WHEN Norman Forester looked round the ancient room in which he was to spend the night, he felt as if he were in a dream. The great bed with its four elaborately carved posts, the old engravings in their antique frames, the deep window showing the thickness and massive strength of the Castle walls, the great oaken beams overhead—all reminded him of stories he had read of bygone ages. Surely here he would find what he wanted—what he had come from his busy life in London to seek—oblivion, as far as his own past was concerned. Surely the chapter of his life, which was closed for ever, would become a forgotten chapter here.
He was tired and needed rest, and he went to bed determined to sleep. But sleep seemed far away from him. A noisy clock in the corridor outside struck the hours in a fussy, imperious way, as if it demanded attention from all who were within hearing distance. But it needed no clock to keep the young doctor awake. Ghosts of the past kept flitting through his brain; dark shadows which he tried to chase away seemed to pursue him. Here these ghosts were to be laid; here those shadows were to be dispelled; here that closed chapter was to be buried for ever. So he fought manfully with the phantoms of the past until the assertive clock near his door announced that it was two o’clock.
It was soon after this that Forester’s thoughts were diverted by the sound of quiet footsteps overhead. Someone seemed to be stealthily moving about just over his bed. He wondered who slept there—the farm servants, perhaps. He had seen no staircase going higher than the one he had ascended the night before, but perhaps it was hidden by the curtain. which hung across the end of the corridor.
The footsteps ceased after a time, and he became more drowsy. But in his short intervals of sleep, and in his longer periods of wakefulness, he was conscious, both in his dreams and in his restless tossing on his pillow, of the sound of a slight cough. He heard it from time to time, and he fancied, when he was sufficiently roused to think about it at all, that it sounded from somewhere overhead.
By degrees the long night wore away, and with earliest dawn the whole place seemed astir. Pigs grunted under his window; cocks crowed on the wall close by; the lowing of cows, the bleating of sheep, the barking of dogs, all the countless noises of the farmyard fell on his ear. As the sunshine streamed in at his window, he jumped out of bed, feeling that the ghosts of the night had departed, and that the new chapter of his life had begun.
Breakfast was ready in the old kitchen when the doctor went down. The fragrant odor of the freshly made coffee, and the appetizing sound of ham frizzling on the fire made him feel quite disposed for it. The old man was sitting on the settle, and holding his hands to the fire just as he had done the evening before. He looked, Forster thought, as if he might have sat there all night without moving.
Rupert and his wife had been up almost as soon as the sun; the cows had been milked; and the chickens, geese, and ducks fed; the farm servants had had their breakfast, and had gone out to feed the pigs and the cattle, and to take the cows back to the pasture. Now the children, three in number, were sitting patiently round the table, waiting for the meal to begin. Leonard, the boy Forester had seen the night before, was the eldest, and there were twin girls, six years old, born on May Day, and named, in consequence, Hawthorn and May.
The old man came to the table, invited the doctor to take a seat beside him, and asked a blessing on their food. But, just as the coffee was being poured out, there came an interruption. It took the form of a sharp rap on the outer door. Leonard at once got up, at a word from his mother, and opened the door. Without waiting for an invitation, the man who had knocked walked straight into the kitchen, as if he were an expected guest. To Forester’s great surprise, he saw that it was the man who had travelled with him from Llantrug the day before, and who had sat between the driver and himself on the box.
The visitor shook the father and son warmly by the hand, kissed the little girls, and laid his hand affectionately on Leonard’s shoulder, whilst he spoke to his mother and tendered his apologies to her for the intrusion at that early hour. Then, suddenly recognizing the doctor, he claimed him also as an old acquaintance, and seemed determined to be on the best and most friendly terms with the whole party.
The old man, in his usual courteous manner, invited him to join them at their morning meal, and the stranger, evidently gratified by the attention, accepted the offer readily, and sat down at the table between the two little girls. As he helped himself from the dish of smoking ham and poured some of the thick cream into his cup, he seemed, Forester thought, to make himself very much at home; and yet he could not help fancying that old Mr. Norris regarded him with a certain amount of distrust.
‘What brings you to these parts again?’ he asked him presently.
‘What brings me?’ said the man. ‘I wonder you ask that, Mr. Norris! What brings the many others who visit Hildick from time to time? What will bring our friend here, now that he has found out the beauties of the place? Why, sir, you may not know it, but this bay of yours is a perfect gem of beauty! Can you wonder that we poor citizens of smoky towns return to it as often as we can?’
Apparently the old man had no answer to give to this very natural explanation of his visitor’s reappearance, and he relapsed into silence, leaving the conversation to his son and to the man who had just joined them.
Forester, being little inclined to take part in the talk that was going on, had ample leisure to notice his fellow-traveler. He was sitting opposite to him, and he could see him much better than he had been able to do when he was close to him on the box-seat of the coach. He noticed, as Doris had done, the thin lips and long pale face, which gave the man a sickly appearance; but it was another feature, which Doris had not observed, which made the most impression on the doctor. He thought he had never seen such restless, inquisitive eyes as those of the stranger. There was an eager, grasping expression in them which struck Forester as most peculiar.
Whether he was talking to Rupert, or listening to the conversation of the children, or eating the good farm fare, at all times and in all places those eyes were busy. Sometimes he was gazing at the oaken beams overhead, sometimes at the dresser with its pewter dishes; sometimes he was glancing up the oak staircase, or looking inquisitively behind him as Mrs. Norris went to the old bed-place to bring something from the spacious cupboard. He caught Forester’s eye on one of these peering expeditions of his own eyes, and at once made some kind of apology.
‘I am afraid your friend here thinks I am Paul Pry,’ he said, turning to the old man; ‘but I do so dearly love old places and old things. I feel that I haven’t half seen your old castle yet. Does any of that wainscoting slide back, I wonder?’
‘No, sir, nothing of the kind. I’ve tried it many a time—ay, and my father before me, and my grandfather and great-grandfather before him. It’s all solid woodwork, and has no secret cupboard or hidden chambers. They would have been found, long before I was born, had they been there.’
Soon after this, Rupert rose from the table to go to his work on the farm, and the visitor, after finding out in which direction he was going, asked if he might have the pleasure of accompanying him, as he also was going that way. He wished them good morning and walked as far as the outer door, when, as if it were an afterthought, he turned back to ask a question.
‘Mrs. Norris,’ he said, ‘I had no idea you had so much room to spare in the Castle. I see you have been able to give this gentleman a bed. I wonder if you could do the same for a friend of mine who is coming by the ‘bus tonight.’
‘No, sir,’ said the old man; ‘we shall have no room at all. Mary will tell you so; we shall be full up tomorrow; we’ve a large party coming in.’
‘But,’ said the man, ‘I never expected you to take my friend in here, I mean in this part of the Castle I know all your best rooms are let through the summer, but he’s only a rough-and-ready fellow; any shakedown will do for him. Why, in some of these outbuildings, in one of these rooms over the gateway, surely you could stow him away! He intended to camp out, and got the loan of a tent, but it has never turned up; the friend who was going to lend it wanted it at the last moment, for something or other, I forget what. But he has got his camp bedstead, and mattress, and all that sort of thing; he would be in clover in one of those old rooms up there.’
‘Up where sir?’ asked the old man quickly. ‘Why, where I see windows at the side of the gateway, and up in the roof over these rooms you live in. There must be some place up there.’
‘Rupert,’ called the old man to his son, who was Waiting in the Castle courtyard, ‘come here, I want you. Here’s this gentleman wants us to let a friend of his have a room, somewhere in the old ruins. There is no place, Rupert, I say, where it would be convenient for him to go.’
Rupert took his cue from his father, and answered, rather reluctantly, Forester thought, that there was no place where the friend could be accommodated.
The two men went out together. The Old gentleman gave a sigh of relief as the door closed behind them, and then invited the doctor to sit in the chimney-corner and to have a chat with him before going out.
A good cigar from Forester’s case having rejoiced the old gentleman’s heart, the doctor lighted his own, and they sat together over the cheerful fire. The month was August, but the air was chilly after the rain of the night before, and a wind was blowing from over the sea.
‘Who is that man?’ asked Forester.
‘That’s more than I can tell you, sir,’ said the old man. ‘He calls himself an antiquarian; not a very paying business, I should imagine, by the look of his coat; but perhaps he wears it out poking about amongst rubbish in old places.’
‘Where does he come from?’
‘Birmingham, he says. I shouldn’t think there was much work for an antiquarian there. We saw him first in the Easter holidays. He lodged at the post office, and he came poking about the old Castle all the time he was here. I went round the ruins with him once, and showed him all about, but he was too inquisitive for me. He wanted to be here, there, and everywhere. He poked and peered about, and kept on telling me he was an antiquarian, till I was sick of the very word. He got round Rupert somehow; he thought I had no right to be suspicious of him, and he let him see a lot more than I had patience to show him. Did he take him to the loft, Mary, do you know?’
‘No, father, I don’t think so; they went inside that part of the Castle, into your tool-house, I believe, but I don’t think Rupert took him upstairs to the loft.’
‘Where is the loft?’ Forester asked.
‘Why, it’s over where you slept last night, sir; it’s a long room, as long as the corridor you walked down, and as wide as our bedrooms and the corridor put together, but with nothing but rafters and tiles overhead. It is very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. We keep the apples up there when we strip the orchard in the autumn; we shall be getting some of them stored soon; they’re fast ripening on the south side of the trees.’
‘Who sleeps up there now?’
‘No one,’ said the old man, ‘nor no one ever has in my time, no, nor in my father’s either; it’s too hot or too cold according to the time of year, and it’s an awful place to be in on a windy night. You’d almost be blown out of bed if you slept up there.’
‘I thought I heard footsteps overhead last night,’ Forester explained.
‘Impossible, sir; it couldn’t be footsteps,—rats, maybe, or mice.’
‘But there was a cough too,’ said the doctor; ‘rats don’t cough—at least I never heard them.’
‘But pigs do,’ said Mr. Norris; ‘and the old sow has a terrible bad cough.’
‘But she wasn’t in the loft over my head,’ suggested Forester.
‘In the loft, bless you, no, sir! But noises are very deceptive in a strange place, and the stys are not far away. I heard her myself last night. Rupert will have to see to her when he comes in.’
Forester did not press the subject, although he was not at all convinced by what the old man said. He went on to make enquiries as to the best place for him to pitch his tent. He found that the shore was quite out of the question, for the lord of the manor allowed no tents to be erected there; but Mr. Norris told him that he was quite welcome to put up his tent in any place he liked to choose on the Castle farm.
‘Go as far as you like along the top of the promontory, it all belongs to the Castle, right away down to the rocks on the shore; you can’t go wrong, anyhow, if you go in that direction.’
Then the doctor enquired how he could get help in bringing the tent up the hill, and in setting it in its place.
‘Why, Maxie will help you, to be sure,’ old Mr. Norris replied; ‘and be glad of the job too. He has got a bit of a donkey and an old cart; he’ll bring your tent up all right. Folks say Maxie’s a little gone in the upper storey; maybe he is. But he’s strong enough and capable enough if you don’t drive him too fast. Give him his time, and he’s all right. We often put him on in hay-time or harvest-time. Oh yes, Maxie will do it right enough. But there’s no need to hurry, sir, and Mary, I’m sure, will say the same. If you can put up with us for another night, why, we can put up with you. Our folks don’t come till tomorrow evening, and so, if you’ll stop here till then, you and Maxie can get the tent up at your leisure.’
Mary heartily seconded her father-in-law’s invitation, and Forester, when he saw that they really wished it, very readily assented.
Seeing that there was now no hurry about pitching the tent, the doctor determined to spend the morning in getting some idea of his new surroundings. He opened the door leading into the Castle courtyard, and started at once on his voyage of discovery.
The mysterious gloom of the night before had vanished with the owls and the bats. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. For the first time Norman Forester was able to see distinctly the ruins of the old Castle. He found himself in a square courtyard, over the stones of which the grass of ages had grown so thickly that very little of the original pavement could be seen. On his right was a high ruined wall, in which were quaint mullioned windows, hung with festoons of ivy. On his left was the ancient gateway with the stone escutcheon over it, emblazoned with the coat of arms of old Sir John Mandeville, the lord of Hildick Castle. In front of him the courtyard wall had been entirely demolished, and he looked upon a glorious view of hill and dale and wood, whilst, down in the valley, he could just distinguish the little village nestling amongst the trees.
But before going down the hill and finding his way to the shore, Forester determined to walk round the ruined Castle. The old man had invited him to go wherever he liked, and had apologized to him for not accompanying him, as he was not feeling well that morning and was unable to walk far.
He found the ruins were much more extensive than he had imagined the night before. The walls of the whole of the principal part of the Castle were standing, but the roof was gone, and the floors of the different rooms had fallen in. He looked up from the heap of rubbish below, which was covered with briers, nettles, and long grass, and he tried to picture to himself what the Castle had been in the days of its glory. The great window of the banqueting hall through which in bygone days the sunlight had streamed on many a festive scene; the wide fireplaces with the cozy seats in the chimney-corner, where on the cold winter evenings the family had gathered round the cheerful blaze of the great wood fire; thy lower floors with their smaller windows where the Castle servants had had their apartments; the small turret whence the lord of the Castle and his guests had gazed upon the beauties of Hildick Bay—all these spoke to him of what had been in the past.
But all these also spoke of the decay of the present. Ichabod was written in dark letters over them all. The mullioned window of the banqueting hall had partly fallen away; the ivy was hanging over the walls; the fireplaces were the homes of birds; the seats in the chimney-corner were covered with ferns and moss; the servants’ hall was turned into a henhouse, where on rough perches the farm fowls reposed at night; the stone steps of the staircase were crumbling away, and could only be climbed for a short distance; the turret was the dwelling-place of bats, and several of these, scared by the intrusion, flew out in Forester’s face as he entered it.
It was the same everywhere; ruin and decay were written on the whole place. The large pigeoncote built at the same time as the Castle itself, had been taken possession of by cackling hens, which had made the deep pigeon-holes into nests where. they might lay their eggs; the great keep, where the armed men of the Castle had been quartered, had become the home of ferrets which were hung in cages on the walls; the guardroom over the gateway, from which, through a wide groove in the floor, large stones might be hurled upon the head of an approaching foe, was shut up and filled with rubbish.
The Castle had been grand in its day, and was beautiful even in its decay; yet, in Forester’s present frame of mind, it affected him with a strange feeling of sadness which he could hardly restrain. He was an imaginative man by nature, and, as he wandered through the deserted ruins, it seemed to him that he heard in them dismal echoes of his own feelings at the moment.
He had been the owner of a castle, too; a fair and beautiful castle, it had appeared to him, busy with life, replete with home comfort, well-guarded from the approach of danger and from the storms of adversity. But he had seen that castle of his fall and crumble away, and, although it was only a castle in the air, great had been the fall of it! And now, after wandering amongst its ruins—bare, unsightly ruins, as yet un-mellowed by the merciful hand of time, as yet unclothed by the ivy and fern and creeper of kindliness and sympathy, which do what they can to hide from us the unsightliness of our ruined castles in the air,—he had come to Hildick to forget it all; to clear away, if possible, the old stones; to sweep out of his life, with the strong hand of firm resolution, the recollection of his daydream; and to begin his life anew,—a wiser though a sadder man. Yet here, at the very outset, the old Castle at Hildick acts as a reminder of what he would fain forget.
Such was his first feeling as he walked through the ruins that morning; but it was followed by a very different one. He felt afterwards as if the old Castle were a companion in adversity, as if the very similarity of their fate drew them irresistibly together; and he conceived a strong affection for the whole place, and rejoiced that, of all parts of the world, he had, at haphazard as it seemed to him then, selected the remote promontory of the Garroch as the place in which to spend his summer holiday.