Witching Hill (9 page)

"Oh, yes, I can," said I; for there seemed to be many more lines on the simple, eager countenance; the drollery had gone out of it, and its heightened colouring had an unhealthy, bluish tinge.

"I'm afraid I have been burning the midnight oil a little," she admitted with a sort of coy bravado. "But there seems so much to do during the day, and everything is so quiet at night, unless it's that wretched typewriter of mine! But I muffle the bell, and luckily my brother and sister are sound sleepers."

"You must be keen, Miss Brabazon, to turn night into day."

"Keen? I never enjoyed writing half so much. It's no effort; the story simply writes itself. I don't feel as if it were a story at all, but something that I see and hear and have just got to get down as fast as ever I can! I feel as if I really knew that old monster we were talking about the other day. Sometimes he quite frightens me. And that's why I've come to you, Mr. Gillon. I almost fear I'm making him too great a horror after all!"

It was impossible not to smile. "That would be a difficult matter, from all I hear, Miss Brabazon."

"I meant from the point of view of his descendants in general, and these dear Delavoyes in particular. Rather than hurt their feelings, Mr. Gillon, I need hardly tell you I'd destroy my story in a minute."

"That would be a thousand pities," said I, honestly thinking of her wasted time.

"I'm not so sure," said Miss Julia, doubtfully. "I sometimes think, when I read the newspapers, that there are bad people enough in the world without digging up more from their graves. Yet at other times I don't feel as if I were doing that either. It's more as though this wicked old wretch had come to life of his own accord and insisted on being written about. I seem to feel him almost at my elbow, forcing me to write down I don't know what."

"But that sounds like inspiration!" I exclaimed, impressed by the good faith patent in the tired, ingenuous, serio-comic face.

"I don't know what it is," replied Miss Julia, "or whether I'm writing sense or nonsense. I never like to look next day. I only know that at the time I quite frighten myself and - make as big a fool of myself as though I were in my poor heroine's shoes - which is so absurd!" She laughed uneasily, her colour slightly heightened. "But I only meant to ask you, Mr. Gillon, whether you honestly and truly think that the Delavoyes won't mind? You see, he really was their ancestor, and I do make him a most odious creature."

"But I don't suppose you give his real name?"

"Oh, dear, no. That would never do. I call him the Duke of Doehampton, and the story is called 'His Graceless Grace.' Isn't it a good title, Mr. Gillon?"

I lied like a man, but was still honest enough to add that I thought it even better as a disguise. "I feel sure, Miss Brabazon, that you are worrying yourself unnecessarily," I took it upon myself to assert; but indeed her title alone would have reassured me, had I for a moment shared her conscientious qualms.

"I am so glad you think so," said Miss Julia, visibly relieved. "Still, I shall not offer the story anywhere until Mr. Delavoye has seen or heard every word of it."

"I thought it was for your own Parish Magazine?"

Miss Julia at last obliged me with her most facetious and most confidential smile.

"I am not tied down to the Parish Magazine," said she. "There are higher fields. I am not certain that 'His Graceless Grace' is altogether suited to the young - the young parishioner, Mr. Gillon! I must read it over and see. And - yes - I shall invite Mr. Delavoye to come and hear it, before I decide to send it anywhere at all."

The reading actually took place on an evening in May, when the Vicar had accompanied his younger sister up to Exeter Hall; and at the last moment I also received a verbal invitation, delivered and inspired by that rascal Uvo, who declared that I had let him in for the infliction and must bear my share. More justly, he argued that the pair of us might succeed in keeping each other awake, whereas one alone would infallibly disgrace himself; and we had solemnly agreed upon a system of watch-and-watch, by the alternate quarter-of-an-hour, before we presented ourselves at the temporary vicarage after supper.

Miss Julia received us in stiff silk that supplied a sort of sibilant obbligato to a nervous welcome; and her voice maintained a secretive pitch, even when the maid had served coffee and shut the door behind her, lending a surreptitious air to the proceedings before they could be said to have begun. It was impossible not to wonder what the Vicar would have said to see his elderly sister discoursing profane fiction to a pair of heathens who seldom set foot inside his church.

He would scarcely have listened with our resignation; for poor Miss Julia read as badly as she wrote, and never was story opened with clumsier ineptitude than hers. We had sheet upon typewritten sheet about the early life and virtuous vicissitudes of some deplorably dull young female in the east end of London; and in my case slumber was imminent when the noble villain made his entry in the cinnamon waistcoat of the picture at Hampton Court. At that I tried to catch Uvo's eye, but it was already fixed upon the reader's face with an intensity which soon attracted her attention.

"Isn't that your idea of him, Mr. Delavoye?" asked Miss Julia, apprehensively.

"Well, yes, it is; but it was Sir Godfrey Kneller's first," said Uvo, laughing. "So you took the trouble to go all the way over there to study his portrait, Miss Brabazon?"

"What portrait? All the way over where, Mr. Delavoye?"

Uvo entered into particulars which left the lady's face a convincing blank. She had seen no portrait; it was years since she had been through the galleries at Hampton Court, and then without a catalogue. Uvo seemed to experience so much difficulty in crediting this disclaimer, that I asked whether cinnamon had not been a favourite colour with the bloods of the eighteenth century. On his assent the reading proceeded in a slightly altered voice, in which I thought I detected a note of not unnatural umbrage.

But far greater coincidences were in store, and those of such a character that it was certainly difficult to believe that they were anything of the sort. Considered as an attempt at dramatic narrative, the story was, of course, beneath criticism. It was all redundant description, gratuitous explanations, facetious turns to serious sentences, and declared intentions which entirely spoilt the effect of their due fulfilment. Bored to extinction with the heroine, who only became interesting on the villain's advent, as his predestined prey, we thenceforth heard no more of her until his antecedents had been set forth in solid slabs of the pluperfect tense. These dwelt with stolid solemnity upon the distinctions and debaucheries of his University career, and then all at once on the effect of subsequent travel upon a cynical yet impressionable mind. In an instant both of us were attending, and even I guessed what was coming, and what had happened. Probably by half-forgotten hearsay, our dear good lady had tapped the same muddy stream as Uvo Delavoye, and some of the mud had silted into a mind too innocent to appreciate its quality.

"Debased and degraded by the wicked splendours of barbaric courts, the unprincipled young nobleman had decided not only to 'do in Turkey as the Turkeys did,' but to initiate the heathen institution of polygamy among his own broad acres on his return to England, home, and only too much beauty!... Poor, innocent, confiding Millicent; little did she dream, when he asked her to be his, that he only meant 'one of the many'; that the place awaiting her was but her niche in the seraglio which he had wickedly had built, in a corner of his stately grounds, on some Eastern model."

Delavoye looked at me without a trace of amusement, but rather in alarmed recognition of the weirdly sustained parallel between rascal fact and foolish fiction. But as yet we had only scratched the thin ice of the situation; soon we were almost shuddering from our knowledge of the depths below.

The unhappy heroine had repulsed the advances of the villain in the story as in the actual case; in both she was from the same locality (where, however, our Vicar had held his last curacy); in both, enticed into his lordship's coach and driven off at a great rate to his London mansion, where the first phase of her harrowing adventures ensued. So innocently were these described that we must have roared over them by ourselves; but there was no temptation to smile under the rosy droll nose of poor Miss Julia, by this time warmed to her work, and reeling off her own interminable periods with pathetic zest. Yet even her jocose and sidelong style could no longer conceal an interest which had become more dramatic than she was aware. Just as it first had taken charge of her pen, so her story had now gained undisputed command of the poor lady's lips; and she was actually reading it far better than at first, as if subconsciously stimulated by our rapt attention, though mercifully ignorant of its uncomfortable quality. I speak only for myself, and it may be that as a very young man I took the whole business more seriously than I should to-day. But I must own there were some beads upon my forehead when Delavoye relieved the tension by jumping to his feet in unrestrained excitement.

"I'm glad you like that," said Miss Julia, with a pleased smile, "because I thought it was good myself. Her handkerchief would have her name on it, you see; and she was able to throw it out of the window like a stone, at the feet of the first passer-by, because it was so heavy with her tears. Of course she hoped the person who picked it up would see the name and - - "

"Of course!" cried Uvo, cavalierly. "It was an excellent idea - I always thought so."

Miss Julia eyed him with a puzzled smirk.

"How could you always think a thing I've only just invented?" she asked acutely.

"Well, you see, it's happened in real life before to-day," he faltered, seeing his mistake.

"Like a good deal of my story, it appears?"

"Like something in every story that was ever written. Truth, you know - - "

"Quite so, Mr. Delavoye! But I saw you looking at Mr. Gillon a minute ago as though something else was familiar to you both. And I should just like to know what it was."

"I'm sure I've forgotten, Miss Brabazon."

"It wasn't the part about the - the Turkish building in the grounds - I suppose?"

"Yes," said Uvo, turning honest in desperation.

"And where am I supposed to have read about that?"

"I'm quite certain you never read it at all, Miss Brabazon!"

Now Miss Julia had lost neither her temper nor her smile, and she had not been more severe on Delavoye than his unsatisfactory manner invited. But the obvious sincerity of his last answer appeased her pique, and she leant forward in sudden curiosity.

"Then there is a book about him, Mr. Delavoye?"

"Not exactly a book."

"I know!" she cried. "It's the case you'd been reading the other night - isn't it?"

"Perhaps it is."

"Was he actually tried - that Lord Mulcaster?"

The wretched Uvo groaned and nodded.

"What for, Mr. Delavoye?"

"His life!" exclaimed Uvo, moistening his lips. Miss Julia beamed and puckered with excitement.

"How very dreadful, to be sure! And had he actually committed a murder?"

"I've no doubt he had," said Uvo, eagerly. "I wouldn't put anything past him, as they say; but in those days it wasn't necessary to take life in order to forfeit your own. There were lots of other capital offences. The mere kidnapping of the young lady, exactly as you describe it - - "

"But did he really do such a thing?" demanded Miss Julia.

And her obviously genuine amazement redoubled mine.

"Exactly as you have described it," repeated Delavoye. "He travelled in the East, commenced Bluebeard on his return, fished his Fatima like yours out of some little shop down Shoreditch way, and even drove her to your own expedient of turning her tears to account!"

And he dared to give me another look - shot with triumph - while Miss Julia supported an invidious position as best she might.

"Wait a bit!" said I, stepping in at last. "I thought I gathered from you the other day, Miss Brabazon, that you felt the reality of your story intensely?"

"I did indeed, Mr. Gillon."

"It distressed you very much?"

"I might have been going through the whole thing."

"It - it even moved you to tears?"

"I should be ashamed to say how many."

"I daresay," I pursued, smiling with all my might, "that even your handkerchief was heavy with them, Miss Brabazon?"

"It was!"

"Then so much for the origin of that idea! It would have occurred to anybody under similar circumstances."

Miss Julia gave me the smile I wanted. I felt I had gone up in her estimation, and sent Delavoye down. But I had reckoned without his genius for taking a dilemma by the horns.

"This is an old quarrel between Gillon and me, Miss Brabazon. I hold that all Witching Hill is more or less influenced by the wicked old wizard of the place. Mr. Gillon says it's all my eye, and simply will not let belief take hold of him. Yet your Turkish building actually existed within a few feet of where we're sitting now; and suppose the very leaves on the trees still whisper about it to those who have ears to hear; suppose you've taken the whole thing down almost at dictation! I don't know how your story goes on, Miss Brabazon - - "

"No more do I," said Miss Brabazon, manifestly impressed and not at all offended by his theory. "It's a queer thing - I never should have thought of such a thing myself - but I certainly did dash it all off as if somebody was telling me what to say, and at such a rate that my mind's still a blank from one page to the next."

She picked the script out of her lap, and we watched her bewildered face as it puckered to a frown over the rustling sheets.

"I shouldn't wonder," said Delavoye a little hastily, "if his next effort wasn't to subvert her religious beliefs."

"To make game of them!" assented Miss Julia in scandalised undertones. "'The demoniacal Duke now set himself to deface and destroy the beauty of holiness, to cast away the armour of light, and to put upon him the true colours of an aristocratic atheist of the deepest dye.'"