Chapter II: Act I: Scene I.--SATIRIC

Bah! I do hate bainting and boetry.--_King George II_.

The influence changed, as was usual at the approach of darkness. The power compelling them forth became irresistible. It was a new sensation for the scholar, but his sensitive nature suggested that the resentful force was directed against his companion, and not against himself. He extinguished the candles and walked lingeringly to the hall door, following Reed who had escaped into the twilight of the garden, having no desire to explore further that night. Nor had the owner any intention then of sleeping in the house. He had indeed when proposing it to himself forgotten that every room would be buried deep in dirt. When the scholar joined him with a hospitable invitation to the rectory he accepted gladly. They passed together towards the iron gates.

A few country folk had assembled upon the road, to discuss that great event the opening of the gates of the Strath. One man stood leaning upon an iron bar, which he had used at Reed’s request to force those gates apart. Their voices ceased when the rector was seen wading through the grass, and gnarled hands went up to pull gravely at the brims of dilapidated and picturesque headgear.

After having engaged two men for the next day, to wrench open doors and windows, to cut away the creepers, and to clear the interior from its accumulated dirt, Reed secured the chain, locked the padlock with his own hands, and giving a good night to the rustics turned away. For a hundred yards not a word was spoken, then Reed pulled himself upright, and brushed the dust from his heavy beard.

“It’s all nonsense,” he said roughly, and his companion shrank at the change in the stranger’s voice and manner. “It’s sheer folly to suppose that the Strath is different from any other old place, apart, of course, from the fact that it has not been inhabited within the recollection of living man. I’m just thinking I may have made a fool of myself when we were in that garden, Professor. I don’t know what possessed me. I’m a practical man, level-headed as the best of ’em ordinarily, but in there I felt--well, I’m not much of a talker, and hang me if I can explain it, but I felt as if I had taken a little more drink than I could manage. I might have been playing a part. Ah, that’s it! I might have been an actor, spouting words that some other fellow had written down for me.”

“You need not explain,” said the rector gently. “I can enter into your feelings.”

“Well, I’m going to change all that,” went on Reed. “I’ll clean the place out from cellar to attic, sell off the old stuff, get in some decent furniture, tear down the creepers, cut the garden up, sell the hay for what it is worth, and get the place into as good shape as I can afford. I mean to start a small poultry farm and make a bit that way. I come from America, Professor, and I’m not afraid of work. Lucky I’m not, for I reckon it will take all my time to get that garden into anything like order this summer.”

The rector shuddered. The stranger had chanced indeed now that the influence of the Strath had loosened its hold upon him.

“You said you would not alter the place,” he reminded him quietly.

“Did I say so?” Reed answered with a hoarse laugh. “Well, I must have been crazy. I’m not in a position to spend money, but I’ll soon show you what one pair of hands can do. Before autumn you won’t recognise the rotten old property. I shall start with the house to-morrow, and when that is clean I’ll root up the bushes, drain the moat, and go for in fruit and poultry.”

“The Strath will not let you,” the rector cried.

“What’s that?” said Reed.

“You are not strong enough to fight the place,” replied the rector boldly.

Reed regarded his companion with open-mouthed astonishment, and presently his beard began to wag with laughter. “’Scuse me, Professor,” he said. “Hope you haven’t got the idea into your head that it is not legal for a man to make his own house habitable? I tell you what it is,” he went on in his blunt fashion. “You have lived out of the world too long, and have roamed around that old wilderness of mine until you have picked up some queer notions. Wait until I show you how to breed turkeys.”

Then Dr. Berry realised that he hated this little bearded man who had come to destroy his happiness. He wished with all his heart he had met him in the first instance outside the Strath and there discovered his true character. Had that happened he would assuredly never have invited him to the rectory. Gazing ahead at the wooden spire of his little church he said quickly:

“There is the rectory. You see I am a very near neighbour. I have always been accustomed to enter your garden by the churchyard, through that gate which you see yonder in the wall.”

Reed shrugged his shoulders, and, muttering into his beard, followed his host into the cool house.

A very plain supper was the evening meal at Thorlund rectory; and afterwards the poet sat in his garden to dream upon matters which were too great for him. That evening he brought two chairs upon the lawn. When they were seated Reed plunged at once into business and asked the rector if he could recommend a suitable housekeeper and a man with some knowledge of poultry. “Poultry and poetry sound a bit alike, eh, Professor?” he said jocosely. “But there’s a heap more money in my line than in yours.”

The rector shrank from the jest as from a blow. He answered the questions of his thick-skinned guest as fully as he could. Then, prompted by curiosity, he asked Reed how long the Strath had been in his family, and why it had remained desolate for so long.

The other pulled at his pipe with a frown, as though resenting the other’s natural desire for information. At last he put up his hand, stroked his beard, expectorated--again Dr. Berry shrank from him--and said:

“I don’t know much about yonder place. The Strath was owned in the first place by a family called Hooper. You can see their arms carved upon a stone over the entrance. They held the property until the middle of the eighteenth century. The owner was then a baronet who lived there alone. He was a pretty bad lot, I’ve been told, and was hanged at last for murdering his servant.”

“There was another and more serious charge against him, according to the opinion of a time when gentlemen were permitted to use their servants like dogs,” the rector interposed. “Sir John was certainly hanged, but it was for highway robbery. Local tradition declares that the rope which was used for his execution is now used for ringing the single bell of Thorlund church. If this statement were to be proved I should certainly have the rope removed. But I do not consider that it has been proved.”

“You know more about the Strath than I do. Perhaps you can tell me how it came by its queer-sounding name?” said Reed; and he raised his pipe to his mouth as a hint that the rector might proceed.

“About the name there is nothing remarkable,” came the answer. “Strath is a gaelic word signifying a broad valley. For a time, I have no doubt, the whole of this neighbourhood was known as the Strath; though glen, also a gaelic word and meaning a narrow valley, would have been more accurate nomenclature, as you may see for yourself by ascending one of the hills and looking down. There is an ancient, although undated, document among the parish records which alludes to the village of Strath hard by King’s Moor. The name of Thorlund, which means the sacred grove of Thor or the Thunder God, was at some later date attached to the hamlet, the name of Strath being retained by the manor house alone. But to return to the Hoopers. According to oral tradition, which I have generally found reliable, Sir John became a notorious highwayman after his wife’s death. It is said he had one child, a daughter who lived with him at the Strath, but whose name is not mentioned in the register of deaths. It is also said that he treated her most cruelly. Indeed, if report concerning him be true, Sir John was altogether bad, a robber and a drunkard in his country life, and when in town a habitual frequenter of the gaming houses which at that time were plentiful in the neighbourhood of St. James’s. Probably his midnight escapades upon the road were instituted to obtain money for the payment of debts thus contracted. One night Sir John was tracked to his house after a more daring venture than usual; his reeking mare was found in the stable; his body servant, one Thomas Reed, was discovered in the saloon mortally wounded, the baronet believing, it is supposed, that the man had informed upon him. The old fox had fled, having escaped by crawling out of an attic window and letting himself down the side of the house by means of the creepers, but he was found that same night hiding in a hollow tree. In due course he was hanged. What happened to the daughter I have never been able to discover.”

“I suppose you want to know how we came into the property. You will have guessed I am a descendant of the murdered servant,” said Reed. “Well, I’ll tell you. The Strath doesn’t legally belong to me. It is, or it was, Crown property. But as by some oversight, the Crown never seized it, the Reeds did. They were on the spot, you see, and when they saw the place was abandoned they thought they would have compensation for Thomas’s murder, and so they stepped in. They were never turned out, and no questions were asked. But the Reeds were only village folk, and couldn’t afford to occupy the place. So they let it to a man named Biron who had spent most of his life in Germany. When he gave it up the Strath was taken by a family called Branscombe who for some reason left suddenly. It would be the last dinner party of the Branscombes that is still set out in that dining-room. Since their time not a soul--” he paused, then added with a grin, “I should say not a body, has entered the place until this evening.”

“But what have the Reeds been doing all these years?” asked the rector.

“They emigrated. My grandfather took no interest in the place. My father sent over enough money every year to satisfy the local rates, always hoping he would make enough to enable him to retire and come back and play the gentleman. The old man died twelve years ago at the age of eighty, and I went on with the business until it was ruined by a trust. Then I realised, and shipped back with the notion of spending the rest of my life at the Strath.”

“Were there no attempts made to let the property?”

“Not for the last fifty years,” Reed answered. “After the Branscombes left, and why they did so before their time I can’t tell you, the place had a bad reputation, and no one would go near it. But I have come at last,” he went on in his coarse voice which sounded unpleasantly through the garden. “I’ll soon clear away all that unhealthy nonsense. We Americans don’t hold with the conservatism of this old country, which makes everybody tumble into a trade error or a crazy belief one after the other, like sheep following the bell-wether through a hole in the fence. I’m not a gentleman in your sense, and I don’t pretend to be. I’m a practical man, the great-grandson of a farm labourer, and a free-thinker from my youth. I don’t believe in what you call occult influences, and if I can’t take up my quarters at the Strath and do what I like with the place I’ll eat my hat. And now, Professor,” Reed concluded in his familiar manner, “what do you say to a small glass of whisky?”

The rector rose without a word, and went into the house to find the bottle of spirits which he kept for use in an emergency; but while he groped in the cupboard there was a mist upon his eyes, and his usually gentle spirit was shaken with disgust and anger as he murmured, “He shall not lay a hand upon that garden. I hate the man. He has inherited my Paradise, and would take it from me and make it a desert.”

Early in the morning the visitor left for the Strath, entering the grounds by the gate in the churchyard, and the rector did not see him again until evening. He did not receive any invitation to accompany the master in these explorations; and the key, his property for the past thirty years, had been taken away. During the afternoon he walked along the front, noticed that the iron gates were ajar, and breathed more easily when he saw the long grass still waving in the wind. Returning, he fell in with one of the men in Reed’s employ, who touched his hat and would have walked on; but the rector stopped him and enquired what he had done.

“Opened the doors and windows in yonder, Sir,” said the man. “Some of they frames were that rotten they broke like paper. I scraped the dirt from the panes, and cut off nigh a truck-load of ivy to let in the light. But I ain’t going in there again, Sir.”

The rector asked for an explanation.

“Well, Sir, it’s what they’ve always said about the Strath,” the man went on, “It ain’t healthy in there. I don’t know whether ’tis because such a powerful lot of strong-smelling plants grow there, or what it is, Sir, but I do know a man can’t help making a fool of hisself when he’s there. I was a-laughing and a-singing while I worked, and feeling just as though I was tipsy, though, as you know, I’m a sober man, Sir, and when I looked inside there was this Mr. Reed laughing at summat like to hurt hisself, and I don’t know if you’ll believe me, Sir, but I saw him join ’ands with Bill Vyner, and them two danced round the room, kicking up the dust awful. They seemed to be fair enjoying of themselves, Sir, but now I come to think quiet-like it was a horrid kind of sight, though I liked it well enough at the time, and stood in the door whistling a tune for them to dance to. You see, Sir, it ain’t proper for a gentleman like Mr. Reed to be so familiar with such as me and Bill. And Bill says he ain’t going there no more neither.”

Dr. Berry resumed his walk with a dreamy smile upon his handsome face. His sensitive mouth quivered as he repeated the famous satire of Archilochus addressed to his own soul. “Nature does not change,” he murmured. “The lampoons of Archilochus caused the daughters of Lycambes to hang themselves for shame. How will the influence of the Strath use Henry Reed?”

It was twilight when the man came to the rectory, sullen and discontented. He had little information to give, and when the doctor enquired whether the work of restoration had begun he curtly replied, “Not yet,” and went on to ask whether he might spend another night under the parsonage roof.

“I will try him,” said the rector to himself when they had supped; and going to his study he extracted from a drawer his little manuscript book of translations. “I will see if this man has a soul which can respond to the unseen world. If so there is a chance for him; if not the Strath must conquer.”

He came out upon the lawn where his guest was chewing the stem of his pipe restlessly.

“Allow me to read you a translation of mine,” he said; then seating himself a little behind his guest he read the description of peaceful night written by Alcman the Lydian slave and poet, who lived and sang a hundred years before Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall for the lord of Babylon.

As the poet concluded, dropping his musical voice to a whisper over the last iambic, he drew forward, watching and excited, his own spirit thrilled by the magic of those lines. Reed appeared to be abstracted; with wild hope the scholar put out his hand and touched him.

“Oh, done?” muttered the bearded man. “Queer, fellows should waste their time writing that stuff, ain’t it? Suppose they’re good for nothing else though. I was thinking while you were talking that what my place wants is better air. It’s too much shut in, you see, and no one can live without lots of fresh air. I shall cut down the elms along the road. It will be all profit to me, as the timber is big, and ought to sell at a good price. Have you any idea what figure elm is fetching now?”

The rector groaned as he pushed the book of treasures into his pocket. He had been prepared to follow up any success he might have gained by reciting a song of Arion, who, the legends say, was brought into Taenarum on the backs of dolphins. But his test had failed. The man beside him was base earth, with a mind impervious to the world’s music.

“Will you permit me to say something?” he asked nervously.

Reed swung his head round, and his small eyes twinkled maliciously.

“Whatever you like, Professor. I can guess what it is. You want me to spare those trees. Well, I tell you right now they must go.”

“I do not ask you to spare the trees,” said Dr. Berry earnestly. “The genius of the place can take care of them. I am going to entreat you to save yourself.”

“What?” ejaculated Reed. He frowned and crumpled his beard. “What foolery in this?” he muttered testily.

“You will not understand me,” the scholar went on. “You laugh at my warnings. Remember I have studied the Strath for thirty years. It has been kind to me, and more than kind, because there is sympathy between us. We are both dreamers. I have been the sole character of its drama all these years. I have tried to be its friend, and it has regarded me as such. But you--you are opposing it. You are its enemy.”

Reed dropped his pipe and planted each hand firmly upon his knees.

“I’m an ignorant man from your point of view,” he said in a grating voice. “I can’t write or talk about busy bees forgetting their daily toil and feathered tribes hanging their drooping wings, and I’ll be hanged if I want to. I can go better than that, Professor. Put you and me down in the world to live by wits, and I would build up a business, while you would sink to the poor-house. Ignorance? Well, maybe. Have you ever heard of a millionaire who could read Greek? I don’t follow you in your talk about dreams and warnings, and if you will excuse my saying so I don’t intend to listen to any more of it. If you have any suggestion to make about the property I’ll be glad to listen. But when you say that a man can’t live on his own place because it has taken a dislike to him--well, Professor. It’s moonshine.”

“Explain to me one thing,” Dr. Berry urged.

“Tell me how it was when I came upon you in the garden yesterday evening you were as different from your present self as my house is different from the Strath?”

Reed stirred uncomfortably. That question rankled.

“If we were sitting in that garden now,” impressed the rector, taking his mild revenge, “and I were to read you those lines of Alcman, which you despise, you would listen eagerly. Explain why your mood should be different there?”

“Maybe it is you that change,” suggested the other unamiably.

“Come into the garden with me now.”

But Reed declined emphatically.

“You and I have got to be friends, Professor,” he went on with attempted heartiness. “You’re the parson and I’m the squire, and it seems there is no one handy to act as peacemaker. We had better not quarrel, and if we are not going to quarrel we must agree to differ.”

“I have done my duty,” said the rector quietly.

“I had to warn you that if you insist upon opposing the Strath you will be made to suffer. If you refuse to be persuaded I cannot help you.”

Reed stretched out for the bottle and helped himself generously.

“How in the name of common sense can I be made to suffer?” he muttered; but there was in his voice for the first time a definite note of awe.

“There will come upon you the last punishment which can befall any man,” Dr. Berry answered.

“The Strath will destroy you.”

Then he removed his hat and wiped his forehead; and walked slowly into the house.

Scene II.--SKETCH

He sette not his benefice to hire, And lette his shepe acombred in the mire, And ran unto London, unto Seint Poules, To seken him a chanterie for soules, Or with a brotherhede to be withold; But dwelt at home, and kepte wel his fold.--_Chaucer_.

Dr. Berry never learnt whether any phenomena occurred within or around the Manor of Thorlund immediately subsequent to that evening when he had been constrained to issue his warnings, because Reed came no more to the rectory. The scholar reasoned that it was not any feeling of indignation which kept the so called master of the Strath away; nor was it fear lest he might be compelled to listen to more ominous forebodings; it was, more probably, shame at defeat.

The gate which admitted from the churchyard was open to the rector no longer; but every day he passed along the front, both at morning and evening, anxious to see if the work of demolition had been commenced, and from each of these walks he returned with the same triumphant smile. Not a tuft of grass had been mown, nor had the axe been laid at the root of any of the elms; not a bush had been removed, not a flower or weed uprooted. The garden remained unaltered in all outward essentials, except that a pathway had become beaten out from the iron gates to the bridge across the moat.

When the rector questioned sexton or shepherd he learnt what he might have guessed, namely that the owner hardly ever left the place; that he had given up searching for men to work there; that he lived alone, attending to his own requirements in colonial fashion; that his baggage had been brought from the distant station across the hills and taken by the carrier into the house; and the tradesmen of the small market town seven miles away had been instructed to call for orders not more than once a week.

“Will he also become a dreamer?” the scholar wondered, as he gazed longingly upon the old grey wall. “Can it be possible for the Strath to give him a soul and take him to itself as it received me? Will his poultry farming become poetry making after all?”

He laughed sleepily at the quaint idea and approaching the oak door turned the handle and pushed timidly. He had done so every evening since Reed had left him, hoping rather than expecting to feel the barrier yield. It was the same then as upon other nights; the door was locked.

During the tension of that long week, when the garden was closed to him, Dr. Berry for the first time realised the loneliness of the Thorlund valley.

His single churchwarden, a peasant farmer who signed his name with difficulty and without legibility, had his dwelling place almost a mile from the church. The nearest gentlefolk lived four miles away at Kingsmore across the white road of the downs. The only houses in the valley were the rectory and the Strath. Half ruined barns, standing in a disused yard which sloped towards a pond where sheep were sometimes scoured, hedges, grass-roads, and a triangular green where a whipping-post was preserved, comprised the remainder of the hamlet. In such a place the talented Greek scholar had been content to pass his time upon earth.

The rector found himself using that past tense unconsciously while he mourned for his lost Eden. After thirty years of a strange sleep he felt stirring within him a desire for more breadth and motion and some human sympathy. The small voice of the world was calling him; the natural human passions, long latent and drugged by the influence which had dominated his life, struggled to reach the surface. The sluggish calm had been disturbed by expulsion from the garden. He had entered there to dream; and now that the gate was closed he became conscious of the thorns and thistles of the world.

This restless mood grew upon the scholar as the days passed, the long dry days of midsummer when the spirit of comedy prevailed around him. His belief in the ultimate triumph of destiny was as deeply-rooted as that of any ancient Greek. The Strath had long ago suggested to him the theatre with its rites and mysteries and the open stage where characters came and went, speaking their messages through either the comic or the tragic mask. He himself represented the chorus, and had merely played his part of exarchus in warning Reed. He did not require to turn to his Aeschylus, or to his Sophocles, to learn the fate of that man who thinks himself strong enough to fight destiny. Reed’s fate was fixed, as assuredly as Agamemnon was doomed to death when he returned to his palace in Argos. But destiny must strike with mortal weapons; and it was impossible to believe that any human instrument in the neighbourhood of sleepy Thorlund could be so wrought upon as to strike the fatal blow.

Although the scholar had never been a sociable being, he felt it a relief when Mr. Price, vicar and squire of Kingsmore, rode over on the Saturday and invited himself to lunch. This reverend neighbour was a simple-minded man of seventy, bow-legged with much riding, hearty in manner, an excellent judge of beasts, and somewhat of a connoisseur in wine. He would shout a jest at every rustic, and touch his disreputable hat to every dame in his village, address his labourers as equals, and throw coppers to the children who passed him as he rode. He had long ago forgotten what little learning he had acquired; and it was to be feared that, good man though he was, his farming interests were not infrequently placed in front of his spiritual duties. He could indicate all the good points in a horse at a glance; but it might be doubted whether he could have quoted verbatim any one of the thirty-nine articles.

“Good-day to you, Berry,” he shouted in his hearty manner, as he crossed the rectory lawn while his dogs hunted the scholar’s cat into the shrubberies. “I was saying to myself this morning that it was a long time since I had eaten roast beef at your table, and as I know you have a sirloin on Saturdays I thought I would ride over and help with the under-cut. So the owner of the manor has turned up at last. My village is full of families with his name. The place was a swamp originally, I’m told, and they say the name came into existence on account of the number of reeds which grew there. Any truth in that, do you think? I believe in tradition. It’s the only thing I do believe in nowadays. If your squire turns out to be connected with our Reeds, as they say he is, I’m afraid he won’t be much of an acquisition.”

“He is connected,” said Dr. Berry. “However you may be able to agree with him better than I can ever hope to do,” he went on with unintentional maladroitness. “He has actually proposed to me a plan for altering the Strath and breeding poultry there.”

“God bless my soul,” exclaimed his brother cleric, pushing an end of his soiled white tie beneath his collar. “There’s no money to be made out of poultry in this part of the world. I can’t dispose of mine so as to cover expenses. He should go in for pigs. I’ll call on him after luncheon, and tell him there’s money to be made in pigs. I have some good sows for sale.”

“Pigs!” murmured Dr. Berry in anguish. “Pigs at the Strath!”

“They ought to do well,” said the farmer-vicar of Kingsmore. “There’s plenty of grass at the manor, and pigs do well on grass. Ah, you’re afraid of the smell. But pigs don’t smell, if they are properly kept. We will call on Mr. Reed this afternoon. I am very anxious to see the inside of the place.”

“I cannot accompany you,” said the rector of Thorlund a trifle coldly. “Mr. Reed and I have not made any considerable advance towards friendship.”

“That won’t do,” said the other, shaking his head seriously. “You must pull it off with your squire, even if you do have to lower yourself a bit. You and he are alone here, and when two men are cast upon a desert island they can’t afford to quarrel. Now I’m quite prepared to call on Mr. Reed, and be friendly, though he is distantly connected, I suspect, with my head-carter. Every man is a vote, as my dear uncle, who was member for this division under Lord Derby’s administration, used to say; by which he meant, I fancy, that every man can do you either good or harm, and you may as well earn the good at the sacrifice of a little pride. But look here, Berry. For the hundredth time I want to know whether things are as they should be at the manor?”

The scholar smiled somewhat feebly as he replied, “Is it possible that everything should be in order with a house that has stood deserted for a century?”

“You know what I mean,” said Mr. Price. “I have asked you many a time if the place is haunted, and I have never been satisfied with your answers. I believe in haunted houses, because I once owned a farm which was troubled by a tiresome old woman in a plaid shawl and a poke bonnet, and I had to pull the house down to get rid of her. You have always declared that the manor is free from anything of that sort; but I think there must be something you have kept from me.”

“Come indoors,” said the doctor. “It is hot out here, and dinner will soon be ready. I will tell you what I know about the Strath.”

The old gentleman followed his reverend brother into the study, and seating himself beside the window listened to what he had to say, his white head on one side, and his eyes blinking incredulously.

“Berry,” he said gravely, when his mind had been sufficiently perplexed. “If this is what our progress has brought us to I am glad I am nearly seventy-one. I have always said that the world is going ahead too fast. When I was a boy we lived very much the same as they did a couple of thousand years before, and then in just fifty years the whole world changed. First came steam, and after it the telegraph and electricity, and now we have reached a stage when we can send a message from one end of the earth to the other in about the time it takes to write it, and hear the voices of dead men speaking out of phonographs, and we are talking of travelling a hundred miles in the hour, and there is no hell and very little fear of death nowadays, and--God bless my soul! we can’t even have a respectable ghost, but our old houses are to be haunted for the future by this electricity and magnetism; and they say messages are coming from people who are dead and ought to be decently at rest, and we are learning something about the next stage of existence, and a future state can be proved, we are told, not through the Bible, which was good enough for everyone in my young days, but by certain phases of human consciousness which I refuse to believe in and don’t profess to understand, and--I’m very glad I shan’t live much longer.”

“There is surely nothing much older than the idea of a house permeated with some essence of mystery,” the scholar continued quietly. “Read again your Greek drama, and refresh your memory by the references of Aeschylus to the palace of Argos, whence odours issued like the breath of graves. There you have a house, haunted, to use your word, like the Strath by an inexplicable and invisible presence working its influence upon the affairs of men.”

“You go beyond me,” said Mr. Price perplexedly. “I never could translate Aeschylus, and the only way I got through at Oxford was by learning the crib by heart and getting the selection right by luck. I always thought it a waste of time to learn Greek, and I think so still. Give a boy a good commercial education. Teach him French and German, and elementary science, and American methods. Give him a chance to make his way in the world.”

“And deprive him of the finest literature of all time, and the knowledge of human nature as it is revealed to us through the classics,” added the scholar quietly. “Is that fair?”

“Bah,” said Mr. Price. “There are always translations if they are wanted, and there are Shakspere and our grand old Bible.”

“Shakspere could only model his tragedies upon the Greek drama,” the scholar protested. “All that he could do was to clothe the old thoughts with his own unrivalled speech and introduce additional characters and scenic effects. The dark thread of influence runs through all his tragedies. We know from the outset that Lear must die, that Hamlet must fail, that Othello must fall through his frightful error. As for the Bible permit me, with all reverence, to say that much of its early lore is apocryphal, and much more of later date derived from the thinkers and writers of ancient Greece. You talk of sustaining your student with stagnant water taken far from the fountain head.”

“I never could argue with you,” said Mr. Price sadly. “You swim right away, while I sink like a stone. Though I am an old-fashioned Englishman I do my best to be modern. I have recently bought a mechanical foster-mother to rear my poultry, I have stocked my farm with American implements, and now I’m seriously thinking of employing gramaphones to frighten the pigeons from my peas. It’s no use trying to fight progress, as the savage who charged a locomotive discovered, and destiny, or whatever you call the thing that is haunting the manor, will find that out. This Reed comes from America. If I were a betting man, I would lay you what you like that he will improve the place according to his plans, and clear away that atmosphere which you say has settled over it. The Strath wants a thunderstorm to freshen its air, and I wouldn’t mind wagering that the American will play the part of thunderstorm to perfection.”

“If I were a betting man, to borrow your expression, I would take you,” rejoined Dr. Berry with a strained smile. “But now let us go and eat our beef.”

“Talking of thunder-storms,” said the squarson of Kingsmore, as he followed his host into the dining-room. “I am reminded that the glass was falling very rapidly when I left home, so I shall pay my call upon friend Reed and get away as quickly as possible.”

Scene III.--TRAGEDY

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.--_Sir. T. Browne_.

While the two clergymen were in the dining-room the expected change in the weather occurred. When Mr. Price rode away, having decided to postpone his visit to the Strath, the sun was wrapped up in dense clouds, there was no sky, and the light was fading rapidly.

For some time Dr. Berry sat with a book in his study. Then he ventured upon the lawn to observe the heaving clouds, which each moment threatened to burst into lightning. There was not a breath of wind. The trees in the garden beyond were entirely without motion; the walls appeared to have no substance, and the very house seemed to float away into unreality. Afar the watcher sighted the chalk-pits on the downs, their white sides glowing fiercely against a sombre background.

“It is the hour of tragedy,” he murmured.

Here, as in the ancient drama, the actors played their parts in the open air, in order that their passions might blend with the fury of the elements. The proscenium, as in old time, was made by nature. The wall of the Strath formed the back-scene; the theatre was the garden; the orchestra that mound on which the sun-dial stood. Already the storm-cocks were chattering there, and their notes came into the doctor’s ears like the piping of flute-players.

“I must go,” said the dreamer with a slight shiver.

Passing back to the house he quickly reappeared carrying a small wooden box. He crossed the churchyard, where the sexton was digging a grave, singing hoarsely as he shovelled up the dirt. The man touched his hat and said, “Looks like a storm coming up yonder, sir. But the sun shines above Kingsmore.”

The rector hesitated, and asked absently, “Whose grave is that?”

“’Tis for old Jim Reeve, sir. Him as died a Tuesday, and is to be buried to-morrow.”

“Ah yes,” the doctor murmured, adding to himself as he passed on, “I thought it might be the grave of Henry Reed.”

The door in the wall was unlocked. Dr. Berry had felt assured that it would be so. He entered and stood within the influence of the garden.

The air no longer thrilled with the note of mirth, the intoxicating happiness and the exuberant laughter were gone. Instead of the sunshine sorrow brooded, and the flowers were shut, and a moaning came from the rotten gables of the house. The tragic note was dominant, and all the grotesque sounds of mirth were stilled.

Fully possessed by the influence, the priest ascended the mound and extended his white hands over the dial, which represented to him no longer a recorder of the flight of time, but an altar sacred to Bacchus. He opened his box, scattered its contents upon the metal slab, and applied a light. Then, as a filmy cloud of incense rose in a long thread into the gloom, he tramped slowly round the knoll reciting an Argive song.

No sane voice spoke from his inner consciousness to remind him that this was worse than folly; that he was offering sacrifice to a mythical deity. He was merely playing the part which had been allotted him, and reciting those words which were suitable to the occasion as they presented themselves to his memory. The impending storm was, he believed, about to break upon the house; and it was not to be dispelled until the last words had been spoken, the tragedy accomplished, and the stage abandoned.

The rain came, and the lightning, and then strong wind which sent leaves whirling across the knoll. But there came no sound from the house. Through the rain and the thunder and the wind moved the old atmosphere of fate and despair and the conquest of unbending human will. The Thymele streamed and smoked no more; but the elements fought on as the accompaniment of the drama, and the piping of the invisible storm-cocks became shriller and more stern.

Again the mood changed, and Dr. Berry was driven forth like a villain to the hisses of the wind. Instead of returning home he took the field path which led beside the beech wood; and ascended until he reached the summit of a grass hill where larches were odorous in the hot sunshine. Pausing there he looked out, and saw the growth of sable cloud above Thorlund and the lightning crossing it and the white steam of the rain ascending.

A rabbit bounded among the larches into the open, and after it came a female figure, young and lithe, her face tanned by exposure to the weather, her great eyes unashamed. At first sight she was beautiful; at the second pathetic, because the light in her eyes lacked reason. She bounded up to the rector, flung herself at his knees, and burst into a noisy incoherent prayer.

“Get up, girl,” cried the scholar, dragging her almost roughly from the grass. “How often must I tell you this is wrong?”

“Here are flowers for you,” cried the girl, pressing a quantity of pale-blue and white harebells, warm and withering, into his hand. “They are always ringing, and I am tired of their noise. Take them and curse them. They will stop that wild nodding of their heads for you. Why will you not let me touch you? There is force coming out of your fingers, and when I hold your hand I see no longer the strange things in the wind. I have been among the larches, and in the white chalk-pits, and down by the stream, and in the cold churchyard, but I still see the strange things coming down the wind. And you too walk alone. Do you see figures? Have you seen the masked man running, and the white woman crying into the lilies? Do you see them in the garden in the valley?”

This girl, a well-known character of the neighbourhood, lived at Kingsmore with her grandparents, but was seldom to be found within the cottage of her relatives. Her real home was upon the grass hills, or in the dry beech wood, or down in the valley. Nancy Reed, Lone Nance as the villagers called her, passed about the country like a will o’ the wisp, talking to the birds and the creatures of her imagination, revelling in wind and shouting through storm. Yet for all her wild speech she was as gentle as a child, although perfect reason had been witheld from her all the twenty-four years of her life. She was sane enough to know that she was not as others, and her one desire was to become perfect and womanly; but relentless nature continued to bear her from place to place against her will, flinging her body about the hills like drift wood tossed upon the sea.

“You go into that garden with a book in your hand,” she cried, pointing into the vapours. “I watched you come out, your lips moving, and your face as white as that chalk. You saw and heard a great deal in that garden, and you were wondering what you had missed. If I had been nearer I would have told you.”

“You have never been in that garden,” said Dr. Berry sternly. “And you must never go.”

The girl laughed noisily into his face.

“That house is filled with sounds which you cannot understand. But if you go there much more, and sit under its shadow a few more years, you will begin to understand. And then you will come out and call for me, and we shall chase the sunbeams into the valley.”

The rector drew away from her. The note of inspiration was there and he had recognised it. It was true he had felt a slow unloosening of mind from body, an exaltation of the brain, and a tingling of each sense, while he had tarried in that garden. He had called this the birth of higher knowledge and the stirring of genius; but when the girl spoke he remembered that the bridge which separates the inspired from the diseased mind is perilously narrow and frail.

“I cannot keep away from the place,” he muttered, forgetful that Lone Nance was his listener. “I cannot stop my ears. I must go there, to sink into sleep and dream. It is good for me. The Aeolian poets walk at my side. I can describe their land, their speech, and their manners, as though I had lived in that far off time. Their language is as familiar to me as my own. I can enter into their moods. I can see where history has erred. I can make the crooked places straight. I can see the outlines of their figures and describe the very texture of their raiment. I can even detect the odour of Sappho’s anointed hair as she passes along the road to Mytilene.”

He stopped, remembering the status of the wild girl. She was looking beyond him into vacancy, her hands locked behind her back. The dark clouds were lifting from Thorlund, but the vapour still ascended like the mist of the genie from the fisherman’s vessel.

Twilight was trailing over the land as Dr. Berry descended, and the beech wood became a black sea, tossing and moaning with the voices of life. A labourer cutting hay stopped from his work and leaning upon his two-handled knife pulled at the brim of his hat as he peered down from the strong-smelling rick.

The rector looked closely at the man, until his sluggish memory awoke and suggested a name.

“Was it not your father who was taken ill? How is he now?” he asked, with a dim feeling that he had neglected his very inconsiderable parochial duties of late.

“Broke,” said the hay-cutter, abruptly and hoarsely. “Broke a week ago and been took. Sixty-one he wur, a good age for the likes of we.”

“I do not remember burying him. When was it?” Dr. Berry asked.

“’E didn’t not ’xactly die,” the man explained. “’E was took to the ’ouse, and so ’e be done to we. Us all get broke, some sooner, some later. Us can’t last for always. Father broke quick when ’e started, but ’is brother, my Uncle Tom as was, ’e took a terrible time. Us all said every fall, ‘’e’ll get broke this time for sure,’ but ’e’d pull through and laugh at us. ’E went sudden at the last. ’E’d been threshing all day, and ’bout evening ’e couldn’t carry. Tried time and time ’e did, but couldn’t carry. ’E walked ’ome, and sat down ’e did aside the fire, and ’e said, ‘I be broke.’ ’E was took that month.”

“Is he still alive?” the rector asked.

“Ay, sir. I saw ’im one day walkin’ the yard, when I druve the waggon by, but I didn’t want ’im to see I. When they gets broke they don’t come back no more. Some on ’em lasts a powerful time yonder too. But they ain’t of no account, and us don’t talk on ’em. Us ain’t got nothing to do wi’ they. I’ll get broke in my time. Us don’t think on’t till it comes.”

“Would it not have been possible for you to have kept your father out of the workhouse?” protested Dr. Berry. “You are in regular work with good wages, and an old man does not cost much to keep.”

The hay-cutter looked perplexed, and a trifle puzzled, at the scholar’s lack of very ordinary knowledge.

“Father wur broke, sir. ’E couldn’t earn no wages,” he explained.

“So I understand,” said Dr. Berry. “But did it never occur to you that you might maintain him? It should surely be the son’s duty to support the father in his old age.”

The labourer smiled more and more at the rector’s ignorance.

“They that be broke be took, sir,” he said heavily. “When I be broke I’ll be took, and my son will say, ‘Good-bye, father,’ and wait for ’is turn. Wife and me ’ave six children, and another comin’ ’fore harvest. I gets twelve shillun, and pays ’alf-a-crown rent and sixpence club money, and my wife and me live clear of charity. There ain’t no room for old folk along wi’ a big fambly. ’Sides, sir, it ain’t proper. Them that be broke, be took. And them that works get wages.”

“Good-night,” said Dr. Berry abruptly.

“Good-e’en, sir,” replied the hay-cutter gruffly.

“Broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel,” the scholar muttered as he walked away. “As we cast the sherds of shattered utensils from our houses, so are these men cast forth from their homes when their strength breaks and their utility as machines passes. There is matter for the thinker here, but it is colourless and cold. It lacks the warmth and glamour of the past.”

One last sunbeam passed over the hills and slanted across the Strath. From a point, where the grass road swung round, a side of the old house became visible, and a single window blinking in the middle of the light. Dr. Berry watched with shaded eyes, and suddenly came to a stop. There was a white figure bending across the window, and as he saw it the question of the wild girl flashed back: “Have you seen the white woman crying into the lilies?”

The same minute he was smiling, because a breath of wind had passed, shaking the foliage, and the white figure rocked in unison and vanished, as the sunlight died away. The shape had been caused by the ivy and a certain arrangement of the boughs of an elm acted upon by the white ray. The rector breathed more easily when the window became blank.

Yet he knew that the people of the hamlet would be saying that evening, “It is noisy in the Strath.” They who behold a tragedy see only the outward passions of the actors; of the influence which is behind they can see nothing. So one may watch the tree tormented by the wind, but not see the wind.

Supper was awaiting the poet, and he ate and drank mechanically. Then entering his study he spread his translations before him, and straightway became an Athenian, floating delicately through most pellucid air.

The poetic mountains breathed their influence into him over the deeps of time. Fragrant odours were in his nostrils, and in his ears the murmur of bees upon Hymettus. He passed restlessly to Olympus where the Gods were in council, and saw the Father aiming his thunderbolt, and like Menippus sat at the door whence issued the supplications of the world, and heard the petitions for wealth, honour, and long life repeated in shameless monotony. He heard also the prayer of Reed entreating that the terrible atmosphere might be dispelled, and he felt no sorrow when the frown on the thunderer’s brow remained unrelaxed. Through all the shifting figures he dimly perceived the table before him and the passionate iambics of Archilochus spread upon paper by his hand, and aloud he read, “My soul, my soul care-worn, bereft of rest.” And at that his head sank forward upon his breast.

The study window remained open, and moths and beetles blundered through to bombard the globe of the scholar’s lamp.

It was ten o’clock when the housekeeper knocked as usual at the door, and receiving no answer entered softly with her master’s bedroom candle and a cup of cocoa. Dr. Berry was leaning forward over the table, his face hidden upon his folded arms, a disabled ghost-moth floundering across his left hand. The woman noticed that the muscles of her master’s hands were standing out like cords.

“Your reverence,” she said.

The rector did not stir, and after repeating her call she muttered gently, “He’s been and tired himself again.” Then she turned down the flame of the lamp, drew it further from the sleeper, and retired softly, leaving the door ajar.

The tragedy was over; and the tired exarchus slept.

The next morning it became known about Thorlund and its neighbourhood that the owner of the Strath was dead. The woman who supplied him with milk had discovered the body lying across the threshold, its head towards the garden. Henry Reed had pitted his strength against the Strath; and the influence of the house had triumphed.

INTERLUDE

He was nothing better than a consumer of the fruits of the earth. “Dost thou then,” quoth I, “imply that we should name such a creature as this--as we do the drone in the bee-hive--a blot upon the community, a mere drone at home, and abroad a disgrace to the state?” “Even so, Socrates,” said he.--_Plato_.

The houses, which compose a street at no great distance from the trees of Gray’s Inn, are for the most part occupied by authors, artists, actors, and architects engaged, like Icarus, in making wings.

The first letter of our alphabet originated it is said from the hieroglyphic picture of an eagle. Followers of the four professions beginning with that letter are, strictly speaking, not wanted. Everybody must need letter B as represented by baker and butcher. But letter A suggests luxuries. The picture of the eagle is therefore appropriate. Authors, artists, actors, and architects must learn first to fly, and then to soar well above smaller birds, before they can win success.

The side posts of each door are studded with an amazing number of brass knobs, intended originally to be in communication with bells upon every floor, but at present restricted seemingly to the duty of exposing lilliputian milk-cans to the public view. These great houses, which in the time of the Georges were occupied by people of title, have become brick-and-mortar masks, hiding the sunken eye and hollow cheek of poverty, in addition to the shame of rake and harlot, from the view of the town. On the ground floor of Number 15 a middle-aged man was brushing a long-haired terrier beside the open window of a wide room panelled with oak. It was close upon ten o’clock, but breakfast was still waiting. The interior was moderately well furnished, although with the typical middle-class disregard for art. The pictures were for the most part prints depicting scenes of sport. There were also a few German photographs in doubtful taste, and one or two engravings of river scenery in blurred and fly-spotted frames. There was not a book to be seen, except one which was open upon the sofa, and that to judge by its broken back was in continual use. Its title was Ruff’s Guide to the Turf.

A well-built man of not more than thirty years, unbecomingly attired in a yellow dressing-gown and scarlet slippers entered the room. His haggard face, listless attitude, and general appearance of disgust with himself and his surroundings, suggested that he had been in the habit of guiding his life according to the traditions of the house. As the middle-aged man turned to welcome him, the profligate yawned profoundly and lowering himself into a chair pushed the hair off his forehead with an irritated gesture.

“So you’re here again,” he muttered. “Drayton, you’re a regular vampire, always after money or food. I suppose you would suck my blood literally, if you weren’t afraid of poisoning yourself. What is it this morning? Breakfast I suppose?”

The other--he was a poor scribbler, who made a precarious livelihood by contributing paragraphs to popular penny weeklies--stroked his stubbly chin, laughed, and removed the dog from the chair as carefully as through the animal had been made of precious porcelain.

“As a simple statement of fact I have slept upon your premises,” he said, indicating the sofa. “Have you forgotten who guided your weary footsteps homeward during the early hours of the morning?”

The profligate bent over the table and picked up a letter which was addressed to “Charles Conway, Esquire,” in copper-plate handwriting. He tore open the envelope, yawned again, and inquired of his companion whether at the time specified he, the questioner, had been very grossly drunk.

“A gentleman of private means never gets drunk,” said the parasite. “We apply that term to costermongers and coal-heavers. But you were, I fancy, rapidly approximating towards that Bacchic state which in classical language is described as _vino gravatus_. Even the policeman at the corner of the street, whom for some reason best known to yourself you insisted upon greeting most fraternally, would never, I am sure, admit that you were more than foot-sore; but then you presented him with a shilling, thereby obtaining your commission as captain. You wasted that shilling. I would have installed you as a Field Marshal for half the amount.”

“Eat the breakfast,” said Conway, as he transferred himself wearily to the sofa and unfolded his letter. “And don’t talk so much. My head is tender.”

Drayton hurried to the table and surrounded himself with victuals; but before beginning he looked across and suggested, “Better have something. Try a kidney and a piece of toast?”

“You can get me a bottle of beer and an apple,” said Conway in his jaded manner.

Drayton bustled to a cupboard, bent his rheumatic knees, and after an interval approached the sofa in the capacity of waiter, bearing the desired refreshment.

“A glass of milk would be more appropriate, considering the time of day, only you might insist upon having whiskey in it,” he said. “You will soon resemble Lord John Hervey, who, in this neighbourhood, and perhaps in this very room, breakfasted on an emetic, dined on a biscuit, and regaled himself once a week with an apple. Here is your ale--all white and yellow! You can imagine it is a poached egg.”

The younger man gave no heed to the parasite’s chatter. He was studying his letter with a frown. When it was finished he leaned back, drank his refreshment, looked at his watch, then read the letter again.

“Bring me the newspaper,” he commanded.

The scribbler was making famine in the land. He believed in eating well, entirely mistrusting the French proverb, which associates a good stomach with a bad heart, and pinning his faith rather upon the creed which teaches that virtuous folk have hearty appetites. His own poor line of business rarely afforded him the means for more than one substantial meal in the course of the day, and too often not that; so when opportunity was given to kill a hearty appetite without lightening his pocket he was never wont to be backward.

Rising obediently Drayton opened the newspaper, folded it with the sporting intelligence outward, and so handed it to his patron with the remark, “There is no change in the betting.”

Conway did not even glance at the sheet, which had been presented as a matter of course; but turning to the general news searched each column carefully. For several minutes there was silence, while the scribbler made ruin of the breakfast. Then Conway threw the paper down and resumed his former attitude.

“Give me a cigarette,” he ordered.

The other briskly left the table, complied with the demand, and as briskly returned. A coal cart rumbled by, and the Stentor in charge announced his business by a long ear-shattering yell.

The noise seemed to stir Conway into life. He paced across the room and set his back against the door. “Drayton,” he said, “I have heard some extraordinary news this morning. My uncle has been murdered.”

“Great Heavens!” exclaimed the writer, his jaws ceasing from their labours.

“Don’t worry your brain to find condolences,” said the other coolly. “I have never to my knowledge seen this particular relative, so I am in no need of sympathy, especially since I benefit by his death. But I want to know whether you have read anything of the murder of a Henry Reed? I see there is no mention in to-day’s paper.”

“Sympathy apart, it’s an awful business,” said Drayton, pouring himself out another cup of tea. “No, I don’t remember to have heard anything. How did it happen?”

“It seems, from the bare narrative here, to have been a remarkable affair altogether,” Conway answered. “My uncle returned from America only a few weeks ago, to take up his residence in an old house belonging to him which had not been occupied for ages. Last Sunday morning he was discovered by the milk-woman, lying dead across the threshold of the hall-door. It appears that the house has a queer sort of reputation, and it was at first supposed he had died of fright. But at the inquest it was shown that he had been strangled. And the curious part of it is that no stranger had been seen in the place, and it is impossible to suspect any of the inhabitants of the village.”

“The mystery of the haunted house,” muttered Drayton professionally. “Perhaps there will be a chance for me to do something here. Where is the place, Mr. Conway?”

The younger man came away from the door without answering and walked up and down, swinging the tassels of his dressing-gown. Suddenly he sat down at the table and poured himself out some tea.

“That’s right,” said the scribbler approvingly. “Nothing half so stimulating as tea. I hope I have left enough.”

Conway filled a cup and drank off the contents. While doing so he kept his eyes fixed upon two grotesque objects above the chimney-piece, one on either side of a picture which depicted Isinglass winning the Derby; and when he set the cup down he remained in the same posture, staring at a pair of brown masks representing Comedy and Tragedy.

“My head is full of wheels,” he muttered. “Come and hit me, Drayton, that I may be sure I am alive. I must have played the fool badly last night. I remember coming back from Sandown, and driving to some restaurant in the Strand. The next thing I can recall is groping round my room for a drink of water. My body aches and pricks, and my head feels as heavy as lead, and my eyes--Great Heavens! are those faces laughing at me?”

The elder man had finished eating at last. He came round the table and placed his hand soothingly upon the profligate’s arm.

“Come over to the window and get some air,” he said quietly. “You have been making a hot pace these last few months. You’ll be breaking if you don’t hold up.”

“Look!” muttered Conway, pointing at the masks.

“Turn your back on them,” said the scribbler. “What are you going to do about your uncle’s death?”

Again Conway disregarded the question. Turning from the wall to the furrowed features of his poverty-stricken companion, he exclaimed thickly, “Sit down, Drayton, and don’t bother me. Do you know why I have those masks hanging there? They are family heirlooms, copies I have been told of a pair made in Nuremburg, during the eighteenth century, by a crazy toy-seller. These belonged to my mother before her marriage, and her father had a pair like them.”

“Where are the originals?” inquired the listener.

“They have been destroyed. There was something uncanny about them, but beyond that I know nothing. This is the crest of the Reeds.”

Conway drew a ring from his little finger and held it out with an unsteady hand. The other took it and saw a white cameo, showing two masks, leaning together, a cap and bells over the forehead of the one, a dagger over the other. He returned the ring, with the grave remark, “But you are not a Reed.”

“My mother was. The family emigrated to America, and there my mother married into the Conway family, and returned with her husband to England. My uncle leaves his property to me, not because he could have loved me, but I suppose there was no one else to whom he could leave it.”

“Go down and see the place. The change will pick you up,” suggested the elder man. “It isn’t probable you will live there?”

“What, give up London to rot away in a lonely country house?” said Conway contemptuously. “Is it likely? If I cannot let the place I shall try to sell it. What are you doing with yourself to-day?”

“The usual thing,” replied the man who lived by his poor wits. “The British Museum reading-room, in chase of a guinea. I have earned nothing this week.”

“You shall have a guinea, if you will pack my bag and take it to Paddington. I am going to see my late uncle’s lawyer, and will meet you at the station about noon. You can occupy these rooms until I come back.”

The literary adventurer closed with this offer promptly; and a few minutes after mid-day a train drew out of London, carrying the profligate Conway towards the influence of the Strath.