a man did not plant a tin box in a room for no reason, and she must have seen it at once, and be continuing to see it all the time. He felt a fool to be seeming to ignore its presence for both of them, while going on lightly to talk of other things of no importance. It was sheer hypocrisy, of course. Nor was the business itself so hard to state; yet he could not introduce it. It was as if it were of weightier consequence than he knew. At least he was glad that Ingrid's words had dissuaded him from following his original counsel, of addressing the request to old Magnus Colborne. Helga was a woman and sympathetic, whereas the old man might barely have comprehended the service required. Though in the part of the business alone to be disclosed, heaven knew there was little enough to go wrong about. Drapier then felt he might be dreading the possible requiring of fuller explanations, which might open up very much more of his intimate personal concerns than he wanted.

He weakly compromised his hesitations by breaking the short silence to talk of Ingrid's hurt. But Helga, finding his inquiry perfectly natural and reasonable, reassured him without a special glance for the reluctance of his voice.

"It isn't much, we may be thankful. There's no acute pain, and hardly any inflammation, so I trust there will be no doctor's bill to pay on this occasion. But it might have been far more serious, and I'm really amazed at you, Hugh. Surely you must have appreciated the unnecessary risk you accepted in crossing the open moor in such a thunderstorm? Everybody saw it coming on."

"Yes, it was silly, and honestly I don't know why I did it. Ingrid seemed to want it; while I suppose it needs more experience than I possess to stand out against the whims of your sex."

Helga laughed, putting tapering finger-tips to press her cheek.

"So spoke Adam! However, I'm sure you won't ever repeat the offence, so I shall say no more. You scared me dreadfully."

"I am sorry."

"And Devil's Tor has lost its decoration?"

"Yes, it was struck."

"Ingrid tells me you had the narrowest escape, both of you, and that it was your marvellous readiness that got you out of a real disaster. Having scolded you, now I want to thank you, Hugh, on her account and mine. If she had been up there alone—"

"It isn't worth mentioning, Helga."

She, however, directed towards him one of her lingering looks, that always had for him the queer double effect of breaking down the barrier between their two individualities, and setting up a more impassable one compounded of femininity and foreignness. He flushed beneath it, which seeing, she smiled, while proceeding to say:

"You can't prevent my gratitude—and admiration. But now explain about this tomb that has come to light. It is one?"

"It has every appearance of one. There is what should be a stairway."

"And you intend to investigate it in a few hours' time, before breakfast?"

"Yes."

"What boundless energy you have, Hugh!"

"Not at all. You know I like an early stroll. It's a habit of mine when at home."

"I hope it isn't evil conscience?"

"No, it isn't that. But on long caravan trips one has to make a start with saddling-up round about dawn, or one would never get away; so at home I wake up and tumble out automatically."

"May you make an interesting find for your pains!"

"I know nothing about these things, but there is the antiquity and the adventure."

His anxious eye chanced, in glancing past her, to rest again on Ingrid's likeness.

"How extraordinarily she resembles your father, as I knew him, Helga!"

"Yes. We all think it so strange that the family in her case should have skipped the generation. There are the two types of Colborne; her type, the northern fair, blue-eyed, and Uncle's, the dark, heavy, financially-shrewd Dutch type. I belong to neither; I am not a true Colborne at all, but am purely and simply my mother's daughter. You were acquainted with her?"

"Of course."

"Of course you were. Then you know how in nearly every physical and mental respect I take after her. I suppose no mother and daughter ever were more alike. Because I am tall and slim, some people have chosen to find a likeness between me and Ingrid, but there is absolutely none. I'm a brunette, with a warm colourless skin, and more heart than head, I fear. Ingrid is my precise racial opposite. You also met my husband, her father; she got still less from him. And here she springs into bloom, the feminine replica of her maternal grandfather, as you have just pointed out. What is the law governing these concerns, Hugh?"

"I have no idea."

"He was a queer, reserved, self-centred man, my father. He shouldn't have married. Books and solitary sport were his two grand passions in life. Most summers he was away with rod and gun in Sweden, Finland, Lapland—always northern Europe. And, you know, he couldn't afford it. When he died, there was hardly anything to come to my mother. Fortunately for herself, she died soon afterwards, poor thing! She had a hard time in every way. Let us trust that Ingrid's being a girl will render her more human and compassionate than ever he was."

"Yet he was a man, Helga. Perhaps he was unfitted for married and family life; nevertheless he had great qualities. I recollect quite well how he always made his company look small. In another age, under other conditions, he might have found himself, only probably he was right out of sympathy with our commercial set of those days, and so got adrift. I used to admire him tremendously."

Helga smiled.

"It's nice to hear one's father praised. And he really wasn't to blame for his coldness. The rule in the family seems to be, one authentic fair-haired Colborne, and one only, to each generation; and he was it. Uncle Magnus and his sister, your mother, have belonged to the heavy dark-haired type; just like their father before them, old Harold Colborne, the ship-owner.
He
derived from his mother, the Dutch-woman. Well, imagine!—I don't know with how much of all this ancient history you are already acquainted—but of the whole of a quite large family of brothers and sisters, of whom this Harold Colborne was the eldest, not one possessed the Norse yellow hair, blue eyes and handsome features except one of the younger boys, who later characteristically got drowned in Iceland, when crossing a half-frozen stream. Shall I go on? Are you at all interested?"

"I am immensely interested."

"While in the generation before that, I've been told, old Colborne's father, our greatgrandfather, who was born in the year of the taking of the Bastille, presented the very image of a northern Viking as pictured in the books—the fair hair, fair skin, heavy fair moustaches, scowling blue eyes, prodigious stature, and all the rest in accordance. He could bend a horseshoe out of shape with his fingers, they say; and after the Peace of 1815 used to hunt bears in Russia, where he was actually killed by a falling pine in a forest. But who represents the type in the generation to which you and I belong, Hugh, I can't imagine. Clearly you don't, while poor Alan and Janet were just as good Drapiers as you." She referred to his brother and sister, both of whom had died years before, the boy Alan having been killed in France during the war.